But success does not come
by magic – it’s a long hard road and it is up to the individual to be selective
along the way. Using a bit of common sense also helps.
So, you have written an
article (or other) and it is ready to send off. Next you must find the
appropriate place for your piece. The Internet lists thousands of newspapers
and magazines world-wide.
It sounds simple. Just pick
the name of a magazine that sounds appropriate and press send. Not so!
Here’s my advice on submitting articles, essays, short stories.
1.
Research
the publication you are targeting. Don’t just pick a magazine at random because
the name sounds right. Don’t send an article on growing oranges to Juice. That publication relates to music,
film and TV. Or send your essay on Chaos Theory to Quad Wrangle expecting it to be a scholastic magazine. By checking,
you will discover Quad Wrangle is the
magazine of the Australian Quadriplegic Association. By failing to research your
target market, you are wasting your own time and that of editorial staff. And you may look a fool in the process.
2.
Check
circulation numbers. Depending on the type of article you have written, and
your degree of confidence, you may feel that your work is worthy of a
reasonable size readership. Eidelon
has a readership of 350, whereas The
Australian Women’s’ Weekly has a readership of almost 2.5 million.
3.
Consider
what types of freelance submissions the magazine accepts e.g. articles,
interviews, reviews and short stories. If the paper or magazine doesn’t handle
the sort of piece you have written – don’t send it to them.
4.
Check the
format required – hard copy, e-mail, disk etc. and what layout is required e.g.
double-line spacing and the word length. It is pointless sending a brilliant
3000 word short story to a magazine which has column space for 800 words. No
editor is going to spend hours chopping your article to pieces – and you wouldn’t
appreciate it anyway.
5.
Supporting
images. If you intend to support your
article with images (providing they are permitted), check if digital images are
acceptable or medium format transparencies are required.
6.
Before
you send your piece check the contact details and confirm the magazine is still
in circulation. It’s also worth confirming the name of the editor as they swap
and change regularly. Addressing your submission to the wrong person may result
in it being unanswered or, if in hard copy, – it being returned to you
unopened.
7.
Finally, find
out what percentage of the magazine’s work is written by freelancers. Breaking
into a market which sources only 5% of its work from freelancers is obviously
going to be harder than breaking into a market that buys 100% freelance work.
Well done! Your article has
gone to the correct person at the target magazine. Now, don’t hold your breath.
Response Time.
Don’t expect to hear how
your article is proceeding two weeks after you sent it in. In many cases 3 to 6
months is not unusual even for short magazine articles. You must learn that patience is a virtue.
Payment – What will you receive?
This information is
provided in some cases but not all. And don’t get carried away with regular
freelancer’s fees. Payment for articles may be quoted as x-number of cents per
word, or as an amount per 1000 words, or it may be “by negotiation”. While some
publishers provide vague information, others indicate that they pay nothing and
merely provide a tear sheet. (That’s tear
(rhymes with hair) as in a page torn out
of a magazine and not tear (rhymes
with beer) as in weeping – although
you may resort to tears when all you get back for your hard work is a tear
sheet!)
We all like to think that our work is
worth some financial reward but, for the budding writer trying to breakthrough
into print, the joy and satisfaction of being published may, in the early days,
have to be remuneration enough.
But once you have jumped
this hurdle and your work has seen the light of print, you have your foot on
the first step of the ladder.
About the author: Today I can claim to be a multi-published author. But I
started writing 20 years ago and it was 10 years before my first novel was accepted
for publication. Initially, I wrote letters to the editor, short newspaper articles
and submitted pieces of interest to targeted magazines. Eventually I was
invited to write regular feature articles for a livestock magazine.
In the early days, the remuneration I received was either non-existence
or negligible. My first payment for a freelance article was $80.00. My last
newspaper article (in 2005) was with a prestigious Australian broadsheet. I was
paid $800 which was more than the advance I got on my first book.
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