How to Write Quality Query Letters: Be real, specific

When a potential publisher reads your query letter, you want to excite them, but don’t promise something you can’t deliver. Not only would this make it difficult for you if you did get the assignment, but a good editor can easily spot ideas that are too broad or unrealistic to make it into their publication. The best query ideas are specific and achievable. For example, if you were pitching an article for a men’s magazine, How To Make Any Woman Go Home with You is general and unrealistic (not to mention creepy) but Six Pickup Lines that Won’t Make You Look Like a Jerk is a little more specific and a little more realistic.

There are two advantages to pitching very specific subjects. The first is that it makes you look more knowledgeable. Specificity and knowledge go hand in hand. Anyone can pitch an idea about picking up women. Even “six pickup lines” is general. If you dig deeper, you might find a more unique perspective. For example, if you have studied linguistics, you might pitch, Why Your Pickup Lines Don’t Work, Six Tips from a Cunning Linguist. If you used to be a bartender you might pitch, The Bartender’s Guide to Picking up Women: Six lines that never work (and three that do).

The second advantage of specificity is that it reduces the risk of you pitching the same idea as someone else. The last thing you want is to pitch a topic your potential publisher has seen (or even published) before. There are limits to how much research a writer can do into the past topics at a magazine, especially if you want to spend more time writing articles than pitching them. Specificity gives you the best chance at originality.

Realistic ideas are the other side of that coin. If you don’t know anything about pickup lines, don’t pitch an article about them. Your query letter should start with some flash, but the body of your letter is going to have to back up that flash. You will need to give examples of what you intend to write about. You not only have to convince your potential publisher that your idea is perfect for them; you have to convince them that you can turn that idea into a great article. If you can’t convince them you are the right person to write the article, your great idea won’t help you.

One Blogger, Many Roles

I am a blogger

As a blogger, I keep and update a blog. I do it as a business. Because of this, I have many other roles besides blogger.

I am a writer

I write just about every day of the year. If I am not writing for my own blog, I am writing for someone else’s blog or I am working on an assignment that came from my blogging. Whatever the case, I am always writing.

I am an editor

I am often in the rather uncomfortable position of editing my own work. This is a situation in which my abilities and flaws as a writer do not mesh well with my abilities and flaws as an editor. I don’t always catch my mistakes. When I don’t, it is the editor’s fault. As editor, I also solicit and edit articles from outside sources. There, I am at least dealing with someone else’s flaws, which are often easier to recognize and fix.

I am a publisher

I own my blog. That means I own a publication. That publication has to have standards, and I am in charge of setting those standards. I am responsible for all of the things that appear on my site. I set the direction I want my blog to go in. In the end, everything about the publication is my decision. I am often put in a position of having to overrule the writer and the editor because I have to think of the big picture.

I am a designer

I wish I was a better one. I am at least smart enough not to rely entirely upon myself, although I assure you that it wasn’t an easy decision. I use a blog theme, and I paid some real money to make sure that I have a good theme. In the end though, the way things are placed on a page, the graphics I use, the font style, the font size, those are all up to me as the designer.

I am a marketer

I maintain a marketing strategy. It isn’t as well thought-out as it probably should be, but it includes advertising, networking, contests, branding, and publicity. I have a small budget (though better than some others) so I have to be creative and I have to stay on top of the latest trends.

I am a customer service representative

When I get a complaint about my blog, anything from the content to the design to the technical features, I am in charge of getting the problem fixed if it can be fixed. I am also in charge of making sure that the customer gets a satisfactory response that keeps them coming back. It isn’t always easy.

I am an analyst

I spend a great deal of my time looking at my web statistics. I pay attention to where people come from, what they look at while they are on my site, how long they stay and where they go when they leave. I also monitor revenue sources closely, because when they go down or up, I want to know why. Having this knowledge helps me plan for the future and to correct problems as they occur.

I am a web programmer

There are plenty of people who are better at this than I am, but I know enough to fix errors as they come up, and to make minor changes when needed. In the old days I could build a site from scratch, but at this point I have to be happy with being able to tweak someone else’s work to fit my needs.

I am a small business owner

As a small business owner I have to collect revenue and keep a budget. I have to weigh the pros and cons of investing money in the business versus taking the profit out of the business and using it to provide for my family. I have to do the accounting and the taxes and I have to decide when it is appropriate to buy new hardware, software, furniture and equipment. I have to decide whether the business is succeeding or failing and what to do to make things better.

I am all of these things and more

All of these role spring from my life as a blogger. They can be difficult to maintain and to separate. My needs as a small business owner or as a publisher are often at odds with my desires as a writer. I sometimes write or don’t write about a topic based on how I think it will be received versus the level of interest I have. I have to determine how far from my central topic (writing) I can stray. I have to decide if another writer is more appropriate for a topic than I am. I have to weigh issues of revenue versus design and content. I sometimes have to be nice when I really don’t want to be because the success of my blog carries more weight than my personal issues.

I am a blogger

These are the issues I deal with. I love it, but anyone thinking of blogging, especially for profit, had better be prepared to fill all of these roles and more. It is one hell of a ride.

Why Newspapers are Dying (and what they can do about it)

I’ve been picking on newspapers for a while, for much longer than I have been a blogger. To me the decline became apparent in the eighties and nineties when the big corporations started snapping newspapers up and the focus of newspapers drifted away from news and moved toward profits. Newspapers, at their best, are a very personal enterprise. Corporations, especially ones that are big enough to buy a slew of newspapers, know nothing about passion. Still, for a long time they only had television to compete with. TV is just as bland and corporate as newspapers are. It took the Internet, and passionate individuals, to dig the grave for newspapers.

A Lack of Interest

I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper since the early nineties. I occasionally buy the local paper, but it is usually because I want the car or the grocery ads or because I have some time to kill in a restaurant. I certainly don’t buy the local paper looking for a great reading experience. Every newspaper runs the same canned stories off of the news wire. Their local coverage consists of mostly basic police/court coverage, business stories, road construction updates and reasonably good coverage of the sports scene. None of these are things I can’t do without. More importantly, I can find any of it on online if I bother to look. For the record, I also don’t watch the news, local or national, on television. Television “news” is all about blood, pundits and car chases. I don’t need it.

New News Sources

I am far from uninformed. I read the news just about every day, spending at least ten minutes and as much as an hour scanning headlines and reading anything that seems interesting. I do almost all of my reading online. Google News is my primary source, but I also subscribe to feeds from a number of specific publications and many blogs. I would subscribe to my local papers’ news feeds, if they had them. Unfortunately. the two daily papers don’t seem to have much interest in allowing people to read their articles without being subjected to their ad-filled web sites. I don’t really blame them, but I don’t miss them either.

A Very Long Decline

Print journalism is in the middle stages of what I expect will be a very long decline. Newspaper readership has been dropping for many years now, but over the past couple years that drop has been accelerating. There is no reason to expect this drop to end any time soon. Sadder yet, newspapers are having trouble online as well. People aren’t just leaving their print version behind, they are leaving their online versions behind too. I am sure this is because of the focus on wire feeds and canned news. You can get that kind of news anywhere. In fact, you have to make a deliberate effort if you want to avoid it.

An Outdated Model

The biggest problem is the lack of real journalism. For years now, newspapers have been getting by on wire feeds from AP, Reuters and a variety of smaller news services. Back before the Internet, this model worked because a person in Tucson wouldn’t have access to a newspaper in San Antonio, so it didn’t matter if they ran the exact same stories. Now, however, all that duplicate national and international coverage can be accessed by anyone anywhere. Why read your local paper’s limited international section when you can access the news from anywhere in the world through the web. With Google News and other news aggregators, it is just as easy to find out the news in England from England as it is from your local paper. As for that AP article, it is repeated so endlessly online that you are bound to catch it too, if you bother to look.

Raw VS. Canned and Bland

Print journalists endlessly deride bloggers, and some of their criticisms are valid. Many, though by no means all, bloggers have less news experience and greater political and personal bias than newspaper reporters do. They make up for those shortcomings, however, by being more timely, more passionate, and more detailed in their coverage. The world of journalistic blogging (there are many blogs that have nothing to do with the news) is uneven, but when it is good, it is far better than the canned, bland news stories that the newspapers reprint. Because there are so many sources to choose from, it is easy to decide for yourself what is good and what is worth reading.

Decline and Rebirth

Newspapers are going to continue to decline in readership and relevance as long as they continue to follow the old model of wire stories and short, uninteresting local articles. The only reason to pick up a newspaper (or visit a newspaper’s website) in Fresno is to find out what happened in Fresno. Only newspapers that invest heavily in local coverage and allow their writers to spend more than 300 words on an article will be relevant as the years pass. That probably won’t happen until the giant corporations that own most newspapers lose interest in these now unprofitable entities and move on to other media. It is difficult to image any conglomeration of newspapers embracing individual voices and local reporting. Once it becomes unprofitable enough, however, I predict that as newspapers begin to fold and be sold, passionate local people will return to print. Until then, I’ll continue to get my news online.

Tuesday Mini-Rants

Amazon Goes to the Dark Side

Amazon has been squeezing print-on-demand publishers, trying to force them to use their print services in order to get a buy-now listing with them. To me this is a case of a big company using near-monopoly tactics to put smaller companies out of business. I’ve been a big fan of Amazon over the years, but this stinks. Anne Wayman has been covering this over at The Golden Pencil, I advise you to take a look.

The Television Networks Blew It

As I predicted months ago, the television networks are seeing significant drops in viewers. Now that almost all of their shows are back the networks are assessing the damage and trying to convince themselves that the cause is anything but the WGA strike. Oh no, it couldn’t be that! The true test will come next fall, when the new season debuts. I predict that we will see an erosion of about ten percent from last fall’s already record low numbers. Of course, if the actors go out on strike over the summer, things could get much worse.

My Local Newspapers Suck, Again

I’ve chronicled the downward spiral of my local daily newspapers a few times. At this point they mainly serve as a place to recycle day-old national headlines (the kind I can get up to the minute on Google News) criticize the local sports teams and send some poor schlep to city council meetings. Oh, and they love telling you who got shot, though they generally get the details wrong (it turns out that loudmouth neighbors don’t make for reliable sources). Thats all fine, but now they’ve decided to charge more for their useless rag. It now costs 75 cents a day to pick up a copy of the morning paper at the newsstand. The afternoon paper, always known for its irrelevance, only raised their price to 50 cents. At this point, I am beginning to suspect that the papers want to drive readers away.

ZenHabits.net is now Public Domain, how about Poewar?

As you may recall from my recent kerfuffle with procopywriters.com, I tend to get upset when I see people reusing my site content without my permission, especially if they are using it for profit. This is for a three reasons.

• I feel I have the right to profit from my work without having to compete with myself.
• I often encourage writers to post creative work in my comments (such as the 30 Poems in 30 Days project) and I do so with the understanding that I consider their work their own.
• I have paid for and published articles from other writers in the past and I have done so with the reasonable expectation that I respect their ownership of the copyright.

Yesterday, I read that Zenhabits.net, one of my favorite sites, is giving up all of its copyrights for the material published there. Leo Babauta, the author of the site wrote a post that says, in part:

From now on, there is no need to email me for permission. Use it however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK.

He goes on to discuss the ways that he would prefer that people share his work, but he makes it clear that his preferences are merely preferences. They are not binding. He has no intention of fighting ANY use of his site’s material. He has freely given up all rights.

I must admit that the idea intrigues me, and it is one I have thought about in the past. If I did so, however, I would have to do the following, just to feel right about it:

• I would have to either eliminate all previous articles by other writers OR get their permission to release their rights as well.
• I would have to give any past commenters the opportunity to remove their comments if they feel the need to keep their copyright intact.
• I would have to create a new comment policy that made it clear that all comments would be considered public domain, something that may discourage people from posting their creative work in the future.
• I would have to review the policies behind the stock photos I buy to determine any limitations and if I could not find a way to stay within their guidelines, I would have to replace that artwork.
• I would have to accept that there people will use words to make money without ever giving me credit, much less payment. However, I would no longer have to worry about enforcing my rights, which is always a painful process.

I am not saying I’m going to make this change. I am only considering it because I do feel it would make my life easier and give plenty of people legitimate opportunities to reuse my work without worry.

I want people’s input. I especially want input from people who have posted creative work for this site in the past, either as articles or comments. What do you think of a public domain policy? Is it a brilliant idea or the worst idea ever?

27 Things This Writer Loved About 2007

1. Blogging and WordPress – It has never been easier for writers to find an audience
2. StumbleUpon — They send me more traffic than anyone but Google. If you aren’t a member, sign up now!
3. OneNote — Finally, Microsoft released a product that a writer can love
4. Lulu– It has never been faster or cheaper to put a book into print
5. PhraseExpress — Put your boilerplate on speed dial
6. FreelanceSwitch – They write about freelancing so I don’t have to
7. Indeed – A great place to look for a job
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows — It’s finally over
9. 30 Poems in 30 Days — It brought a lot of new friends to the site
10. NaNoWriMo – 50,000 words in 30 Days!
11. The 4-Hour Workweek — The book about business every writer should read
12. Google Reader — The best place to keep track of all my favorite blogs
13. Zen Habits — I was at least 4% less angry this year thanks to Leo
14. ProBlogger – And my blog was at least 4% better thanks to Darren
15. Blind Date With Cavafy — My favorite book of poetry this year
16. The Comics Curmudgeon — Comic strips today are just plain lousy, and Josh makes that funny
17. Pearls Before Swine — Proof that comic strips can still be funny
18. Superbad– Proof that teen sex comedies can still be well-written
19. Californication – The best show about a washed-up, immature, sex-obsessed writer since Murder She Wrote
20. Fresh Air — Every year, Terry Gross keeps getting creative people to talk about process without becoming an SNL parody
21. Tucson Weekly — The only newspaper left in my home town that is worth reading
22. Free software — Some things are worth the lack of price
23. The Well-Fed Self Publisher — Every writer who wants to understand the publishing business should read it
24. Low-Carb Monster Energy Drink — Without it, half this blog would not get written
25. The Daily Show / The Colbert Report — This double punch is not only funny, it’s given hundreds of writers exposure they would never have gotten otherwise
26. Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How! — My most popular article this year
27. WiFi — 2007 was the year that wireless Internet really came of age and I was finally able to blog from anywhere, which coincidentally is where I am most of the time!

Weekly Poetry Assignment 1: Compilations and Love Poems

As we discussed at the end of 30 Poems in 30 Days, I would like to continue in the spirit of the project by posting a weekly poetry assignment along with at least a few words about a poetry-related topic. The form of these posts is going to be similar, but not identical to the 30 Poems in 30 Days posts. I will still discuss poetry every week, but the topic will probably be more free form and a little less instructory. I just made that word up, do you like it? I thought about instrutorlicious, but that word had some connotations I wasn’t quite comfortable with. My point is that the topic will be poetry, but beyond that, I am giving myself some space to wander. I will also replace the “recommended poet” section with a “for further reading” section that will give me a little more flexibility there as well. These posts will appear on Fridays or Saturdays because people generally have more time to write on the weekend. With all of that said, here we go with my first new post, followed by an assignment…

I am in the process of assembling poems for a poetry collection. This was one of my goals when I started the 30 Poems in 30 Days project. I have already discussed chapbooks as an inexpensive way to publish your poetry. For myself, however, I am planning to use a print-on-demand publisher to create a paperback book with a glossy cover. I’m doing this because I want something that I can advertise and sell through the website and I want it to look as good as possible. I have a little money to spend (currently a budget of $800 but I can free up more if I need it) and I am leaning towards using Lulu, a print-on-demand service with a good reputation and a lot of options. I have also found an excellent photographer, David Hwang, to help me in the creation cover art. I encourage you to check out his work.

Choosing poems for my collection has been an interesting experience in time travel. I have never published a book, so I feel like I need to consider all of my poems (or at least all that I can find) for this collection. Unfortunately, my perspective on some of the poems is skewed. The poems I wrote about love and relationships before I met my wife now seem dated and unfamiliar. My perspective has changed. That doesn’t necessarily mean the poems are good or bad. It just means that they don’t express what I feel now. This makes them hard to judge. Will I leave a good poem out because I don’t feel like it doesn’t match my current thinking? That’s a risk, and demonstrates why it is important to publish regularly rather than occasionally.

I currently have about 25 poems that I am sure I want in the book and another 30 or so that I am also considering. I figure I’ll publish around 40 once I make my final decisions. That should make for a reasonable length without pushing expenses too high. For now I need to keep rereading my work, making some edits and removing a few more poems from the list until I get a collection I am comfortable with. With luck, by next week I will have settled on the collection and start working with Lulu. I also have a photography session for the cover coming up. More on that next week…

This Week’s Poetry Assignment

Write a syllabic verse poem about a love or relationship topic. It may have as many stanzas as you like, but the composition of each stanza should be:

8 syllables
8 syllables
6 syllables
6 syllables
4 syllables
4 syllables

Good luck. I look forward to reading everyone’s work!

For Further Reading:

You can read more about syllabic verse at Wikipedia. You may also be interested in learning more about the study of verse form in this article about Prosody and Metrics. If you are looking for a place to submit and read poetry, check out Web Del Sol, the best collection of poetry magazines on the web.

Glossary of Publishing Terms

After our recent comments discussion, I thought it would be a good idea to compile a small, publishing-related glossary, so we agree on our terms. Please note that these definitions are geared toward book publication and our discussion is geared toward the publication of poetry books.

• Acquisitions Editor: An editor whose job it is to find new books and authors to publish.
• Advance: Money paid by a publisher to an author for the right to publish a book. It is called an advance because it is payment on “potential” royalties in advance. In other words, until your book sells enough copies to generate a percentage of profits above what you have been paid in advance, you will not receive any more money.
• Backlist: A list of books, published more than twelve months earlier, which are available for sale from a publisher.
• Best seller: A fairly ambiguous term that will be applied by a publisher to just about any book that makes a profit.
• Book proposal: A sales tool consisting of information about a possible book that an author sends to a publisher. The proposal often includes sample chapters, an outline, a discussion of possible markets and a list of the author’s credentials. The goal of the author is to persuade the publisher to pay to produce the book and to share the profits with the author.
• E-book: A book produced digitally, often in the absence of a printed book.
• First printing: The number of books produced in the initial print run.
• In print: A book that is still available to be ordered directly through the publisher.
• Independent bookseller: A locally owned book store that is not affiliated with a large chain such as Barnes & Noble or Borders. Independent booksellers, in general, are more likely to display and sell books by local authors.
• ISBN: Short for International Standard Book Number. This number is required if a book is to be stocked or available to order by a major chain or sold through an online publisher. If a book is only going to be sold directly by the author (such as at readings or through a personal web site) an ISBN is not required.
• Midlist book: A book acquired by a publisher for a relatively small advance and given a smaller print run and less publicity than a book that the publisher expects to be a best seller.
• Niche book: A book that is aimed at a smaller market of possible buyers. Most books of poetry are considered niche books because few of these books sell more than 5000 copies. Many “how-to” books also fall into the niche category.
• Out-of-print: A book that can no longer be ordered directly from the publisher.
• Print-on-demand: A book publishing process mainly associated with self-publishing, in which a book is printed in small runs (sometimes as small as a single book) from an electronic file. This process makes it possible to produce niche books more cheaply.
• Publisher: A company or individual who is in charge of producing, printing and distributing a book or other material.
• Publishing: The process of producing, printing and distributing a book or other material.
• Review Copy: A free copy of a book that is sent to the media with the hope that the book will be reviewed.
• Royalty: The percentage of book sale profits paid to the author.
• SASE: Self-addressed, stamped envelope. Often used when submitting a query to make it easier for the editor/publisher to respond.
• Self-publishing: The production, printing and distribution of a book (or other material) by the author of the book or at the author’s expense, rather than by a third-party publishers.
• Slush pile: Unsolicited (not requested) queries/manuscripts that may or may not get read by the editor or (more likely) an assistant.

Poetry Publishing on the Cheap: Chapbooks

What is a chapbook?

A chapbook is a book that created by folding standard 8 1/2 x 11 (The size varies outside of the United States) paper in half so that you create a shape close to that of a common paperback book. By doing this, a single sheet of paper yields four pages of a book. You then bind the multiple pages together by stapling along the crease of the sheets of paper. A mere eight sheets of paper can create a 32 page chapbook. Because of the limitations of the stapling and folding process, chapbooks tend to run about 32 pages and rarely more than 64 pages. In addition to standard sheets of paper, you may wish to create a cover using thicker (and perhaps glossy) cover-stock paper.

What are the advantages of a chapbook?

The primary advantage of a chapbook is that it can be created cheaply using a computer, a word processing or desktop publishing program and a printer. This means that you can produce as many or as few books as you need. Poetry chapbooks are accepted in the poetry community and many poetry competitions accept chapbooks as entries.

What are the disadvantages of a chapbook?

The primary disadvantage of a chapbook is that most retail bookstores will not sell it. Because chapbooks do not have spine wide enough to print a title on, they cannot easily be found on the bookshelf. Also, if you wish to produce a chapbook yourself, that means you will have to write, edit, design, print, and bind the book yourself. Many people lack the skill or the motivation to do these things themselves. It is possible to have a professional print shop produce the chapbook for you, but that will add to the expense and you will have to order a set run of books.

Once I create a chapbook, what can I do with it?

You can sell it through your web site. You can bring it to sell at poetry readings (even open mike nights). You can enter it in poetry contests and you can produce it so cheaply that you can even give it away if you want to.

Where can I get more information?

• Wikipedia entry for chapbook
• What is a chapbook?
• More chapbook information
• Chapbook template (Microsoft Publisher)
• Instructions for making your own chapbook template in Microsoft Word

30 Poems in 30 Days: Joining the Community

This is Day 18 of 30 Poems in 30 Days

Take your Place

One of the great things about this poetry project so far is that we have started to develop a community. We have regular contributors, occasional contributors and readers. A sense of community is important in poetry. Because the market for poetry is so small compared to the fiction market, it needs constant support to keep going.

There are many benefits to joining or creating a poetry community. You gain the support of your peers. You have the opportunity to compare yourself with and learn from other poets. You encourage each other to keep going. You meet the people who can help you down the road.

The people who publish other people’s poetry do it because they love it. There is no great financial benefit, and it is certainly easier to make money publishing something else. The best way to get noticed by these people is to get out in the poetry community and start introducing yourself. Attend poetry readings. Take poetry classes. Attend open mic nights and poetry slams. Get up on stage if you can. Support other people’s poetry by buying their books and magazines. The more you support poetry the more it will support you.

Today’s Assignment

Include the words “formal” and “casual” at some point in your poem.

Today’s Recommended Poetry

Rather than pick a single poet today, I am going to include a list of poetry magazines. I have linked to their submissions guidelines because I know that is information you will want to know, but I don’t just want you to consider submitting to them. I want you to read them. Subscribe to at least one or two of these magazines. Help keep them alive.

• AGNI
• The American Poetry Review
• Bellingham Review
  
• Conjunctions
• The Hudson Review
• Indiana Review
• Island
• New American Writing
• The New Writer
• The Paris Review
• Poetry
• Poetry Flash
• Poetry New Zealand
• Ploughshares
• The Threepenny Review
• Thorny Locust
• Tin House
• TriQuarterly

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