You ask, we answer: Should I rely on Writer’s Market?
Stephanie asked, “Are books like the Writer’s Market reliable? How many opportunities am I missing by taking their word as gold? Or how many bridges will I burn by not listening to them and querying editors that really don’t want to be queried?”
I love Writer’s Market. I subscribe to their online version every year, and when the new dead tree version comes out, I check it out at the library or flip through it at the bookstore just to see what’s new. Sometimes I find magazines — especially trades — that I’d never heard of that sound like great markets for me.
However, I don’t rely on WM for information on who to query at a given magazine (or who not to query). I use this helpful directory to find new magazines or to look up magazines that I find on the stands, and use the contact number WM provides to call the magazine’s editorial offices and get the real scoop on who to contact and how. If the listing includes a web address, I may visit the site and search for the current editors’ name and e-mail address there.
The problem is that editors move around like hyperactive children on lattes, so sometimes the information in Writer’s Market is outdated (the online version is better about this as they update the data more often).
Another problem is that hoards of people use WM to pitch magazines, so some editors get inundated with half-assed queries from unprofessional writers. To discourage these writers and keep their in-boxes manageable, some magazines print only a generic “query” e-mail address, list only a snail mail address, or opt out of Writer’s Market altogether (for example, some of the national women’s magazines are no longer listed), claiming they’re not accepting queries at all.
If a magazine isn’t written entirely in-house (and you can tell by comparing the bylines with the editors’ names in the masthead), then it most likely uses freelancers. Someone is writing those articles, and it could be you. Not only that, but I pitch only via e-mail these days, even to magazines that give only a snail mail address in WM, and I’ve never had a problem. As long as you’re professional and pitch relevant and well-written ideas, you’ll be welcomed. In other words, when editors opt out of WM or put up other roadblocks to querying, they’re thinking about those “other” writers — not wonderful, professional writers like you.
Have a question for the Renegade Writers? E-mail it to questions [at] therenegadewriter [dot] com. [lf]
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Dec 15, 2006 Advice, Ass, You Ask, We Answer
Before getting into freelance writing, I wrote songs. The Songwriter’s Market version was no help to me then, and I can’t recall the Writer’s Market version, book or Web, ever getting me work either.
I should have mentioned — I actually landed my first assignments using WM in 1996! There was no big newsstand close by, so that directory was even more important to me. The first few magazines I got assignments from I had never actually seen except for their listings in WM. But I think that as the Internet makes it easier for everyone and his brother to pitch magazines, editors are getting inundated and putting up roadblocks to pitching.