10 Lessons from a Year of Magazine Writing

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

A year ago I started sending magazine queries to editors on a regular basis. Just the other day I looked over some old queries from last August and September. Man, they were awful.

I should have just followed up my query with a plea to not even read them.

You could say I’ve learned something over the past year, especially since my number of accepted and published articles has significantly increased over the past three months. Here are some lessons that may help you as you query magazine editors:

  1. Brevity. Lead your query with two sentences—three maximum. Check a Writer’s Market for sample letters.
  2. Ask about theme lists before querying. If the guidelines are not listed online, e-mail about them too. Make your first contact with an editor a positive one.
  3. Scan the magazine and read a bit of it to get an idea of the tone and the departments. Most editors say, “Read several editions of our magazine.” Most published freelancers say, “Yeah, whatever.”
  4. Query often. Get so many queries out there that you practically lose track of them.
  5. “No” is not the same as a ban from sending future queries. Try something else.
  6. Feedback in a rejection letter is a good sign. Send another query within two weeks.
  7. Focus on practical, how-to articles in the beginning. Ask yourself, “What do readers of this magazine need to know about?” “What are the problems they’re trying to solve?”
  8. Don’t pitch 3,000 word feature articles right off the bat. Query short, 200-500 word pieces.
  9. Proof read query letters 3 times, with an hour break in between your second and third reading.
  10. Work from small to large. Aim for smaller magazines with less circulation and lower pay before shooting for the big guys. You have a lot to learn if you’re starting off. When you do shoot for the big guys, write on spec. It will eventually pay off, but you need to work your way up.

As with any tips in writing, these are not hard and fast rules. The rules of writing are made to be broken. However, these ten lessons are often on my mind as I send out queries to magazines. Good luck!

How to Know if Your Book Idea Works

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I have had publishing hopefuls ask me whether their book ideas were good, and I have to admit it’s a tough question to answer. There are many factors to consider when setting out to publish a book.

It’s most important in my experience to summarize the book succinctly, to have a solid title in mind, and to know exactly what you need to say in order to evaluate its merit. The details of each chapter may be fuzzy, but at least the main idea, controlling metaphors, and outline should be pretty clear before evaluating whether or not a book could work.

Some sample chapters will help you sort through how substantive your ideas are and if you can carry on for an entire book. Many good book ideas work better as magazine articles.

There are several factors you’ll need to consider when evaluating whether your book idea works. I’ll give you a hint right now, it won’t be enough for the idea to be good. I’ve seen my own good ideas and the good ideas of others fail the editor test.

They need to be better than good, and that’s what I’ll discuss in my next post.

When Can You Call Yourself a “Writer”?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

In speaking with many publishing hopefuls, bloggers, and other folks who dabble in writing, I often hear them question whether they can truly call themselves “a writer.”

They all write words on a page or on a computer.

Some have quite a few readers on their web sites.

And yet, they hesitate in calling themselves “writers.”

Why?

Because they haven’t published in magazines or they haven’t published books. They just think of themselves as word tinkers.

I used to think the same of myself before I published a book. At the time my only writing credit was an online magazine and a defunct humor magazine. Then someone said in an E-mail, “You’re a writer. Now you just need someone to pay you for it and some fame.”

It was a jarring comment. I’d built my identity as a writer around external sources of validation, namely money and popularity.

Here’s the thing, having published in several magazines, several books, and online over the past five years, I can just about guarantee you’ll never think you have enough money or popularity to call yourself a writer because there will always be someone with more money and more readers.

While there are good writers and writers who have a long way to go before they’re good, perhaps the matter of calling yourself a “writer” rests more with the individual. Do you personally believe you can call yourself a writer based on the work you do?

Forget money.

Forget fame.

Do you write seriously? Do you care about the words you put on the page? Is your writing an important part of who you are?

If you can answer yes to questions such as these, then you probably are a writer. Very few writers go on to make a lot of money or to become household names, so just focus on loving what you do, put your best into it, and savor every time a reader shares positive feedback about your work no matter how you publish it.

Writing is about crafting words for readers. Set goals for yourself, but never confuse legitimate writing with the side benefits of money and popularity.

What You Need to Know About Self-Publishing: Solving the Distribution Problem

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

One of the greatest obstacles that self-published authors will face is finding people to actually buy their books.

Think about it. No one will visit a book store and stumble upon your book. No one will find it on a publisher’s web site. No one will read about it in a catalogue. No one will want to stock in a book store because it’s self-published.

Oh, of course you can sell it online, but how will readers find it?

That is the trick. Can you assemble a realistic marketing plan that will sufficiently take into account all of the setbacks that self-publishing brings, while still connecting with readers on a scale that will ensure you sell enough copies to at least break even?

Ah, distribution is a huge problem for self-published authors. Heck, when self-publishing A Path to Publishing, I still didn’t quite grasp the amount of work ahead of me or the sheer quantity of potentials readers I needed to connect with in my niche.

Where should you start if you’re self-publishing?

For starters, check out my free online marketing guide. That gives both traditional and new ways to market your work.

However, the most important principle in selling books is to make a real connection with a potential reader and to communicate clearly why he or she may want to buy your book. Someone else may be able to do that for you by way of an endorsement or a review, but kicking it all off depends on you and you alone.

I began this series saying that “self” is the key word when it comes to “self-publishing”. If you have any hopes of selling your book, make sure you have more than Plan A and B for distributing your book. You’ll probably need to have plans that range from A to Z.

Your job is to find the communities, blogs, forums, Twitter users, Facebook users, groups, societies, and any other group of potential readers in your content niche. That is the publishing sales game in a nutshell, and it’s a tough one on your own!

Win a Free E-book Version of A Path to Publishing

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

Marketing expert and blogger Paul Steinbrueck is giving away three copies of A Path to Publishing. Check out his review and his special offer to readers. He has opened up the comments to reader questions about publishing and will include them when he interviews me this week.

If you drop by his blog, be sure to stick around and to have a look at some of the great posts he has been sharing on marketing, writing, and blogging.

What You Need to Know About Self-Publishing: Seek Opinions

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

In conjunction with the release of my self-published book A Path to Publishing: What I Learned by Publishing a Nonfiction Book, I’m offering this series of posts on what you need to know about self-publishing.

When working on a self-published book you may have put together a passable first draft, and even managed to spruce up a pretty decent second draft. However, chances are your argument or story will have some significant holes in it, to say nothing of some sections that readers will find confusing.

While working on my third draft of A Path to Publishing I couldn’t think of any significant changes to make, so I sent it off to several friends and colleagues to read it. Sure enough, one reader found the same glaring flaw in two of the book’s chapters.

She very gently suggested that those two sections needed significant revision. She was absolutely right. I had a few doubts at first about those sections, but I had decided they worked fine. Thankfully she pointed out some other reasons why needed to be not only rewritten but largely deleted.

And that brings us to the challenge of editing your own book. You always need perspectives other than your own to make sure your book flows and makes sense. No matter how talented you may be as a writer or an editor, you can’t catch all of your own mistakes.

Depending on your relationship with your friends and family, you may ask them for help. However, remember that a good editor will not worry about hurting your feelings. A good editor needs to feel comfortable pointing out all of your book’s flaws. Will your friends and family be able to do that?

My friends through social media and blogging have been a tremendous help in reading drafts of my books, while several key friends and family members have helped at times as well. However, I think it’s important to choose your readers carefully and to give them deadlines that can be flexible if need be.

In addition, keep in mind that these friends may publish their own books some day. Guess who they’re going to e-mail before anyone else for help…

What You Need to Know About Self-Publishing: Get Known First

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

In conjunction with the release of my self-published book A Path to Publishing: What I Learned by Publishing a Nonfiction Book, I’m offering this series of posts on what you need to know about self-publishing.

When you’re self-publishing all of the work falls on you, the author. No matter how much published authors complain about the lack of marketing support provided by their publishers, which can be spotty at times, the worst publicist will do more than upload a file to a web site, which is all you’re doing when self-publishing.

The Basic Ways Publishers Market

Publishers have established lists of contacts who receive their catalogues, e-mail newsletters, and browse their web sites. They represent authors at book stores and can send releases out to major press services—something that can be quite costly to do on your own.

The staff at publishers generally have social media accounts and blogs, and they may even generate some buzz for your book through these tools. At the very least these publishing professionals will tell potential readers about your book. You’ll at least have a few warm bodies with a measure of interest in selling your book.

Any way you slice it, the least that a publisher provides still puts their authors way ahead of the self-published ones.

What Self-Published Authors Need to Do

While it’s important to seek out some reputable endorsers and reviewers who have a large group of readers, I don’t think self-published authors realize the number of readers they need to pull off a self-published book that sells more than 25-50 copies. Simply put, self-published authors need a massive number of connections with potential readers.

The “potential reader” part of this is crucial. Authors may have lots of “connections” through social media, their blogs, or more traditional means, but many of these connections may not view their books as something they’ll want to purchase.

I’ve done quite a bit of networking, but I have been reading Crush It! by social media expert and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and he’s been blowing my mind. I usually drop by some blogs to leave comments and contribute to writing forums, but he advocates a scale of networking that few would ever consider.

I sure didn’t!

I could try to describe it to you, but to be honest, I’d be doing you a disservice because I can’t do his methods justice. Crush It! is available at a pretty low price as a Video Book, which I highly recommend, though it’s also available in print. You may not do everything Vaynerchuk suggests, but I think he’ll give self-published authors the reality check they need about how involved the marketing process will be for their books.

An author who is new to the publishing process will underestimate the amount of work necessary for marketing. Count on it. As a published author I still underestimate the amount of work I need to do. Before you invest heavily into a book, begin marketing yourself and making connections today. It’s a worthwhile investment you won’t regret.   

Next Steps

Interview with Lisa Delay on A Path to Publishing

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

Spirituality expert, comedian, and writer extraordinaire Lisa Delay kicks off the blog tour for A Path to Publishing today with her interview of me. She asks some great questions that should give publishing hopefuls some helpful ideas and a good idea of what they’ll find in the book.

Do you have your own publishing question? Drop by Lisa’s blog and post it in the comments. Between the two of us we’ll try to answer it.

Over the following week other bloggers will be posting on the book, conducting interviews, and possibly even hosting a giveaway or two.

My thanks to Lisa for her help in spreading the word. Make sure you check out her various endeavors:

http://lisadelay.com
http://lisadelay.blogspot.com
http://LifeAsPrayer.wordpress.com

http://twitter.com/lisacolondelay

What You Need to Know about Self-Publishing: Know the Publishing Business

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

PTP150 In celebration of my latest book, A Path to Publishing: What I Learned by Publishing a Nonfiction Book, I will be posting a series on what you need to know about self-publishing. I chose to self-publish A Path to Publishing and discovered an enormous amount of material online, but some of it was dated. Over the coming weeks I will provide an updated guide to self-publishing today based on my latest experiences.

What Self-Publishing Involves

The most important word in self-publishing is “self,” not publishing. The publishing part is fun. The self part is not.

Of course self-published authors boast higher royalties, greater control, and many other benefits. These are all true to a certain extent, but consider what you’ll need to organize by yourself:

  • Researching the market and audience for your book.
  • Outlining, writing, and editing.
  • Researching a publisher and comparing the various packages.
  • Paying for and organizing the editing, design, printing, and distribution (which of course will vary).
  • Putting together a marketing plan.
  • Creating a publicity kit
  • Contacting bloggers, radio producers, newspaper editors, and other media outlets about your book’s release.
  • Contacting independent and chain book stores to set up book events. Many of them will not call you back because you are self-published.
  • Finding conferences where you can sell your book—that is, if you pay for the space.
  • Setting up book events and eating the cost if they flop.

Granted, many publishers today are quite light on the marketing end of things, especially for nonfiction books where a marketing platform is essential for new authors. That being said, at least having someone who is paid to help you send out press releases and to advise you on ideas can save you a lot of time and frustration. In other words, even the publisher who provides minimal help with marketing a book is still way better than doing everything yourself.

What You Need to Know about the Publishing Business

If all of this is new to you, then I’m guessing you’ve never commercially published a book. While self-publishing is easy to jump into from the standpoint of writing and printing a book, making it into a product that someone will actually deem worthy of $15 is quite another matter.

Here are a few things you need to know about publishing as a business:

  • Most books need significant editorial development.
  • It takes time to learn how to write for a specific audience.
  • A bad cover and sloppy interior design can be fatal for a book.
  • Distributing a book effectively will take a lot of e-mails and phone calls.
  • Marketing a book is a full time job.

If you want to self-publish and to sell more than 500-1000 books, your work is cut out for you. Thankfully it can be done. In the coming days we’ll discuss the importance of a marketing platform for self-publishing.

Looking for a bit more about publishing right now? Check out A Path to Publishing. It’s available for $10 as an ebook and for $15 as a paperback.

A Path to Publishing is Now Available!

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

PTP_final03_texOrange450 I’m happy to announce that A Path to Publishing is now available as a paperback book through Amazon and most other distributors, as well as an ebook through Lulu.

The price through Amazon is $15, while the ebook price through Lulu is $10.

So far the feedback has been really encouraging, including comments from readers who have found the book both informative and well-organized. One book publisher enthusiastically purchased a copy, and he’s someone who certainly could have taught me a thing or two about publishing! So I’m grateful to see positive responses to the book as it starts out.

If you’re interested in hosting me for an event with your writing group or book store, I offer group discounts and free publishing workshops along with my book events.

Throughout the third and fourth weeks of May a number of bloggers will be posting reviews and interviews. I hope to have the schedule up soon.

In addition, I’ll be posting a series here next week covering what I learned in the self-publishing process. If you subscribe to my e-mail newsletter (in the right column), you can also read about the inside story of self-publishing, the decisions I made throughout the process, and why I followed the course I chose.

There are a lot of decisions to make in the self-publishing process, so believe me, reading about my process will help you a great deal! I learned a ton over the past 6 months.