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The Business of Writing:
How to Market Your Non-Fiction Work

Michael Bavota

So you are a writer and you have spent the last three months writing a great article. Well, good for you! But if you have given no thought beforehand as to where you can sell that work... guess what? You have only "written" an article.

There are two sides to the writing business. One side is the imagination, creativity, the plotting, developing and grunt work-- THE WRITING. The other side is the drudgery, the real work, and the difference between a sale or another dead folder in the file cabinet. I'm talking about the marketing of the story. Knowing where to sell it. Many beginners write without ever asking one simple question. "Is this a story that a publisher will buy?"

Of course there are stories that writers put their time and effort into for self-gratification. Then there are writers who want to sell their work and make money. Those who learn how to market their work have the best results. Writers who study the market before they write tend to sell most of what they write. It is the business of writing.

Writing articles for magazines is very lucrative. Thumb through the Writer's Market and you will find hundreds of pages of magazines to sell your work. There are more than 3,000 publications from which to choose. Sounds great, dosen't it? Yet as you learn the markets, it becomes more narrow and very focused to specific needs. So how do you sort it all out and increase your odds for success?

First decide what type of subjects you feel you can write about. Start with your personal interests and hobbies. Then read through the various magazine categories and see what they like. Many will send free writers' guidelines and a copy of the magazine for the cost of postage. Stop by the magazine rack at the grocery store and browse through a few that interest you. Once you have found a few that feel comfortable for you, construct a few rough ideas for stories. But don't begin writing yet. Plan a market strategy first. Use the attached worksheet to help you plan where to sell your work. Otherwise, you will have dozens of completed articles, only to painfully discover that they don't fit any magazines. Learn the mechanics of the market and you begin to write articles that are tailored to the market.

The Components of Marketing

There are seven basic areas to be addressed when setting out to find a market for your work.

1. Which magazines buy this type of story? How many are there? The more magazines that fit into the category, the better. Some will be very narrow and limited to certain needs. Technical or medical may be in-house written, or only open to be written by professionals in that field. So first list the magazines that fit the topic you wish to persue. Read through their needs or requirements found in Writer's Market.
2. What is the percentage of free-lance material accepted? Next to each magazine that you have listed on the work sheet, record the percent found in the market book. Realize that any magazine that uses more than 75% free- lance material is an excellent avenue to persue, over and over again.
3. Rate the magazines using the scale at the bottom of the work sheet to have an easy view of where your best opportunites will be.
4. How many words are needed? This is important. You can write the best article ever, but if it is 7,000 words, you may sadly discover that few if any magazines can devote that much space to one story. List the word requirements and when you begin to write, plan your work to fit those guidelines.
5. How much do they pay? Ah! Now that is what it really gets down to. When first starting out as a writer, any sale is a good sale. Yet as time goes on and you begin to get established, like anything else "time is money". The question becomes, can you invest the time it takes to write a 3,000 word story, only to earn $25 or $50? The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it is better to know going in, what kind of payment for your labor can be expected.
6. What are the particulars of the magazine? What do they like? What are their readers looking for? How many manuscripts per issue, per year do they buy? Of course the less they buy per issue, the more competitive the market will be. Usually a magazine that has a low free-lance percentage also has a low number of articles published per year.
7. The final element in your market research is to know if the publication wants the finished article or a query first. Most non-fiction stories will require query first. So it does absolutley no good, other than to waste precious time, to send your completed article to a magazine that requires a query. All you will do is get it back unread and reduce your chances of selling to that magazine later.

The final analysis is clear. Once you have done the market research for your ideas, you can begin to send out query letters.

Looking over your completed work sheet, pick those magazines that have a high percentage of free-lance material. Select magazines that publish a high number of articles or stories per issue. Pick magazines that pay a fair rate for the amount of work you will need to produce. (10 to 25-cents per word is fair. Top magazines pay 50-cents to $1.00 per word, but here the competition is fierce. After all, most writers would like to sell their work for top dollar.)

Once you have narrowed down the market to where your work fits best and have queried all of them, you can start up another project the same way. This way you will have multiple irons in the fire. Then when the mail arrives and you get the good news to send the story, you can get to work and complete the story, knowing that the odds of selling it are excellent.

Sample

CATEGORY: FOOD/COOKING

Rating:

Under 20% Freelance Poor

25% to 50% Fair

55% to 75% Good

Over 90% Excellent

The story The Business of Writing is Copyright 1998 by Michael Bavota.

The collection of works called Fish Eggs For The Soul is Copyright 1998 by Brian Rickman.

Copy edited by Sara Fawbush, editor of The Young Writer's Collection.