How to Write Quality Query Letters: Offer them what they don’t have

The best way to convince a publication to purchase an article from you is to offer them something new and interesting. If you pitch them an article that sounds similar to a previous article in their publication, or something similar that ran in a rival publication, you probably aren’t going to make the sale. Most publications aren’t in the business of repeating the same material over and over again.

It can be difficult to come up with truly original ideas, especially when you are dealing with a publication that caters to a narrow topic. A magazine about model trains or a web site about search engine optimization doesn’t have much new ground to cover after a while. Still, if you consider yourself a knowledgeable writer about one of those subjects, you should be able to find a fresh approach to the material. You may not come up with an idea that has never been used before, but at least try to find a new way to present the material. Often, it is a good idea to get more specific. There may be many search engine optimization articles about using keywords, but if you take the time to discuss a small part of a specific technique, you might find some ground that has not been covered.

When you do have a new idea, or a new take on the subject, make sure that you emphasize that early in your query letter. The fact that you aren’t offering the same old story should be one of your key selling points in your query letter. Your goal is to stand apart from everyone else. It is worth spending a little extra time thinking about how to make your idea original. Another good way to do this is to add a little personal experience to your pitch or to pick an overriding metaphor that hasn’t been used before, such as comparing model train enthusiasts to politicians. No matter how you go about it, find something new to say if you want to make a sale.

How to Create a Documentation Library

By Shoma A. Chatterji

To survive as a journalist in a world of cutthroat competition and to sustain high standards of performance over time, every writer worth his salt should build up a documentation library for himself. Some people also term this a clippings file or an archive of documents. This offers a thorough database of secondary research, which could often stand on its own without the support of library books and files.

Over the past two decades that I have been writing prolifically for the print media in my own country, I have built up a documentation library of my own. I have around 100 envelopes of documentation. Which means that if I have to write an article, say, on Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace, I have just to pull out the plastic envelope labeled Sexual Harassment take the newspaper and magazine clippings out of it, choose the clippings I want, link these with the current topic I am going to write about and get set to work. This gives a solid base to the subject I am writing about, and makes the article more in-depth.

Below are ten tips on how you can begin building your own documentation library.

1. Subscribe to at least one daily newspaper and not less than two newspapers on Sundays.

2. On the Saturday of each week, collect the newspapers in chronological order. Sit down, preferably on the floor with a pair of scissors, a stapler, a stapler pin box, two thick paper, canvas-lined large envelopes and one ball-pen.

3. Open each paper, mark out the portions you would like to cut out, according to your subject-specialty and keep them aside. For example, you may be specializing in health issues and on television. Mark out only those articles, reports, analyses that have appeared in the paper for cutting and keeping later. If the paper does not have anything worthwhile to cut and keep, keep it aside and go on to the next.

4. Now take one newspaper at a time and cut out the marked portions, inserting the date on the top margin with your ball-pen.

5. Keep the clippings you have cut out in a thick magazine for later sorting as you go on doing this.

6. If you also mark the subject along with the date and the name of the newspaper briefly on top, this will make sorting easier.

7. After you have finished cutting out all the marked portions you have chosen from the previous week’s newspapers, you can turn your attention to the envelopes.

8. Since you have decided to have two subject-clippings only, you will need just two envelopes. Label one of them with the words HEALTH ISSUES in bold caps and the other with the word TELEVISION.

9. Take the clippings out of the thick magazine, sort them out into two neat piles and put them into the respective envelopes.

10. This is just the beginning. There is more to follow.

As you go along you will discover that with every succeeding week, your envelopes begin to thicken. Then begins the next part of your specialized clippings work.

1. Arm yourself with more large-sized, thick-paper, canvas-lined envelopes, pen and the two labeled envelopes you already have filled with clippings.

2. On a rough sheet of paper, break up the subject health issues into as many topics as you wish to write on. It would be wise to choose topics that never lose their topicality in the global market. AIDS, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, DIET AND NUTRITION, WELLNESS AND FITNESS, EATING DISORDERS, EVILS OF TOBACCO, DOCTOR’S INTERVIEWS, GYMS AND FITNESS CLUBS, HEALTH AND PUBLIC POLICY, THE ABORTION DEBATE, are just some of the sub-topics that are covered under the large umbrella of HEALTH ISSUES. If you wish to write on all these sub-topics, you are free to do so. You will then have to label as many envelopes as the number of sub-topics you choose and sort out the earlier clippings kept inside the HEALTH ISSUES envelope to place them in their new envelopes.

3. Therefore, where you began with just one envelope marked HEALTH ISSUES, you now have TEN envelopes with HEALTH ISSUES as the main heading and the sub-topic as the sub-heading on the envelope. You find yourself specializing in several areas of Health.

4. Do not discard the first envelope labeled HEALTH ISSUES. When it is empty, you will use it to update your documentation. Remember that it is ideal if you can update it on fixed day every week. Otherwise, the papers keep piling up and you feel lazy to sit down and sit with a large pile.

5. Keep your eyes and ears open to anything topical that may be happening around you in any of these areas. For example, a man dying of AIDS has been refused admission to a bed in a public hospital. You find this as a news item in you daily paper.

6. Make this story your peg to hang your article on. Dip into your AIDS envelope, pull out all the clippings, choose news items or stories on similar cases where AIDS patients were refused admission and died as a consequence, compare them with other news stories about AIDS patients having received sympathetic treatment at public hospitals and create an article around the subject AIDS AND THE HUMANE QUESTION. The article will surely find a good buyer because of the solid research base it has, solely supported by your own clippings. The same principle could be applied to the subject TELEVISION. You will slowly learn to do the classification yourself.

7. If you also subscribe to a magazine or two, you could add cuttings from these too, to your clippings envelopes.

8. When the paper envelopes get too thick to manage, replace them in large plastic envelopes.

9. Use schoolbook sticker labels to label these envelopes and file them on one shelf of a book cabinet.

10. Number the envelopes too, to create an index for easy locating.

11. Make an index of the envelopes according to number and the sub-topic of each envelope and keep this list on your computer or on a piece of thick paper which you can stick on the wall in front of your work table for easy reference. For example, you can give the number ONE(A) to the envelope marked AIDS. ONE stands for HEALTH ISSUES and (A) stands for AIDS. This will make it easy for you to locate the subject when you want it. Because as your documentation library begins to grow, locating them is a difficult task. REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH will be ONE(B), DIET AND NUTRITION will be ONE(C) and so on. TWO will then be used for TELEVISION. TWO (A) may be used for the sub-topic TELEVISION PERSONALITIES, TWO(B) for DAILY SOAPS, TWO(C) for SATELLITE WARS and so on.

The two pitfalls you must guard against are (a) asking someone else to mark out the clippings for you. This is one job you must do yourself and let me assure you, it is not a waste of time. In addition, (b) try not to postpone your weekly date with cutting and filing clippings. I’ve done it myself, and ended up spending an entire weekend clearing the backlog.

One last tip is to mark an envelope with the label MY OWN ARTICLES where published clippings of your own articles may be filed, preferably date-wise and not publication-wise because you often need easy access to a new article you may be writing on the same topic as before.

Happy clipping and filing!

Shoma A. Chatterji, gave up teaching Economics to undergrads to take up fulltime writing. She is a freelance journalist who specializes in gender issues, films, television and human rights. She has published six books: THE INDIAN WOMEN’S SEARCH FOR AN IDENTITY, YES AND OTHER STORIES, THE INDIAN WOMAN IN PERSPECTIVE, KAMINI AND OTHER STORIES, SUBJECT : CINEMA, OBJECT: WOMAN, A STUDY OF THE PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN INDIAN CINEMA and INDIAN WOMEN – FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT. She has traveled abroad extensively since 1988 and has been on the panel of the international jury at several international film festivals abroad.