Transcripts
1. Intro : Hello and welcome to class This class, Siri's teaches how to build and grow your writing career. In this series, students will learn how to break into the magazine market, where to find profitable writing jobs, how to write an effective pitch and email to editors how to turn one idea into many income streams and so much more. Everyone has their own reasons why they entered into a freelance rating career. My research revealed that the top motivations our freedom to design a rewarding career and financial independence, flexibility to travel and try new activities such as skiing, scuba diving, learning to play a musical instrument or to learn a new language, helping others and making a positive change in the world. Often our reasons and motivations are topics that we want to write about. Travel writers get paid to write about their adventures. Food, health and fitness writers inspire others. People passionate about photography, art, design or fashion become experts in their field through writing the old adage. Write what you know is true, but I also believe that you should write about what you love. I started my freelance writing career in the 19 nineties. Thes are some of the magazines on blog's that published my work. My niche is parenting, Education, Special Needs, Families and the art world. These are subjects that I am so passionate about. I've also been hired to do copyrighting for corporations, newspapers, television and the travel industry. Most of my copyrighting jobs for the results of clients finding me through my magazine articles, blog's or word amount. I've been a professional writer, artists and teacher for over 20 years. Today's classes call start writing for magazines. There are a lot of places that'll publisher work without paying you. They offer toe print your article for exposure. Full exposure is a benefit. This class focuses on teaching you where to get paid to be a free last writer and less than one we're gonna go through the three main sections of the magazine. A lesson to we're going to go over writers guidelines and where to find them. And less than three. I'm gonna show you a website where you can make your 1st $100 this month as a freelance writer, and then I have a final thought for you. My freelance writing career is proof that you can make money and fulfill your goals. In 2010 my husband and I bought our dream writing, retreat and art studio in the woods. Please join me in class and this Siri's to build and grow your writing career for free creative news. Please sign up on ari north dot com. My online courses have closed caption for the hearing impaired and to promote literacy.
2. Lesson 1: Magazine Sections: hello and welcome back to class. Starting your freelance career. Writing for magazines is not only a great way to enter the writing world, it is also very profitable. And this lesson we're gonna go over the sections in magazines. Most magazines are divided into three sections. The F. O. B is called the front of the book. When we say book, we actually mean the magazine. Then we have the feature well, and finally we have the b. O. B. The back of the book. The front of the book is the up front section in the magazine. It contains the table contents, letters to the editor and the masthead. A masthead is the list of editorial staff, publication, information, address, subscription information and a list of the department's. The articles in the up front section or the front of the book are short. About 100 to 300 words is the norm. This the section in the magazine that the editor sets up the overall theme of the issue. For freelance writers, this is the perfect way to get your foot in the door. The feature well section is in the middle part of the magazine. It's Also the largest section containing article word counts from about 1500 to 4000. It also pays the highest rate. 500 is generally the minimum payment for a large circulation, but you can usually expect about $1000 or upwards as payment established, Raiders will command about $2000 up for feature articles and major magazines. You have to pitch your idea to the editor before actually writing the article for new writers. I recommend the front of the book or the back of the book in magazine sections before jumping into that feature. Well, the back of the book section of a magazine contains the regular departments and columns like Front of the book articles, Air shorter and often have invitations for new freelance writers to submit a piece. General interest and women's magazines often have, Ah, my story section in the back of the book. This is a great place for new writers to not only exercise and develop skills, it gets you in front of editors who one day might come to you to write a feature feature. Writing is where the big money is, However, front of the book and back of the book sections remain the best places to start as a new writer. In the next lesson, we're going to go into details about writers guidelines. I will see you there.
3. Lesson 2: Writer's Guidelines: Hello and welcome back to class writers Guidelines are the requirements the editor presets for your submissions. They contain the tone of the magazine, the word count that's expected, what the payment is with the kill fetus and who owns what rights to the article. Raiders guidelines are the editorial commandments and should be followed to the T. Reuters guidelines can be found usually in the front of the book section of the magazines. If it doesn't actually specify these air, the writers guidelines. Look for words like submission or contribute. If you can't find the writers guidelines in the magazine, go over to the magazine's website and take a look there. What I usually do first is just scroll to the bottom and look for Raiders guidelines, submissions or contribute. If it's not there, I'll go to contact or even sometimes, in the subscribed page area. You'll find the guidelines. If not, I go to the search bar and check their And if it's not there, then I will just email the magazine just requesting their writers guidelines. Also, what we're gonna look at in this lesson is my favorite source the Writers Market Book and Website. I highly recommend freelance writers either by the book or, better yet, subscribe to the annual website. The book is an annual release and costs about $30 or so, but the website is $39 for the year. Gets you all the information that the book does an updated information and current articles . Okay, let's look at some examples. Here is Travel and Leisure magazine's website. If you couldn't find the writers guidelines in the masthead or in the front of the book, then head on over to the website and the first thing I like to do is scroll to the bottom, and I can see that this website is not a discount travel website. This is premium travel. So the articles to right here would be a lot of fun, and I come to the bottom and I don't see anywhere that says writers guidelines or even a contact us. There is a subscribe section, but that's not with the first place I want to go, so I can't find writers guidelines submit or contribute. So I'm gonna come up to the search typewriters guidelines, and here they are in the contact US section. I'm going to scroll through this area, and I've come to submissions where it says If I am a writer with a story idea, please send it here. So this is good. We have the information on submitting an article, but we don't actually have the writers guidelines what they expect from us. So in this case I would click here, which I've already done and sends me to an email page so I would email the editor and just kindly ask for their writers guidelines. Here's another magazine that I write for. This would be under the category of small to medium circulation, and if I scroll down to the bottom here, there's no information about writers guidelines. So I would come up here and I would look at their headings, and I see in the contact section there's editorial. I would click there and see that for story submissions, I can contact the managing editor again. It doesn't have specific Raiders guidelines, so I would contact her by email asking for Raiders guidelines. You can look through current issues of this magazine by clicking here, and, I believe is a pdf that you can scroll through to find the tone and the voice of this magazine. My absolute favorite place to go for writers guidelines is the writers market website. So here I've looked up Entrepreneur magazine and I see that it gives me the address, the email and their website, the contact information of the editor in chief a little bit about the magazine, and this is gold. For a freelance writer, this tells you everything that's required to submit an article. Really great news is 60% of this magazine is written by freelancers. They take simultaneous submissions, which means that you can submit the same Article two other publications at the same time they buy first worldwide rights here that tells you their circulation numbers byline. It pays on acceptance. There's no kill fee. That means if they accept it and then all of a sudden decide not to take it, you'll just have to move on to another publication. They aren't going to give you a kill feet. The major magazines will give you a kill fee of anywhere between 25 50%. So if they offer to pay you $500 for an article and decide that they were going in a different direction, and don't need your article, you will still get some form of payment for the work that you've already put in. They accept queries by email, so that means any time you want to pitch a story, you can just email the editor. You can buy sample copies or just go to the library or bookstore, or even a big box store that has a really great magazine section and you can flip through sample copies. There they respond to queries and three months published period after acceptance. They publish manuscript about five months after acceptance and again, 60% of their content is from freelancers, and they want you to submit seasonal material, but six months in advance. If they don't list their editorial calendar, always assume it's going to be at least four or six months in advance that they're working on future issues. Christmas is that time of year that you really want to give them six months, so if you have a great Christmas article, you want to get that to them no later than June. And here we have some nonfiction information, photographer information and the departments and columns, so this would be the section in the back of the book, and this is excellent information on everything that they will take their telling us that they want 300 word articles and they'll pay a dollar a word, which is an excellent payment. They give you some tips here. And all in all, I would say that this is an excellent place to submit as a first time freelance writer. In the next lesson, we're gonna take the first steps to making your 1st $100 as a freelance writer. I'll see you there.
4. Lesson 3: Make $100 This Month: hello and welcome back to class. In this lesson, I'm going to show you a website to go to to potentially make your 1st $100 As a freelance writer, this is the Reader's Digest website. The Reader's Digest still has one of the most prestigious reputations and is a great credential on your resume. And here they have a section called Share Your 100 Words story. All you have to do is tell a story your story, something interesting that happened in this box. Fill everything out submitted, and if they take it, they'll pay you $100. If you've ever flipped through a Reader's Digest, you can see that they have a lot of areas with little jokes or little stories. They pay those writers $100 or even at the bottom of a story. You might see a quote or one or two lines that was submitted by a writer, and they pay $100 for that. A submission to the Reader's Digest in one of these smaller sections pays well, and it gives you that really great confidence that you need to progress and move on to your next writing project. In the next lesson, I have a few final thoughts. I'll see you there
5. Final Thoughts: Hello and welcome back to class. Thank you for taking this class. If it helped you get a better understanding of entering the magazine market, please give this class of thumbs up. This series of classes will help you build and grow your freelance writing career. My final thought for the class is this. No. Your magazine market. Read several issues to get the feel and the tone of the magazine editors. Absolutely Love it. When a writer understands the magazines voice, spend some quality time with yourself At a Bookstores magazine display. Go to magazines that fit into the category. Write what you know and write what you love. Pick 3 to 5 to focus on and really get to know those magazines. Please stay in touch and sign up on airy north dot com for creative news. And again, Thank you so much for taking this class
Sandra Clarke, zero-waste textile and fibre artist
