Hitting the Stacks

I’m busy pulling together a slew of queries this week. They stem from story ideas I’ve been jotting down in the past couple of months but haven’t had time to think about, and now I’m focused on getting proposals out the door within the next two weeks.

Before the madness of the holidays hit, I began by brainstorming potential publications to pitch my ideas to. Once I narrowed down the list, I headed to the local library and spent time thumbing through past issues of the magazines.

I’m pitching to magazines I haven’t written for before, so this gave me a chance to familiarize myself with them. It also allowed me to keep an eye out for similar stories that may have been done before.

It was a smart move on my part. One of the topics I planned to pitch to a women’s publication had recently been covered—in a different way, but too similar to make publishing another feature on the topic already a possibility. So I went back to the drawing board with that one and thought up fresh ways to approach the topic and new publications to pitch to.

With others, looking through the magazines allowed me to note the appropriate editor to send the pitch to and helped me figure out possible word counts for features, what department the story might fit best in for front of book pieces, and the type of sources and tone the stories in each publication used.

When I left the library, I came away with a page of notes and the confidence that I was sending the right ideas to the right publications.

I know some people don’t believe in querying and others send pitches blind, without any research into the publication, confident their idea will fit even if they’re not totally familiar with the publication.

For me, however, spending the time to familiarize myself is worth it.

It may not ensure that I land every story assignment I propose, but it at least gets me one step closer to success.

And now it's time to get to work on those query letters.


Photo by eclecticlibrarian via Flickr.