Posts tagged: query letter

How to Interview a Famous (or Infamous) Person Abroad

Some years back I was headed to northern South America to write five or six travel articles. I got tickets to/from Manaus, Brazil, on the Amazon River, and planned to divert to Quito, Ecuador, and Bogota, Colombia, if I had time when I returned. A lot to squeeze into three weeks. I followed the process [...]

Wednesday February 13th, 2013 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

What do you do with a 5,000 to 30,000-word “book”?

Whatever your fame or literary legerdemain, a “book” like that is a size orphan. It’s too big to fit in a magazine, newsletter, or journal and too small for major publishers to even consider. Of course, you can publish it yourself. It may be too short to get a spine as a paperback at CreateSpace [...]

Tuesday January 29th, 2013 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Write a dandy book and sell it worldwide in minutes, hands-free…

It used to be that 90% of your time getting in print was spent finding some big house to look at your query (or proposal), then writing the chapters they wanted, then rewriting the final book. Not to mention that it then took 18 months to see print! How things have changed! In that time [...]

Thursday January 24th, 2013 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Publishers have so much to be thankful for in 2012…

The day before Thanksgiving I sent the copy that follows to my monthly newsletterfolk. Let me overrule an in-house tradition of keeping the newsletter and blogs separate, this one time, since I’ve had a lot of positive response, I like the message, it deserves sharing, and the newsletter is free so it doesn’t really cost [...]

Tuesday December 4th, 2012 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Four ways to get magazine or newspaper interviews

Over the past 30-years, in my “Writing Travel Articles That Sell” seminar, I’d talk for about 20 minutes about interviewing. The entire process has almost completely changed during that time. First, though, why bother to interview at all? Who really cares? The editors who will hopefully buy your article (even book) care a lot. It’s [...]

Friday August 24th, 2012 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

What do you do first to deduct your travel-writing trips?

Two premises: (1) you want to write and sell something about a coming trip, and (2) you want to be able to keep all of the money you earn, or at least increase your IRS tax deduction as much as you can. Good thinking—and totally legal. You are supposed to take every deduction allowed. More [...]

Monday August 20th, 2012 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Resell your article again and again? Here’s the needed tool.

If you’ve had a good article in print, why not sell it again and again? To do that you need a cover letter to send to the second editor. These are full-page letters sent to editors who buy reprints (same as second rights)—usually editors who pay on publication. If you sold first rights to the [...]

Tuesday August 7th, 2012 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

How do you set up a magazine (or newspaper) interview?

Most of the articles you write should include at least one and often three interviews, plus of course facts, perhaps some anecdotal material, and probably some artwork (usually photos). In fact, the most persuasive items selling the article are the interviews or quotes you promise the editor in your query letter. Like a piece about [...]

Monday July 30th, 2012 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

A lifetime formula for selling 75% of the nonfiction you write

If you want to sell almost everything nonfiction that you submit, including 75% of what you send to editors, here’s the not-so-secret formula: • Before submitting any copy, first send a super query letter to the editor asking if she/he would be interested in your preparing and sending an article about ____. (If you’re unfamiliar [...]

Tuesday June 26th, 2012 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

How to very profitably resell derivative rights to your writing and photography

Selling the rights is easy. Finding them and keeping them is a lot harder. First, what are derivative rights? “Derived from another source, spin-off” says the Oxford dictionary. But I mostly know them as second or reprint rights. And why are they important? Because every sale without a tail (some restriction of your reselling the [...]

Tuesday June 5th, 2012 in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »