Magazine writing: you must learn to pitch

Writing for magazines is reasonably simple — read this week’s Editorial for more on this.

I’ve freelanced for magazines for many more years than I care to remember. The thrill of seeing my byline in a major publication for the first time stays with me, all these years later, and I hope you get that pleasure too. When you see your byline for the first time, you realize that yes indeed, you really are a writer.

To freelance for magazines, you never send the complete article. You send a pitch. There are only a couple of exceptions to this, and that’s if you’re offering a personal essay, or a piece of humor. In those cases, keep it under 1000 words and send the complete article.

In this article, How to Make Money Online by Writing for Magazines — Angela Booth’s Fab Freelance Writing Blog, I said about pitching:

“When you submit an article or an essay to a magazine, you don’t submit the completed piece of writing. You submit a pitch, which is a proposal – a letter outlining your idea.

Primarily you pitch because editors are busy so they just want the gist, but also because when an article is still at the idea stage, editors can mould the the finished piece of writing to what they want.

On the magazine’s site, look for a section called About Us, or Editorial Contacts to find out how to submit your pitch (your idea) to that particular magazine.”

You’ll get better at pitching magazines with practice, so practice.

Angela Booth’s writing guides have been created to help you to make money from your writing every day. Join the thousands of writers who are making great money with their writing skills.

“If You Want to See Your Name in Newsstand Magazines, You Can!”

Many writers start high-profile careers by writing for magazines.

Magazine writing is both easy and highly profitable. Once you’ve learned the techniques in Angela Booth’s new writing guide “Freelance Writing: Make Great Money Writing Articles For Magazines (In Your Spare Time)”, you’ll soon be writing for magazines which pay from $1 to $4 PER WORD.