Write That Article!

by Jerri Ledford

Making a living as a magazine writer is tough. It’s a constant battle to sell articles through query letters and reprints. But it can be done and you can make it easier. Slant your articles to a variety of specific markets and one idea can land you a dozen or more sales. By targeting your stories to multiple markets, you get the most mileage from them, you’ll make your success easier to obtain, and you’ll boost your income considerably.

Preliminary Research
Slanting ideas for more than one story begins with the preliminary research for the article. As you are gathering the information necessary to write a knockout query for your original idea, look for other bits of information that might lead to second, third, or twelfth articles. Keep separate notes for each slant you discover.

For example, let’s use the most recent e-mail virus, "Melissa." I had an article idea in the aftermath of this prolific virus; the article, "Teaching Computer Safety to Your Children," would show parents how to teach their kids safety on the 'Net. The research for this article led me to a variety of things I didn’t know when I began.

Women have a variety of worries about the net -- cyber stalkers and scams are just two of them. So, there are two more ideas: "How to Outsmart Your Average American Cyberstalker," and "How to Avoid Becoming a Target for Electronic Scams." Other ideas I added to the file depended on finding sources willing to be profiled. Those were "How I Survived an Assault from Cyberspace," and "My Best (Cyber) Friend Saved My Life."

Tracy Simmons, a successful freelancer in Tennessee says, "I like to have at least five markets in mind when I begin an article. I may not query that many, but it helps in preparing for the interview." By having preliminary markets in mind when you are doing early research, you open yourself to possibilities you might not see if you are focused on only the original idea you conceived. Simmons also suggested skimming the Writer’s Market to find publications that might be appropriate for the topic you are pursuing.

Interviews That Go Farther
Interviews are an important and time-consuming part of writing most articles. If you have to spend the time talking to someone, why not make that time do double duty? Go to your interview with an idea of the markets you are trying to reach, and ask questions that relate not only to your original article, but also to the other possible markets and stories that you have established.

Simmons says she does just that when she is interviewing. An example is a recent interview she conducted with a young man who was fascinated with the NASA program. During the interview, Simmons asked questions that would apply to several articles: one on the relationship between the boy and NASA officials; one on the boy, but slanted toward NASA’s nationwide educational programs; one for a teen publication on the dreamer side of the boy and the determination that made his dreams into reality; and one for a Christian publication on the boy’s faith and how it related to his experiences.

Once you have quotes from your subjects, use them judiciously. Since quoting the same source in two different articles is not usually a problem for editors, you can use different quotes from one person in several pieces. However, don’t use the same quotes from piece to piece. To protect the publication that buys your article from possible copyright infringements, verbatim quotes should not overlap from one article to another. It is acceptable to paraphrase a quote from another article so long as you are not quoting word for word.

The Final Copies
Once you have your articles together and your markets carefully chosen, check one more thing. The markets you are targeting, all with different versions of the same story -- are they competing markets? For example, I wrote several articles on the subject of involving children in home businesses. Of the slants I had for that subject, many of them could have overlapped. "Involving Your Children in a Home Business" appeared in the January/February issue of Back Home. "A Family Affair" is scheduled to appear in a home business magazine, and "Hiring Family Members" will appear in a regional magazine. Each of the articles has a different slant: "Involving..." is a how-to piece, "A Family Affair" is a profile of a successful work-from-home mother, and "Hiring Family..." is a tax treatment. While each of those articles might have been interchangeable in the markets they were submitted to, I was careful to avoid markets that overlapped. The surest way to make an editor hate you is for a similar story, written by you, to appear in a competing market.

Chelle Cohen, a busy writer in Missouri, says that her first rule when relsanting an idea for multiple markets is: "Don’t send out more than one query letter or manuscript to those magazines in direct competition with one another." There is no reason you cannot submit dissimilar articles to competing magazines. For instance, you can sell a profile to one women’s magazine and a how-to piece to another. With the number of different markets available for your writing, you should have no problem making multiple, non-competing sales. Here are a few of the markets you can slant your articles to fit:

• Women’s National Publications

• Women’s Regional or Local Publications

• Men’s Publications

• Trade Publications

• Corporate Publications

• Mature or Senior Publications

• Children’s Publications

• Young Adult Publications

• Hobby Publications

• National Parenting Publications

• Regional and Local Parenting Publications

• Association Publications

• Newspapers or News Magazines

• National Business Publications

• Local or Regional Business Publications

• General Interest Publications

Not all of the markets listed above are going to be appropriate for every topic you come up with, and there may be markets not listed here that would be appropriate. Each topic has a different audience and a different range of readers, but with a little planning, you can sell your ideas to numerous markets, increase your exposure, and double or even triple your income per article. Cohen says, "For each topic I choose, I think about how each publication and its readers would like to see the topic addressed. No two magazines would address it the same."

The great article idea you dreamed up as you fell asleep last night just might be the one that will make the glossies sit up and take note. Then again, it might not. But, if you look at that idea from another angle, or from two or three angles, who knows what you might come up with? In her book, Feminine Wiles: Creative Techniques for Writing Women’s Feature Stories that Sell, Donna Elizabeth Boetig writes, "Be open to the modification of your original idea -- either on your own initiative or the editor’s. Sometimes a slightly different slant, a tighter focus -- even a broader focus -- may rescue an article idea." It may do more than that if you have a strong idea. It may give you the means to use the same idea, research, and interviews to make multiple sales. And it will definitely make it easier to reach the goals of success which you have set for yourself.

References:
1999 Writer's Market (Annual), by Kirsten Holm, Ed., et al., Writer's Digest Books, 1999.

Feminine Wiles: Creative Techniques for Writing Women’s Feature Stories that Sell, by Donna Elizabeth Boetig, Quill Driver Books, California, 1998.

-- JL
©1999 Jerri Ledford