How to Successfully Pitch an Article to a Magazine

Before pitching to magazines, you need to choose a few good candidates. This will boost your chances of success and help you avoid wasting valuable time.

1. Understand your potential targets

Freelance writers can tap into two potentially lucrative magazine markets: trade magazines and general-interest magazines.

Trade magazines

Trade magazines are publications aimed at specific industries from insurance to construction to teaching or virtually any other field.

Because publishers distribute trade magazines directly to subscribers, they are less visible but often pay better than other types of magazines.

Examples include:

• Education Digest
• Energy Weekly News
• Engineering News Record
• Design News

General-interest magazines

General-interest magazines are mailed to consumers, sold at the newsstand, read online via mobile apps or digital content delivery, or distributed regionally or locally. For example, when writing a travel article, try to look beyond travel-specific or travel-trade magazines to other “general interest” magazines that publish travel-related and lifestyle articles.

Examples include:

• National Geographic
• The Economist
• Time Magazine
• People

2. Create a list of targets

Compiling your best options into a list will streamline the submission process and help you stay organized. Here’s where to start your search.

Visit your local library and bookstore

Survey the types of magazines in a subject area you’re comfortable with or have written about before. Browse the magazine rack where magazine titles are fanned out across different tiers and pinpoint magazines that might publish your topic.

Browse online

There are plenty of online resources you can use to find publications that are a good match for you:

• Amazon.com: Check out Amazon.com’s magazine subscription category and search for relevant magazines. Although Amazon.com will not list all relevant magazines that are published in the US, it will aid you in finding the most popular magazines.
• Google: For example, to search for travel magazines, you can enter the search term “travel magazines,” and Google will usually list the most popular travel magazines. If you want to find travel trade magazines, you simply add the keyword
  “trade” to the search phrase.
• SideHustles.com: We have a huge list of submission guidelines for publications in every category imaginable. We let you know what the editor wants, what they pay, and a link to their submission guidelines which describe where and how to submit.

3. Study each target carefully

Once you’ve found some magazines to target, study each one thoroughly so you have a better chance at selling an article.

Check the submission guidelines

The first thing that you should do is check if the magazine has submission guidelines. After all, if they’re not accepting pitches, you don’t want to waste your time on any of the subsequent steps.

Review their rates and legal claims

Review how much the magazine pays and what “rights” it buys. This can help you eliminate magazines that don’t match or exceed your pay rate or which purchase “all rights” to an article (without the rights ever reverting back to you).

Read the magazine

Next, you should read the magazine, either its online or physical form. Study these key features of each magazine:

• Tone: Is the tone formal or informal? Is it conversational or serious? Is it technical or expressive?
• Audience and readership: Who reads this magazine, and why? Why are readers eager to pay for a subscription? They must know they will get some value and benefit from each issue. What is that value and benefit readers are seeking?
• Advertisers: A magazine with more advertisers usually pays higher freelance rates. Plus, the type of businesses that advertise their services or products can tell you a lot about the magazine’s readers.
• Writers: What’s their writing style? What subjects are they writing about? What are their credentials? An editor has decided to publish these writers. Why?
• Publishing history: Don’t pitch articles on topics that the magazine recently covered or that are overdone.
• Publishing frequency: A monthly or biweekly magazine needs more articles. A quarterly or bimonthly magazine needs fewer.
• Content-to-advertising ratio: How many pages are devoted to articles? This will help you judge how much content an editor buys.

Check the editorial calendar

If the magazine has a public calendar, or if they’re happy to send you one, check it out. A calendar is invaluable for knowing what the editor plans to publish in the coming months. This can help you develop a more refined pitch that is sensitive to the editor’s needs.

Judge the level of competition

If you’re a brand new writer, the chance that you’ll be able to sell an article to a widely distributed national magazine that pays $1.00 per word is vanishingly small. A new writer should aim for regional, local, or trade magazines that welcome new writers and pay decent rates.

There’s nothing worse than sabotaging yourself by ignoring submission requirements or overlooking fundamental factors influencing how your pitch will be read and received. For the best results, follow these tips.

1. Follow the writer’s guidelines

Magazines provide their own “writer’s guidelines” to tell writers:

• What topics the editor favors and which ones they disfavor
• Whether the editor prefers query letters or finished manuscripts
• What type of articles and departments are open to freelance writers
• Typical word length
• Response times
• How to submit material
• Pay rate (but only sometimes)

Follow the magazine’s guidelines exactly. Editors receive hundreds of submissions monthly. Laziness on your part will likely result in a rejection.

2. Address your query letter properly

Double check the writer’s guidelines for each magazine to see what information you should include in a query letter. Address each editor by full name and title.

3. Write a persuasive query letter

Generally, a query letter contains four paragraphs that sell your article and convince the editor to publish your article. Keep your query letters as short as possible.

• 1st paragraph: Hook the editor, usually with a short passage from your article.
• 2nd paragraph: Support your hook by discussing a solution or solutions to the problem.
• 3rd paragraph: Explain why your article will interest readers.
• 4th paragraph: Display your credentials and explain why you’re the best writer to cover the topic. For example, if you’ve written an article about Apple’s newest iPad and have a background in designing mobile applications, you should mention that.

4. Format your letter and article correctly

Remember: First and foremost, you should follow any guidelines provided to you by the publication.

Formatting for online forms

These days, magazine submissions now mostly happen through a web portal with forms that you fill in. These rarely require formatting, although if you attach an article via an uploading portal, you should read along to make sure it’s in a standard format.

Formatting for email or snail mail

If a publication wants you to send your submission via email or snail mail, and they provide no formatting guidance, it’s a safe bet to use the following guidelines:

• Font size: 12-point.
• Font type: Times New Roman or Courier New
• Spacing: Double-spaced.
• Margins: 1.5 inches.
• Name and contact information: Placed in the upper left-hand corner.

5. Start submitting

Submit your article simultaneously to several publications. The only times you shouldn’t do this are if your article is extremely tailored to a specific magazine or the publication doesn’t permit simultaneous submissions.

Otherwise, it’s a good idea to pitch to as many relevant publications as possible, especially if your magazine article is timely. You’ll increase your chances of landing your piece, and you may be able to pick the magazine with the highest rate.

If at first you fail, keep trying. You may discover that the editors you contact provide invaluable feedback about why they didn’t accept your article, plus tips for success in the future. It’s those kinds of experiences that will really make the difference as you hone your ability to target magazines and write content that they can’t resist publishing.