To publish your work, you must consider many markets and match your material to them:  literary small press publications, national large circulation publications, local newspapers, regional and national newspapers, radio, industry publications and online sites and publications.  It is rare for a writer to start at the “top” with national publications before publishing locally and regionally.  (For some people, however, locally may mean a major newspaper such as the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Seattle Times—and these markets are not out of the question if the topic is right and you have credentials for writing on that topic).  In addition to knowing and understanding markets, you must also network contacts to improve your publishing chances.  This week, I share information on how to find markets as well as six stories from writers on publishing strategies.  You can use the resources to learn how and where to submit your work and the writers’ personal stories to sharpen your own strategies.

First Resources
When you set out to publish, you will benefit from understanding not only market categories, but also submission requirements and protocol.  There are directories available that offer help in this area. Perhaps the most widely known is the annual Writer’s Market from Writer’s Digest Books.  This publication is available at bookstores, directly from Writer’s Digest Books (www.writersdigest.com) and at library reference desks.

I recommend perusing this guide.  There are over 1000 new publishing opportunities found for each year’s edition, and the listings include over 1400 consumer magazines, almost 500 trade magazines and more than 1000 book publishers as well as hundreds of script buyers. In addition, the information you need to make submissions once you have the venue’s contact information is in this guide, from how to query a publisher to editors’ descriptions of what they are looking for.  Don’t let the amount of information in one place become daunting:  if you want a short course in understanding the publications industry, reading much of this guide will go a long way.

In addition to familiarizing yourself with the always-growing list of publications seeking manuscripts, with how to make queries to publishers and with the format for cover letters, you should visit the periodical room of your library and browse newsstands and bookstores for magazines. You will notice many that are new to you, and by looking through them, realize additional markets.  If a magazine seems like a likely place to submit your work, you might go online and see how much of an issue you can browse.  You can take down the submission guidelines and information from the magazine or webpage. To find out more about how your work might match the magazines’ missions check Magazines for Libraries at your library reference desk; it contains information about particular publications’ editorial slants and financial backing.

 A separate guide for online markets, called Online Markets for Writers:  How to Make Money by Selling Your Writing on the Internet by Anthony Tedesco and Paul Tedesco offers a thorough description of the online market as well as an explanation on this market’s background and development.

Guerilla Marketing for Writers by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman and Michael Larsen, also from Writer’s Digest Books, offers tips essay writers can use concerning writing op-ed essays and book reviews (See Chapter 12 “Weapons Made Possible by Your Ability to Write”)

Now The Stories
Over and above using the print guides, ask publishing authors you know about the who, how, when, where, what, and what next of their publishing experience.  Their answers will prove extremely informative. Contrary to the idea that the writer merely writes and someone else takes over from there, networking and following through on contacting publications constitute the rest of the job.  Most writers of essays, poems and articles do not have agents until they have a collection for a book and maybe not even then, given the smaller audiences for these genres.  The good news is that even if you think you don’t have a person or place to start networking, you do.  As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Steven Winn said to me:

Some people think they work so far outside of publishing or live so far from a publishing center that they are not able to network.  But everybody knows somebody who knows somebody.  Never give up asking about contacts in any aspect of publishing.  The people in the Public Relations or community relations departments of your workplace will probably know editors of newspapers, magazines, and newsletters.  Those people know other people and so it goes.

Judith Adler
For years Judith Adler taught environmental topics to schoolchildren in Mt. Diablo State Park near her home in California.  In addition to developing her own garden, she began training as a docent for the world-renowned Ruth Bancroft Garden also near her home.  The garden director she trained under soon took on the editorship of Pacific Horticulture Magazine.  Judith told him she was working on an article and mentioned a few of the ideas in it.  He said he’d like to see it and she sent it in to him. He made very few changes and published it.  Soon after, she wrote a letter to American Gardner thanking the editor for picking up where Wildlife Gardener, a magazine that went under after six issues, left off in terms of promoting environmentally friendly gardening practices.  She mentioned she was a gardener and had written an article for Pacific Horticulture Magazine, and he decided to give her the opportunity to write the first article in their new Habitat Department.

When she helped in founding Life Garden, a nonprofit that promotes the value of organic, native planting to families and children and communities, she wrote to some well-known horticultural writers asking for endorsement.  She told them she admired their work and also what she was doing at a grassroots level to promote the same ideas.  She very much values the words they sent to her.

Judith says, “I think you just have to put your ideas and work out there, not necessarily because it will be published, but because the contacts are important.”

Caroline Arnold
Author of dozens of books for children, Caroline Arnold has also had essays published in trade publications.  When her children were part of a Suzuki violin class and the lights went out during a holiday concert, she wrote about how people responded to the electricity going out and the emotional experience of being there. She sent it to two national Suzuki magazines, names she’d gotten from one of her children’s music teachers.  Both magazines accepted the essay, and she had to withdraw it from the one that responded second since they were both expecting first publication rights.  In addition to writing her essay, her experience with Suzuki inspired a children’s story called Music Lessons for Alex and a photo essay.  She then did a number of articles related to musical experiences that were published in the national and local Suzuki newsletters. After that she wrote an article for the Suzuki community on the process of creating the Alex book.

Now most of her essays are for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.  She enjoys being asked to write about what she has learned about publishing so others can learn from her experience, but she also writes essays when things compel her to write them down and autobiographical essays for Something About the Author, a publication that libraries buy.

In Caroline’s experience, essays provide an opportunity to share thoughts and discoveries with the communities of people with whom you are involved and sometimes they are the start to a string of other publications.

Meg Files
Meg Files publishes poetry and fiction and the occasional essay. She never saw herself as an essay writer because she thought essays were either academic or over the top in making the personal public.  She was more comfortable hiding behind fiction. However, after she published her novel Meridian 144, people kept asking her if the book was based on her life.  She thought about her answers and that became an essay that she sent to Writer’s Digest Magazine.  Later, when a local editor asked her about writing by hand versus writing on the computer for an article he was doing, she extended her answers into another essay that she sent to Writer’s Digest Magazine.  She realized that she enjoyed writing essays when she wanted to explore something and articulate it for herself.  Recently, a Phoenix newspaper was doing a series by Arizona writers on Arizona.  The editor knew her and asked Meg to write for the series.  This was hard because she didn’t have a subject in mind and didn’t know what she needed to explore. But she was taking a trip in the next few months and that trip turned out to be not only a physical exploration of an area but also an internal exploration about loss and love.

Now Meg advocates taking the risk of exploring personal material and appreciates the voice and structure of the essay form.  She says the shape comes out of experience and cannot be imposed.  Therefore, she doesn’t work by thinking of a hot idea and pitching it to a magazine. She writes essays when she finds she has a passion to write about something. Because she teaches writing, what she is passionate about is often answering students’ questions.  She has had her essay work published in Writer to Writer, Bylines and The Writer in addition to Writer’s Digest Magazine and they have grown into an instructional book entitled, Write from Life: Turning Your Personal Experiences into Compelling Stories.

Jim Files
Jim Files is a veteran newspaper columnist.  Straight out of journalism school and two years of freelancing, he saw an ad for a sports reporter job for a Kanakee, IL newspaper that hadn’t yet begun publishing.  The first Saturday after he was hired he covered a Little League baseball game and went back to the office to write his story for the paper’s first issue.  There was nobody in the office but the publisher and the editor, and as he typed, their voices grew louder and louder in the conference room.  After a while the editor left in a huff and slammed the front door behind him.  The publisher came over to Jim and asked him if he knew what a pica pole was and if he could work a reduction wheel. He’d used both in journalism school and said yes.  “Well, do you want to be editor of this paper?” asked the publisher. Jim said yes and now he did everything at the paper as editor and only full time reporter. In addition, when the publisher, who was writing the editorials, burned out, he asked Jim to take them on as well.

Jim had been a reader and writer of newspaper columns since he was a kid. At age 10, he delivered papers and when he’d finished his route, he sat down and read his issue cover to cover admiring columnists like Jim Bishop and Robert Rourke.  The summer before he entered the Marines, he wrote a column a day for himself, on everything from his observations of politics to fashion. Therefore, as editor Jim creates a personal column and such a column has been a part of his subsequent newspaper jobs ever since.  He may soon market many of these columns as a Western themed book, especially to presses in CO where he wrote many of the essays.

His advice for those who want to write essays for newspapers is to remember that most editors have an open door and are interested in what you can write for them. He had doctors approach him about columns with medical advice and many Erma Bombeck wannabes. “Okay, go home and write me five columns and bring them back.  I don’t want to see one subject today but five of them over time,” he instructed them all. “Only one person ever responded.  He was a forest ranger and he wanted to write an outdoor philosophy column.  He got the job.”

Smaller papers are open to people pitching. The larger ones, like the Denver Post recruit writers, 10-12 around the state and ask for samples.  He says that writing letters to the editor can get someone an occasional guest column. Contact the editorial page editor to see about this.  If there is a gap, they are always looking for people to fill it.  The free weekly papers may be a place to start for many, too.  “If you can write what people will read on a regular basis and on a subject that advertisers would like to share space with, you might find a market for your writing.”  If writing to a general readership is not your thing, he says, focus on a specific area of town.   There are editors out there who need writers and will use them if their pieces are good.

Jack Heffron
Editorial Director for Emmis Books, Jack Heffron augments his fiction writing with creative nonfiction and uses fictive drama techniques and dialog as well as reporting in the pieces he sells to magazines.  He believes these essays suggest a personality at work rather than a seeking of objectivity as in classic reporting.

He wrote an essay on visiting the Bonnie and Clyde Festival in Louisiana and that essay was reprinted in the Best American Travel Writing anthology.  The editor of that collection then told an editor at Oxford American about the piece. That editor read Jack’s piece and asked Jack if he would write an article for them about the Casey Jones Centennial Festival, focusing on the famous song about the train wreck.  He felt earmarked as a writer, but it was a way in, he says, and because he loves American history and in his fiction characters enjoy American kitsch and pop culture, these essays did seem an outgrowth of his interests.

Out of his own childhood admiration of Peter Rose, he wrote a piece about him that Esquire paid for.  When the publisher changed, however, the new staff didn’t feel that the essay had enough “dirt” on the figure and they paid Jack a kill fee. The original acquiring editor told him to show the piece to people at ESPN-The Magazine. They liked it but it was way too long for them.  Nonetheless, based on this sample, Jack was hired to write on Cincinnati sports figures.  Next, he took samples of his writing to Cincinnati Magazine when he learned they were looking for a sports guy to write for them.

To get published in a magazine, Jack believes you have to legitimize yourself and show that you are part of the world the magazine deals with.  And you have to be realistic about what you have to offer and present samples of your writing.  Writing groups, workshops and courses can help you get those together.

Based on his experience, Jack’s advice to those writing personal essays is to be aware of the world, especially anniversaries of historical events and institutions and regional celebrations. He says to be aware of new books, movies and Internet attention on popular subjects.

Through a combination of such interests and attention and networking, Jack is writing about subjects connected to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  He went to NY to pitch an article idea to a flight magazine and left with his hat in his hand but later through a friend connected with an editor at AKC Gazette, a publication of the American Kennel Club. They paid less but were interested in his essay about Meriwether Lewis’s dog, which was Newfoundland.  He has since interviewed the late Steven Ambrose and pitched a piece to Bookstreet, which is doing a round up of books coming out next year about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Christi Killien
A well-published novelist for older children, Christi Killien came to essay writing in a lull between books.  She has since published four essays, one opinion piece in Publisher’s Weekly and another in the Seattle Post Intelligencer during National Adoption Month.

Christi says her experience in publishing essays shows how themes are important.  She wrote for guidelines for the theme issues of literary magazines she had read about in Poets and Writers Magazine and The Writer’s Digest Writers’ Market.  She matched what she said in her submission cover letters with how she saw her essays fitting into the theme issues. For a magazine on after-hours activities, Christi sent an essay about her grandfather and great uncles making canes from bull penises.  For a magazine issue on borders and boundaries, she wrote an essay about breaking the family convention of never talking about an ancestor.  When an essay about dividing men into types according to whether they enjoy digging or pruning in the yard was rejected by National Gardening Magazine, Christi sent the essay to a literary magazine called Rosebud where it was published in their gardening section called “These Green Hills.”

Christi believes it is very important to send for guidelines, read them and give the editors what they are asking for–or at least show them how what you have is what they are asking for.  It has taken her an average of 10 months to get each of her essays published and some remain unpublished because although she agreed with what editors told her to do in revision, she hasn’t wanted to work on the essays. She finds that with time, her unfinished essays become part of much longer essays as was the case for “Homemade,” which began it’s life as a short essay about making rhubarb pies.  Now that older essay sits inside the newer one born of years of work experience in the adoption field and tied to her experience raising children and mourning the loss of an adopted brother.  At this point in her career, writing essays is not about being paid for writing them.  She feels that what she has to say may be of use for others.  To publish “Homemade,” she contacted a former writing group colleague whose husband worked for the city newspaper.  He passed the essay on to the editorial and opinion page editor who asked Christi for a much, much shorter essay on the same topic.  Christi was able to do that and feels that writing is now a life work, not a career. There are times she wants and needs to write essays and plans on continuing to do so.

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The next time you hear a writer say that luck and/or determination are involved in publishing, realize that you have your own kind of both, and the use of resource guides and directories as well as networking will help you succeed in finding broader audiences for your work.