In this Issue:

• "Welcome" - Dan Case, editor
  
• Feature "No Two Queries Are Alike" by C. Hope Clark
  
• 16 Paying Markets - High, Medium, and Low
  
• Feature "An Essay Of Passion" by Suzanne G. Beyer

This newsletter is only sent to subscribers. Instructions for unsubscribing or changing your email can be found by following the link at the bottom of this newsletter.

If this issue was forwarded to you by a friend, take the time to subscribe for free by going to our web site at http://www.WritingForDollars.com and receive a free copy of the ebook, 83 Ways to Make Money Writing by Beth Fowler.

Here are the top-selling writing books at AWOCBooks.com - FREE SHIPPING on selected books! ($2.95 value)

1. THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING & SELLING MAGAZINE ARTICLES by Peggy Fielding and Dan Case. FREE SHIPPING!
   
2. CONFESSING FOR MONEY 2nd Edition Writing and Selling to the SECRET Short Story Market by Peggy Fielding FREE SHIPPING!
   
3. MAGIC STEPS TO WRITING SUCCESS by Charles W. Sasser. FREE SHIPPING!
   
4. THE ORGANIZED WRITER IS A SELLING WRITER by Kathryn Lay. FREE SHIPPING!
   
5. WRITING HUMOR FOR MORE THAN LAUGHS by Phil Truman FREE SHIPPING!
   
6. BE YOUR OWN BOOK DOCTOR: So You Can Cure What Ails Your Writing by Robyn Conley.
   
7. THE SUCCESSFUL WRITER'S HANDBOOK by Patricia Fry
   
8. JUMPSTART YOUR WRITING CAREER & SNAG PAYING ASSIGNMENTS by Beth Erickson.
   
9. BOB BLY'S FREELANCE WRITING SUCCESS (How to Make $100,000 a Year as a Freelance Writer and Have the Time of Your Life Doing It) by Robert W. Bly
   
10. WEEKLY WRITES (52 Weeks of Writing Bliss! For Writers Who Want to Develop the Habit of Writing Every Day, Every Month, All Year Long.) by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta
    

Dan Case, editor
editor@writingfordollars.com (put WFD in the subject line)

You have the best article idea about teaching children manners, so you prepare a query for Child magazine. At the same time, you pitch a fabulous story idea to Sew News about designing a memory quilt. Since you’re on a roll, you throw out another idea to Children’s Writer Newsletter about writing for five-year-olds. Carefully, you delete, cut and paste each editor’s name as well as the proposed title of each piece in your query template. Three queries in twenty minutes, a new record.

You just wasted your time.

As a previous personnel director, I counseled potential employees on the proper preparation of a resume. I preached incessantly that no two resumes should be alike because no two employers are alike. Applicants needed to study the employer, review the job announcement, and custom design the resume to fit what the employer needed. When I hired people for my agency, I looked for the resumes prepared with care by someone willing to understand what I sought in a new employee.

Editors want the same with query letters. The editor for Child magazine should not receive the same letter as the editor for Sew News. How would you like to receive a letter from a friend who photocopied the same letter and sent it to three other friends? Suddenly you feel less special, and you feel less obligated to read the letter. Same goes for the editor.

Write a letter, not a query.

If you have a marvelous idea for a magazine, write the editor as if you know her. Know what the magazine represents, who the readership is, what kind of message is delivered consistently. Talk to that editor about your suggestion, how it makes her publication better because it helps deliver that all-important message. You care about that magazine and want to enhance it with your piece. The only way you can communicate such a desire to contribute to this publication is to sit down and write a query letter from scratch – from the heart.

Hokey? Not at all. Editors protect their publications. Part of their protection includes culling writers who don’t understand why a publication exists. If you cannot inform an editor through your query letter that you understand her duty to publish good material, then don’t bother writing it.

How to write a query letter that catches an editor’s eye:

1. Hook the editor in the first sentence. Whether you use statistics, the opening line to your article or a descriptive generalization that sings, entertain that editor. If the opening line is not entertaining, rewrite it. The first impression of a query letter is as important as the opening words of a novel. Those words make the determination whether the reader wants to continue.

2. Connect with the publication. Why do you want to bother writing for this magazine? Get personal with the editor in showing you understand the importance of this publication. I once told an editor that I bought the magazine to read the mystery short story in the back to my husband so we could compete solving the crime. The editor realizes you understand the flavor of the magazine, so she reads on to know more about what you can offer her readers. Most queries don’t make it that far.

3. Be brief. Nothing sells an editor faster than a good idea written in as few words as possible. Hone those words until every one carries its weight in gold. In doing so, you respect an editor’s precious schedule. She will notice the effort you took to save her a little time.

4. No brag, just facts. Tell the editor why you are qualified to write this piece, for this publication. If I’m writing for a business publication, I emphasize my history as an administrative director for the government. If I’m writing a garden, home, or science related piece, I flaunt my agronomy degree. If I write about teens, I speak about my sons in college and my teen mentoring program. However, I do not list all of my qualifications in all of my queries. Who cares? All that the editor wants to know is how my qualifications fit her magazine. Those are the only ones that matter.

5. Wrap up. Advise her the rights you offer for purchase. Tell her if it’s not a simultaneous submission. Tell her when you can have the piece completed. Thank the editor. Waste no words in this short final paragraph.

Many writing books make queries sound like impossible missions. Each book has its own secret method. Frankly, queries are nothing more than a letter. Think about a letter you’d like to read. Does it make you feel special? Does it empathize with you? Does it give you unique information you wouldn’t find in any other letter? Then you understand.

Write a different query letter every time you submit. Not only will you increase your chances of connecting with the editor, but you will also improve your writing. You don’t take the same short story, change the characters, move the setting, slap a new title on it and submit it to three different publications. You use your imagination to create a new world each and every time. Magazine editors deserve the same attention, and your extra effort will reap the rewards.

© Copyright 2006, C. Hope Clark

Hope Clark is editor of FundsforWriters.com. She has published in Writer’s Digest, The Writer, Landscape Management, Next Step Magazine and more. Her book, The Shy Writer, has successfully taught many writers how to deal with the insecurities of promotion.

• FIRST THINGS - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction. Subjects: religious and ethical perspectives on society, culture, law, medicine, church and state, poetry. 

• Nature Canada - Guidelines:  .  Seeks nonfiction, columns/departments. Subjects: bird conservation, parks and protected areas, endangered species, natural history and environment. 

• The Old Farmers's Almanac - Guidelines:  Pays on acceptance.  Seeks nonfiction, fillers. Subjects: Science and weather; nature, plants, gardening, farming; history, natural health, folklore, recipes. 

• Scrap - Guidelines:  Pays on acceptance.  Seeks nonfiction. Subjects: new scrap processing and handling equipment, environmental regulations, legislation, market trends. 

• Sierra - Guidelines:  Pays on acceptance.  Seeks nonfiction, columns/departments, photos/artwork. Subjects: Travel, environment. 

• The Sun - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, fiction, photos/artwork. Subjects: essays, interviews, fiction, and poetry. 

• Travel & Leisure - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, columns/departments, photos/artwork. Subjects: travel, the latest resorts, hotels, fashions, foods and drinks. 

Medium - $125 - $500

• Dance Spirit - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, fillers. Subjects: Dance, teens. 

• Marco Polo - Guidelines:  .  Seeks nonfiction, photos/artwork. Subjects: For adventrue travelers over 50. survivor stories, middle-of-nowhere destination pieces.. 

• Pilot - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction. Subjects: General Aviation. 

Low - Less than $125

• Childrens Digest - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, fiction, fillers, photos/artwork. Subjects: stories, articles, and activities with health-related themes. 

• Childrens Playmate - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, fiction, fillers, photos/artwork. Subjects: stories, articles, and activities with health-related themes. 

• Cineaste - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, columns/departments. Subjects: cinema. 

• ComputorEdge - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, fiction, columns/departments. Subjects: Computer. 

• DNA Publications Web Site - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks fiction. Subjects: fantasy, horror, satire, science fiction. 

• The Imperfect Parent - Guidelines:  Pays on publication.  Seeks nonfiction, fillers. Subjects: Parenting. 

I glanced down at the stack of magazines sitting on the floor of our local YMCA. I saw a picture of my daughter and me standing atop the World Trade Center. If this weren’t shock enough, directly underneath the photo was my essay about the devastating destruction of the two giant New York icons and the precious souls lost on that September 11th day.

My words made front-page news on the cover of the Seattle-area magazine called Northwest Prime Time. This is a paper covering issues relating to senior citizens and since I felt I was teetering on senior citizenship, I thought it would serve as good reading material. It also seemed the perfect publication for my outpouring of thoughts that tragic day.

I wrote the essay for therapeutic reasons. Here I sat in Seattle, watching this made-for-TV movie, seeing two planes crash into the buildings, then their total collapse. Horror overcame me, and with that pit in my stomach, like the feeling after a death in the family, I needed to scream out my pain. But who would listen? I was a native New Yorker and so far away. This was a hurt felt by all Americans, but somehow my sadness was more acute and increasingly getting worse. I chose to write to help me with my struggle to grasp such horror – an assault on my roots, my city! This attack felt personal.

Writing just flowed. I reminisced about my family standing on the roof of the World Trade Center. I recall pointing out all the bridges (even getting one wrong, as my daughter noted according to the plaque). I spotted my Staten Island high school, Curtis, which we used to call “The castle on the hill.” I told my children about working on Liberty Street, taking the ferry each day from my home on Staten Island and how I’d eat my bag lunch in the graveyard of historic Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street. The graveyard provided sanctuary from the sweltering, bustling city streets and a needed respite for an hour. Memories rushed to the forefront as I recorded my scattered, emotionally charged thoughts at a good 90 wpm. It was a long, rambling piece that I shortened to 600 words.

Upon receiving my article, Editor Roedell of Northwest Prime Time phoned to see if I had a photo to accompany my words.

“Yours was the only article I received about 9/11,” she said.

Not knowing what she had in mind, I could only pray she wanted to publish it. But truly, to this day, I can’t comprehend why no one submitted an article to her magazine about this horrific event.

From that first piece, "Headline News," where I received $75.00, I’ve written numerous non-fiction articles ranging from growing redwood trees in our front yard to the benefits of swimming exercise and have been published in several national magazines. More importantly, however, I’m a regular contributor to Northwest Prime Time. Last year, I opened the paper to another surprise … "Associate Editor: Suzanne G. Beyer."

© Copyright 2006, Suzanne G. Beyer