Perfecting the Magazine Article Pitch
Dreaming of getting into a certain publication, but can't seem to catch the editor's eye with your pitch? This week's live focuses on steps to take to ensure your magazine pitch hits all the right buttons, captures the right tone and style of the magazine, stands out among other ideas in their inbox, and provides a truly unique, detailed take on a specific topic.
________
Start with the pup date this time. So, oh, the good thing is I'm un-muted without me even touching the button. Good job everybody. Okay. So we only have one for both. Charlotte, can you go to your house?
Can you go to your Hobbit hole? Thank you. Good girl. Here you go, buddy. Good boy.
I like your cross paws. You look very gentlemanly. Let's see if we can show the cross pause real quick. There you go. Across pause, looking like a super gentleman. Charlotte, you look like a troll and like we should pay you a bridge toll.
Good job. You're the cutest. Good boy there. All right. So today
We are talking about pitching magazines. So now I'm un-muted I was, I was muted on one screen and not the other. Okay. So we did our pup date. Um, and we're talking about pitching magazine articles. This is one of my favorite things to do. Um, I pitched a lot in the beginning of my career. Um, and now I don't pitch as much because it just depends on what I'm doing. Like it's, it's kinda like you get more inbound. Um, you develop relationships with editors and then you're kind of like not having to do full on pitches in the cold basically to editors. You don't know. So let's talk about that. So let's talk about steps first. We're going to stop talking about the steps in your pitch. I've always had this kind of, um, format that I kind of go with. I have to cough, hold on golf.
I've always had this format that I go with for my pitches. So basically it's Hey, hi editor. I think I have a pitch for this magazine name of the magazine, and then put in the section that you think it goes in for, you know, the, uh, health section or the food section, whatever. Then you just drop down a line and write the headline, like put the headline in bold, have a super, super snappy headline. And if you want to go, um, and do like get more attention in your subject line of your pitch, right? Pitch in all caps, P I T C H colon, and then put your headline there. Or you can say, um, pitch, you know, and then a short version of your headline, but you want something spicy, something exciting that helps editors open up that email. So then in our back in our email, we're back in our email, we have our headline in bold, and then you start out with basically the way that you would, um, have it printed in the magazine.
So if you go through the magazine and you look at their first few sentences, that's what your pitch should look like. It should mirror that because your pitch shouldn't just be this, um, general amalgamation of information. It should look like what's going to be printed in their magazine. It shows that you understand their audience, their tone style format, um, how it should be read, how it should deliver information. That's really important. So your first couple of sentences need to read like other magazine articles. They need to read with the, the, um, the ability to pull someone in immediately. Not like something like, according to this study, you need something that says, Hey, uh, this is like an interesting thing, or ask a question. I am like famous for sending pitches where my first sentence is a question. Well, have you ever thought about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
Or what would happen if dah, dah, dah, dah, or, um, how do we actually go about blah, blah, blah. I always kind of start my pitches that way, because it gets someone thinking and then you deliver the answer. So your first paragraph is basically like, Hey, spicy few sentences to draw you in. And then a couple sentences of like, don't worry. I have data to back that up. This is a recent study that backs it up. This is a recent trend that backs it up. Um, this is a recent other thing that there there's some sort of timely information there that backs it up that gives them, um, something where it's like, don't worry, this isn't just a series of questions. Or like, you know, me just drawing you in, it's actually backed up by really important information. Or sometimes that's a recently published book sometimes recently published books.
Um, sometimes it's magazine, um, it's articles in medical magazines. There's all these things that we, we can do to basically back up our idea for this article. So first paragraph, first paragraph should be your two sentences of like spicy draw them in, Ooh, intrigued and mystery. And then your next two should be like, let's go into the data in a fun way. Not just like, you know, just like barfing, a bunch of stuff. It needs to be readable understandable quick to the point and really fit your topic. So then we go into our data. Our second paragraph, um, can be a couple different things. So our second paragraph can be adding to the data. It can be adding information. So, um, it can be stuff where, depending on the pitch, you're like, yeah, I need more information. I need to beef this up a little bit because there's one piece of data or these few sentences doesn't really capture the whole meat of it yet.
So your second paragraph can be that or more often. My second paragraph is I say, like in headline, right? And I say the headline in headline, I'll explain, you know, how this, why this, what that, um, steps to take to do this. I use different phrases here to show the editor like, Hey, the piece is going to be about this. I'm going to answer these questions in the piece. Um, I'll also add in that second paragraph of, Hey, these are the experts I'm thinking about talking to, and you name specific people like Dr. So-and-so or, um, you know, registered dieticians, this person, you want to give them the type of sources that you're going to be speaking to because excuse me, because you want them, um, to be able to see as much as possible, they can envision the piece. And you're like, let's say you wanted to do, um, a registered dietician and a little like, you know what?
I think you should talk to a holistic nutritionist or some other type of thing. They can see that and editors can give you feedback. Um, it gives them a lot bigger of a picture of the detail that you're putting into your pitch. So that second paragraph could either be added information that you need to be fed up before you get to the part where you talk about what it's about. Um, but more often than not, mine is like in my second paragraph of my pitch is like in headline, I'll talk about why this is happening, steps to do this, how to do that. Um, what to recognize for this. I walked them through the questions that editor I'm pitching of what the article will really answer and talk about any experts. Then my third paragraph is again, could be a couple of different things. My third paragraph, if I just want to be short and sweet with my pitch and make my pitch three paragraphs total, um, I'll just make that last paragraph like, hi, I'm Andy Ellis.
I'm an Austin-based freelance writer. I write about, um, whatever I'm pitching, right? I say, like I wrote about food and travel, um, and I've written for these publications. Here's a link to my portfolio. Thank you so much for considering or looking forward to your thoughts and ending it there. The other option is that sometimes you have to send pitches that are like really outlining the articles. So for example, sometimes when I send a beefy, listicle I say like, number one, you know, after I say my paragraph of like, what am I going to answer in the piece I'll send, like, number one would be this hotel. Number two would be this hotel or this property, um, or this restaurant. Sometimes you have to outline them enough so that they can see what you're actually including so they can see if it fits or not. Um, sometimes what you need to do with your pitches, especially in things like food to travel, um, or places where you're really highlighting, um, like specific places that you're really going to have to drill down.
So let's say a specific place, like you're going to drill down a property to like 100 words per property. You need to give the editor some, some bits of information there. Uh, sometimes what you need to do here is that you need to give them a little feel for like, what is it actually going to be? Here's what I'm thinking to include on this list. Here are the tips that I've been researching. I think that are useful. Give them two or three. Um, here are steps, a few steps I've been thinking of here are a few strategies I've been thinking of and put those in there because you need to give the editor enough information to say yes, and to see the bones of the article, the pitch isn't just to be mysterious enough that they're just like, yeah, tell me more. We want to give them enough information in that pit that they say yes, like this bones of this article makes sense, fix these few things, add this property.
Um, talk to this expert. There's enough in there that they can see the shape of the article and how it would basically relay to the magazine. Um, after you add that extra beefy part, if it needs it, you go into your last paragraph, that fourth paragraph after your beefy, extra stuff, your steps, or a few different things, um, in terms of properties or restaurants, or, um, I dunno people to feature, then you go into the credibility, right? That I talked about, which is like, hi, I'm a freelance writer. I write in these niches, here's past clients, here's my portfolio and ended there. So when we're creating our pitch, basically the way that I used to, um, the way that I used to do it was like really long pitches. I would write these like two page pitches. I go into my word doc and I'd write my two page pitch.
And I realized over time that my shorter pitches that were like, hi, spicy sentence data in this article, I'm going to answer these questions, experts. Hi, I'm Andy Ellis. I'm a freelance writer. Here's some credibility. Those were way quicker responses than my long ones. My long ones were just like way too much time and effort. It was hard to pitch them to different magazines because they ended up being so specific that magazine, I ended up just kind of creating that formula of like a few short paragraphs and calling it a day. It was a lot easier, a lot less like in-depth, um, research. It was a lot more, um, it was more of a chameleon. I could pitch it to different publications without having to change a ton of it or make a lot of mistakes or, you know, all that stuff. Hey, Getty. Welcome in. Um, we we've started late Getty, so don't worry. We actually started late today. So you're basically right on time. We've only been going for about 10 minutes. So we started a little late, so welcome and Getty. So when we're writing these pitches, oh, hello. Let's do a quick pup date. So when we're doing these pitches, can you go to your Hobbit hole?
Good job. Good job. There you go, buddy. So when we're writing these pitches, oh, don't choke. Okay.
When we're writing these pitches, we want to make sure that we are, um, if you have more treaties on the back that we're being clear and concise. So I found that sometimes it's really good to write a longer pitch. Sometimes that's, um, a really important thing for a bigger magazine. So maybe you're, um,
Submitting a piece to Smithsonian,
Or maybe you're submitting a piece to the New York times, or maybe you're submitting a big, giant feature piece. And for those, maybe you want to have a little bit of a longer pitch, but for most stuff, we want to make sure that our pitches are, um, not hogging all of the editors time. So something important to remember is that your editors inboxes, they get hundreds of pitches a day. Um, most of the time trade magazines don't get as many pitches per day, but, um, lots of those bigger magazines, online publications ended up getting, um, hundreds of pitches per day. That means they're going through all these pitches all the time. We have to be short snappy to the point, um, stand out amongst hundreds of emails and that can be really difficult. And the point of our pitches should be that we actually get to the point of the article.
We get to, um, all of the pieces that put it together. All of the things that make sense in a short, snappy, concise way, hit all the things that, um, are going to be answered in the article, give them a tone and style feel for our writing, um, and make it very apparent that that piece belongs in the magazine. So those are kind of our steps we need to do for our pitch. Um, you can experiment with different subject lines too. This is something I get asked about is what kind of subject lines capture their attention. Honestly, if you just write pitch in all caps, um, and then write something snappy there that helps a lot. Um, but just identify that it's a pitch, um, that really helps it stand out, but also that you have something that's sometimes what works is you could just say like, Hey, freelance food writer with an idea sometimes what works is, um, you can say part of your headline or your whole headline sometimes what works is, if you ask a question, um, but the subject line, isn't always the thing that makes it get clicked on it's more the meat of the inside because they just get so many pitches they're, you know, clicking through and reading and scanning.
We want to make it easy, as easy as possible for them to say yes. So when we're going through, um, our magazines and making sure that we are pitching properly, you have to read the magazine. It is always very obvious when a writer does not read the magazine and I'm not saying read one issue, you need to read, you know, three, four or five, sometimes six issues to understand tone and style to understand what kinds of sections come up every year. Maybe they do. Hey, Lori, welcome in. Um, yeah. So Laurie, I'm going to answer your question in just a second. So when we're looking through the magazine, there are special sections. Sometimes every fall, they do like a holiday section or, um, every September they do back to school or they new Valentine's day, or they always have a new restaurant section. Hello, I see you're traveling.
Um, they always have these things that pop up and it's really important to make sure that you have, um, an idea of what that structure of the magazine is the print version or the online version. Like how does that actually work? Um, and then we need to know tone and style. And I find that for me, it takes two or three reads of the magazine or reads like, um, it takes me 10 articles online to like really get a feel for tone and style, not just a general idea, but like, I've read that. I'm like, I know how to now write like this that's the big difference is not just that we have the idea of what it is. Okay. There's there like kind of edgy or they're very formal or, um, they're talking to single moms or they're talking to, um, super corporate, like millionaires who, uh, run giant companies.
Like you have to read enough of their material to really be able to not just know what they're talking about, who they're talking to, how they're talking to him, but right like that. So I find that that's really important. I'm going to answer Lori's question. This is a great question. So Lori says, um, that's a great format for a pitch. So hopefully that helps, uh, do some magazines, have their own pitching format. They prefer is this available online sometimes, but very rarely. Um, this is the kind of thing that's funny about what are you doing? You just being a travel bean. Um, she attached to something right now. Okay. Sometimes she gets attached to cables. So when we're thinking about magazines, um, they have very outdated pitching guidelines. So most of the time, most of the time, like nine times out of 10, the pitching guidelines that you find online, um, the pitching PDF that you download or the type of information they give you, um, is like super outdated.
If you check the date on it, it says like 2015, or like, I think one that I found was like 1997 or, um, like they never update those things because they're accepting pitches they're in their inbox. They're not over there saying like, I hope they pitch us better. Your job as a writer is to understand the magazine. So they don't have their own pitching format, but they definitely have their own tone style way. The information is presented. If you go into a magazine and you start reading it and it's different than how you normally pitch go with that magazines, tone style. So like if you go in there and you're reading a magazine and you just feel like, okay, I need to switch up my initial paragraph because all of these intro paragraphs in this magazine are way different than what I normally do, then do that.
Um, but what you want to do in your pitch is you want to give them structure what they're, what they care about is what are you answering? Why do I need to publish this right now? Why is this relevant to my readers? How is this unique? Um, and are you kind of the person to do it? Do you have, um, can you show me within this pitch that you're the person to write this, you understand our magazine, um, you understand the bones of the article, what it should answer based on previous issues that we've published. So it is available online. There are pitching guidelines online, but most of the time they're very outdated. Um, and what you want to do is basically like put your pitch in the mindset of that magazine. And oftentimes when you're pitching to multiple different magazines, your pitch only needs to be kind of slightly changed to pitch to multiple magazines.
Because when you have a story, you're not really always like pitching it to like very different types of magazines. I know people who just don't change their pitch at all, they just write a pitch and they just send it to as many people as they want and they go back to their business. Um, so I think when it comes to that, I think for me what's been most effective is just meeting the tone and style of the magazine and getting familiar with certain categories. So, um, for example, if I was going to pitch an idea to Conde Nast traveler, I wouldn't pitch it to travel and leisure because they're direct competitors. So that's usually like a no-no if I pitch it to two, um, Connie Nass and they're like, no, then I'll pitch it to travel and leisure. I always give preference to editors I've worked with in the past.
I always give them longer lead times. Like, Hey, let me know in the next couple of weeks, what you think. Um, I don't just say, like, I don't send the pitch and then move on with my life. Um, but I think when it comes to pitching format, I think you have to pick the format that makes the most sense for, um, I think it makes the most sense for like how you can structure the piece in a way that like clearly and succinctly explains the idea and why it's valuable to the magazine and it fits the magazines, tone and style. I think that's the most important. So let's see our notes here. Let's make sure we have all these things. So, um, when we're looking at tone and style of the magazine, like I said, there are a lot of things that really help with figuring that out, not just looking at the structure and the sections, not just reading multiple issues or multiple articles.
I have also found what's really helpful is to find, um, like one writer who consistently writes for that magazine and read their articles over and over again, I'm not a writer who writes like op-ed and they can just write however they want. Not that, um, you need to pick someone who obviously has a relationship, like you've seen their name and like three or four issues, or you've seen their name all over the website and they're writing pieces where it's like byline stuff, but it's not personal opinion. It's not, um, you know, just like them writing, however they want. So read their stuff. I've done this with a ton of different magazines. I just read like 10 of their articles and it's like, oh, I get it now. Cause there it's the same writer writing in the tone and style of the magazine, getting a feel for like them writing for different sections.
And I think that kind of shows you how to write your pitch. It gives you like, not just the idea, but like how to change your writing or how to morph your writing to like fit that publication. Because the whole point is that we're submitting this idea to get it published, right? So we already need to be a step ahead. We need to be a step ahead and being able to write like that because if we get it, um, if the pitch gets accepted, we have to write like that. We have to write like the magazine to get our article published. So I think that kind of, you know, um, what is it not supersede, but like front-loading, it's, front-loading, I'm actually writing the article for the magazine, because if you're practicing that in your pitch, which your pitch is a writing audition, that's the thing you need to do to prove you can write for that magazine, practice that in your pitch, write it up, um, understand how to write like that magazine, send the pitch and then you're already kind of front-loaded for writing that piece.
All right. The next thing we want to talk about is I'm standing out in their inbox. So this is something that I always thought that there was like little rules we had to follow. I always thought that there was stuff where, um, we, if we didn't do X, then the magazine editor wouldn't open our thing. If we didn't do Y, then they would just delete it. And it's true. They delete stuff all the time. But most of the time they're deleting things that aren't a fit for their magazine. So in order to stand out in an editor's inbox, it's not really always about subject line, which that does help. If you have a creative subject line that does help. But most of the time standing out is showing that you have a unique take on an idea. It is an idea that really isn't just like every other thing they've seen, it's not like five must have back to school supplies or like, um, five ways to like cook your Thanksgiving, Turkey.
It's like truly unique stuff that they couldn't have gotten. Otherwise, if you did pitch it like that kind of stuff really stands out. They get a lot of pitches that are similar. Like imagine getting all of these back to school pitches. And they're not just getting pitches from writers. They're getting pitches from PR companies. They're getting pitches from experts. They're getting pitches about all these different products that they should include or services or companies or destinations or restaurants all the time. And you have to stand out with like your pitch that truly has a unique spin on something. It's not just everybody can write it. Right. Um, like it's not just something that is a generic listicle, it's not just something that, um, you know, it's something that you really understand well or that you ha you've collected a lot of data. So for me, um, I ended up collecting hotels over like a long period of time and then pitching a list of, of really unique hotels.
And I do the same thing with restaurants, I, or properties, like I collect stuff. And then I pitched that and it's really unique because no one else is like collecting this specific list. Sometimes there's a little overlap. Um, but oftentimes when you're kind of collecting these things or curating a list or understanding what the magazine does and then putting your unique spin on it, that's what makes it stand out. When we end up kind of making, like, if you think of your article that could basically be for anything, then you have the wrong idea. What makes it stand out is you you're like, here's this random study or here's this book, or here's this unique like, um, you know, I went on a, um, like you don't just pitch them a travel story. That's like, I went to this island, are you interested in a story?
You pitched them something like, um, I went to, you know, um, do you know the last two, um, rare species of tortoises were born on Richard Branson's island. I saw them in person. And like, you talk about how they've, um, avoided extinction or something rare about them. That like, they're the only source of this in the world or whatever. And that's true. I read that the other day. That's why I'm using it is Richard Branson's Necker island. They had two tortoises born that are like those super rare tortoises. Um, and that's what I read. Right? And this was an article that not everybody could could write because that person was there. That person saw it. Um, and or they, they were, they knew they had like insider information, but you need to put your unique spin on it and it needs to fit the magazine. There's a lot of times when people pitch magazines where it's obviously never read the magazine, it's obvious that the idea isn't a fit. Are you being grumpy over there? Are you being grumpy? What's wrong? Oh gosh. All right. Let's give you a little treat off.
I know now you're not going to be grumpy cause you get home. I thank you for the pork noises. Oh my gosh. You're so far away. Boy.
Maybe we'll do one more. So when we're pitching our magazine, it's very obvious when people don't read the magazine. So something to remember is that that mag, that magazine editor works with that magazine every day. That's their full-time job. So if you roll in there and you haven't read the magazine, here you go, buddy, if you haven't yet, or the magazine or you don't have a deep understanding of their tone and style, or you don't show that you get it, how their magazine works. It's very obvious to them. People forget that, you know, they forget that, um, that editor is working in that magazine every single day. Like it's very obvious to them when something doesn't fit or that you shopped it around and you didn't actually take any effort to change your headline or make it fit their magazine. So you have to stand out by really understanding the magazine, deeply, understanding what they're looking for, the ideas they want, the experts they interview, um, or the type of story structures, like the type of ideas.
They typically accept the really unique spins on things. And I bet if you read high-level magazines, like big national magazines or even, um, like I like, sorry, I like reading Texas monthly. So Texas monthly always has these really unique stories. Um, and it helps me really think about how I approach stories and how I kind of think about things, um, and how I would pitch them or how I would apply this strategy to make my ideas really unique. And I think if you find different magazines that resonate with you, like within your state or national, or even sometimes local magazines, like we have Austin monthly, I always reading that because they have different types of like spins on things that I just wouldn't think of. Um, and it just really helps you kind of like farm, you know, like till your farm, like give the soil some good stuff.
Um, and most of the time I found that we as writers want to write for magazines that we read. If there's a magazine you want to write for that, you haven't read very much. You need to read it. You need to understand that. Um, and standing out in their inbox, it very much shows that you like don't get that you, that you don't get their magazine. If you haven't read it before, or you don't have a deep understanding. So the last thing we want to talk about here is, um, unique perspective. So let's dive into that a little bit more. So giving a unique perspective on our story ideas, goodnight. I hope you have a nice sleep giving it a unique perspective on our story. Ideas comes from a few different things. For me, it comes from inspirational restaurants or properties. They're doing unique things that no one else in the planet is doing.
For me, it comes from unique studies like random things, not like four out of five people get heart disease. No, this is like, if you chew gum and swallow it, it actually gets stuck into your intestines. Because if you have this, you know, get a gastrointestinal disease, it does like really random, really random stuff where you're like, oh, more people need to know about this. It's not just a study. Like for example, one of the first articles I wrote was a study about the sodium in our diets, right? We all know it's not a surprise that Americans have high sodium diets. We all know that. But the study I found was like the majority of that sodium isn't people like get worried about putting salt on their food. It's not from that. It's from packaged and restaurant foods all the time. Like this study studied all these people and Mo like 80% of their sodium intake was from pre-packaged foods and restaurant foods.
Um, and things that like, if you add salt to your food, that's like a minuscule amount of salt, but most people are worried about that. Most people are worried about seasoning their food or buying low sodium this at the grocery store or whatever. But most of the salt people eat is not the way they normally think about it. It's not adding salt. It's like the thing you're eating already has tons of salt. So it was like, and unique take. Plus, I was writing about pizza. How do you address that as basically a piece of restaurant, right? How do you address that as a place that serves people? Something that typically has a high level of sodium or something that people eat pretty often? Pizza is like, I think pizza, um, more people eat pizza than burgers. If I remember, right. I don't know if that's right.
You can fact check me on that, but I'm pretty sure more people eat pizza than burgers and they don't really think about it, right? Oh, it's just dough and sauce and cheese and maybe some toppings, but it's the way the salt, the, the, um, you know, is the sauce like homemade? Like, do they make it in-house or they buy like a jar of it and, you know, um, do they add too much salt to the dose? Do they buy a super salty cheese or like, um, do they have a lot of sodium in the ingredients they put on top? Like maybe you always get like the full, you know, meat lover's pizza, where you have like bacon ham, sausage, pepperoni, like all that stuff. Right? All those cured meats that can be, um, very heavy, but people don't pay attention to that. So when you're looking at unique takes on your ideas, you got to put all the pieces together.
And sometimes I think this takes a little bit of time. It took me awhile when I was pitching to understand how to actually build a unique take and make something, an article, a slice, not a book. A lot of times I get pitches from students, um, like my coaching and core students. I get pitches from them. I'm like, this could be a book, not a book. We are giving someone a slice. Like, just imagine the page that you get on the magazine, in the magazine, that's the slice, that's all you get. Um, and you're trying to convey the most useful, impactful, best information in like less than a thousand words. Most of the time, most of my articles, um, sometimes they're like 3000 words if I'm doing a big feature, but most of the time it's 800 to a thousand words, sometimes up to 1500.
So that's all you get and that's way, way short. So we have to pack it with a punch. That means, excuse me, when we end up, um, looking for unique ideas, we have to take our own perspective, like question ourselves. I didn't, I had no idea that sodium was a problem in, um, I randomly came across that study. I was looking for studies about pizza, about pizza restaurants, about the restaurant industry. And I came across this random study that had just been done the year before or something. Um, and it was just like, did you know that pizza is one of the places people get the most sodium and most of their sodium comes from all of these foods that they just eat. They just don't even pay attention to. They're like worried about the salt shaker and it has nothing to do with that.
So yes. Pieces. Okay. Thanks for fact, checking me on that. That's why we're journalists, we fact check. So, um, when we're thinking about that, it's unique take, like I had no idea. I just came across this study and I was like, oh my gosh, how cool, like, let's talk about that pizza and health or, um, eating out and pizza. Cause people like it's a comfort food, right. Especially with the pandemic. Right. Like some of us have been, um, really into the comfort food recently we got the judgy finger going on, but that thing, you know, sometimes it's just like, you just don't pay attention to it. And then it builds up and then they're like, Hey, you know, you go to your next visit. And they're like, your sodium is really high. And you're like, but I don't put salt on my food. Right. So these ideas, you have to take your own perspective question, the things that you just kind of like, don't pay attention to all.
Yeah. I buy this kind of broth. Right. But it turns out that you could get the low sodium version of that broth and it takes, tastes just as good. And like you reduce your sodium a time or, um, oh, the Harris poll. Okay, cool. Um, if you end up, like, for me, a lot of times my ideas come from like questioning things that I normally just kind of like take as like face value. Like it is this way, or like, I understand it this way. And then I'm like, Hmm, what about that? You know, like what makes like there's a lot of times, um, like I get a lot of pitches just for an example about restaurants and properties, because I write about food and travel. So I get a lot of stuff about restaurants that it's just like, it's not new information. Every once in a while I get a restaurant where they're like, Hey, this person, um, is using their heritage to bring in random ingredients from around the world to make these crazy dishes.
Or I get pitches about restaurants that are like, we're making everything site. Not only is everything homemade, but we have a garden and we source everything from that garden and everything you're eating is sourced locally. Like there is nothing from more than a 50 mile radius. Like that's really cool and unique. There's lots of places that source different ingredients from all over the world, because they're like, well, we need these specific lines or we need these, you know, we need saffron or we need this specific type of fish or whatever. There's not a ton of places that have a super small radius or grow everything site. Um, we're looking for stuff like that. We're looking for ideas where it's just not common. It's just not stuff. And of course there are a time and a place for like five back to school supplies. There is a time and a place to pitch something where, um, it's just like a general Roundup.
It's a time and a place for like, let's update this list that we run every year. Let's do that. There's a time and a place, but if you really want to stand out in an editor's inbox, and this is for big publications, people ask me how I got into some of these big publications that I've written for, like a far and Conde Nast traveler. Um, and sometimes people ask me how I got into NAR. That's an interesting one. So anyways, you're looking for things that they just can't find anywhere. Like they're getting so many pitches, so many ideas, so many things you have to dig around and you have to come up with them, not only from your own unique perspective of things that you look upon, but unique things that just aren't happening very many places in the world. Um, unique things that are a study.
That's just surprising. It's surprising that, um, like one of my students, um, is writing a pitch and it's about caregivers and the amount of caregivers, um, who deal with the stress of being a caregiver. And she has some really fascinating studies in there that I had no idea. Like I just had no idea. Um, and you make assumptions, right. As a human, we make assumptions or like, oh yeah, it's probably this way. And then boom, surprising study. Like it's totally not. We thought that's the kind of stuff that we're looking for to really in, in these big magazines, of course we can always pitch, you know, general stuff if we want. Um, but I think when we're really thinking about magazine, you have to think about the volume of in volume of emails that your editor gets in their inbox and how your idea really can stand out.
Like this is something that I think it takes a long time to hone. Like it took me a long time to get to the point where I was like, oh, they don't want like five best coffee shops all the time. You know, they want, um, five best coffee shops for like gluten-free brownies that are actually good in your area. Not just gluten-free brownies, but gluten-free brand is it tastes good, um, or where they want something, you know, really specific or, um, something that is just a slice. I think that's the best way to think about it. How can you give them the most detailed, um, specific, fun, interesting we'd slice of this topic. And I think that kind of helps hone it in. Um, and one last thing I want to say. So if you have any questions, you can pop them in the chat.
If you have any questions, pop in the chat. Um, a couple of last things. So number one, um, how do you pitch magazines? Like, walk me through that below. How do you pitch, what are your dream publications like? Walk me through that below. Um, leave me a comment below list your dream publications, put it out into the world and, um, you know, start pitching them, but let me know what your dream publications are. And then let me know, um, how, you know, what kinds of things you really struggle with. How do you kind of go about pitching and where do you struggle with pitching? So pop that in the comments below or pop it in the, I see the comment box over here. So pop it in the comments. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about a high earning, sustainable profitable, freelance writing business, make sure to subscribe.
Last thing we're going to talk about here is that you have to keep trying, it took me a long time to get in the publications that I wanted to be in. I had to keep pitching and trying and doing all these things, um, and learning how to craft ideas. That really made sense for that magazine. And that's just trial and error. Um, there was someone that I talked to, I think one of my students said they talked to an editor who said, yeah, you have to send them like 10 pitches before they'll ever answer you. And that, excuse me, that was just rule that that editor had. You're welcome. I'm glad this has been helpful. I'm gonna pop Katie up here, Katie. Welcome in. I know you didn't say hello, but hello, Katie. Welcome. I'm glad that this has been helpful. If you have questions, you can pop them in the chat too.
You have to keep trying magazines are, are limited real estate. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people. That's why. Um, I had someone, I had a friend who, um, it took her 18 months to get into the New York times, pitching them every month for 18 months. And she finally got a story in the New York times. I know other writers where the very first story they ever pitched was to the New York times and they got accepted and that was their very first clip. But most of the time, it's not that you pitch your first idea and then you ended up, are you having a little trouble over, okay. Um, uh, it's not that you pitched this idea or you pitched 10 ideas or 20 ideas. And then you're like, oh, you know, this isn't gonna work out. Like sometimes you have to pitch 50 to a hundred ideas.
It depends on how much you want to get in that magazine. Like some people I have always loved travel and leisure and Conde Nast traveler, always. There's a bunch of food publications that I love, like afar. I've always loved afar. Um, oh, that's okay, Katie, you can't be late. You can't be late. You can only show up and say hello and join it. So you can never be late to a live stream. We're glad you joined us Katie. So you have to keep pitching and trying and pick those publications that you really want to get into because the space is limited and you really gotta be unique. You really gotta think about it. Um, and it depends on industry too, right? Like the high level food and travel publications are going to get a lot more pitches. Um, then probably like a, uh, like a real estate publication, um, like a smaller real estate publication.
Like the, the things that have people, oh, bless you. The things that have people dreaming, the things that have people imagining these cool things, they could do. The things that people like add as part of vacations or like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that that's so luxurious. Or those kinds of things are like the things that are hard to get into, um, versus ideas where it's kind of a publication that's talking about B2B. Um, and you're giving more information about like how to actually structure your business or make this better. But I think the point is that you have to pick the publications you really want to get into, you have to pick the publications that like sparked some good stuff. Um, in your mind, you had to pick the publications that really speak to you and then work on honing that in hone in your unique perspective, hone in your information, hone in your pitch, and then keep trying.
Sometimes it takes awhile to get into them. Um, sometimes you have an editor that works with you. Like I've had editors where I've pitched an idea and they're like, Ugh, can we try this? And I'm like, sure, like what about this? And they're like, yes, go with that. Sometimes it happens. And it's really part of the process. So I think just don't give up, don't give up if you really want to be in that magazine, keep pitching, um, make sure that you, you know, if you're not getting any hits, make sure you have someone look at your pitches or read their magazine or, um, you can always ask an editor for feedback. Sometimes they give it, sometimes you've sent them 20 pitches and you send another pitch and you're like, Hey, if there's anything I can do any feedback you can give me to like, make my pitches better.
Cause I would love to be in this magazine. Sometimes I write you back and say, yeah, this sucks because ABC you need to do Def. And you're like, oh, then you go off and do it. So, um, Katie says the New York times anecdote you just mentioned is really inspiring to keep in mind. I often have the sense I need to go through this initiation period before I make it in the publications. I really want, yes, we as writers often have this idea that we have to like pay our dues. We don't always have to do that. That's the magic of magazines. That's that's what I have always found is so cool that magazines, there is no sense sometimes of paying your dues or having to write for, you know, write for your local online blog, then the local magazine, then the state magazine, then the Nash, like you, there's no concept of that.
If you have an idea that is unique, that stands out, that fits the magazine. That truly brings out cool. Um, out of the box perspective, they will publish it. Like regardless if you can write that pitch, that that makes sense to them. Um, and that's the thing is like the person who had the New York times had zero clips, zero. She didn't go in there and say like, I've written for WaPo. And I've written for like all, you know, all these things. She rolled in there with nothing, but she proved in her pitch that she got it. She understood it. She knew what to do that writing audition, that idea that matters a lot more than being like I've written for 75 publications. And it's like, okay, but your idea sucks. Right? So this is really important. We don't have to like pay our dues sometimes with magazines.
We have to roll in there with a unique idea that captures attention. That makes sense for that magazine right now. That makes sense to publish it right now. So thanks for that. I like that a lot, Katie. So I'm glad we got to talk about that. We don't always have to do that. We don't always have to like, you know, it's, it's the same thing with writing novels. Nobody has to write 10 novels before they get a New York bestseller, right? There are people who their very first book they've ever written is a New York times bestseller. There are authors who submit manuscripts as part of finishing their MFA. That's what happened with Twilight, right? I think Twilight or, um, there's been a couple of books that just like blew up where someone submitted the manuscript as, oh, maybe it was the hunger games. Anyways, there's some recent franchise that, um, was submitted as part of someone's MFA program.
They were finishing their MFA. And part of finishing their MFA was to submit, you know, part of their manuscript or however much, you know, a few chapters to some agents to see if they could get a book deal, boom. They got a book deal. They never published anything. They haven't even graduated with an MFA. And they, they had a great idea that stood out. That made sense for the audience they're writing for everybody loved it. They published it. We don't have to do all these things. Um, being that said being a writer, just because you get something published once doesn't mean you're going to get it published again. So we have to keep working hard, honing our ideas, thinking of how we can be unique. And honestly, part of that uniqueness is like you as a person, the ideas I come up with, like if I was going to write a story about these guys, my story about these two for bowls right here would be way different than yours. You don't know them personally, right? Like you don't know, they're weird little quirks, the Hersh accounts, you don't know, like they're weird little things that they do or their problems, your perspective on it is so much different than mine. Can you bet back up in your head, the whole place? Oh,
Good job. Good job. Good girl.
But if we were going to pitch this idea about my [inaudible] to the same magazine, we would have to understand the tone and style and our perspective and our unique take would be different, but we would have similar writing styles in there because we're trying to match the magazine. It's just the slant on the idea would be very different than me talking about, uh, you know, Bose, geriatric, right. Bo is going to be 15 years old. He's a giant dog. He's like 60. How many? His 60 pounds now? I think so both 60 pounds. Charlotte's 50 pounds. And if I was going to write about bow being 15 years old, um, that would be a way different story. I would tell you about like how at 15 years old he can, um, Katie says she wants to know about their weird things they do that are adorable.
Okay. So I'll tell you a few things. We'll, we'll stay for a little bit and tell you that, Laurie, thank you for coming in. We're glad you were here. I'm glad I'm hoping this was helpful with tips and encouragement. So thank you for coming in Lori. All right. So here's some weird things about Bo, just so we have like a fun thing on here. Bo is almost 15 years old. He can jump our couch. Okay. Our couch is like one of those tall couches. Uh, like it probably hits me like, uh, right about here, like right, right. Like my rib cage. Okay. So it's a tall couch and he can jump it. He can clear it as a 15 year old dog. He can get on our counter and get things off the counter. Even if they're on the back of the counter. Like I thought by the time he'd be 15, uh, he would not be doing any of that.
And we still have to like hide food from him. The other thing that he does is he can run up and down the stairs. Like I've never had a 15 year old dog who can do that. Now the other weird thing is like, we're pretty sure that he's losing his hearing and his eyesight. So like, even if he can run up and down the stairs, he's not exactly sure how to locate you sometimes. Like he can't always hear you. So like he'll run up and down the stairs, like looking for you. But you know, we have to like kind of be in his visual slash hearing area. So, um, and the other weird thing is, um, something that we don't talk about on here, but, um, we're just having like some fun on a Friday. So one of the weird things is that both of them have food aggression.
So sometimes what happens with dogs and this is normal. I think people don't normalize this enough dogs have food aggression. It doesn't make them bad dogs. It doesn't make them dangerous. It's part of having a traumatic past. And it's part of them being worried that there is this scarcity of food that, that there will not be any more food for them. So what ends up happening is separate them. So you'll notice when you give them treats. I keep them very far apart. So I keep them far apart because like, um, you know, if you drop a treat between them, we might have like, like a battle to the death. That's just, that's just how it is. They love each other. They get along great. Not when it comes to food. So we have to separate their food all the time. Um, so that's an interesting thing that I feel like people don't talk about enough is like, it's just our old dog.
Um, we had a dog named Bruce and Bruce was a great Dane Mastiff mix. And, um, he had the same thing Bruce would eat. Like when he ate dinner, um, he would take three kibbles and he would go hide them somewhere. So Bruce would eat his meat for the first thing he did when he ate was, um, he would take three kibbles and he would go hide them. There you go, buddy. And, and part of that was because he was scared there wasn't going to be more food or that Bo was going to eat his food and then he wouldn't have any food. So he would store some kibbles just in case. So at least he had something and that's just part of his past. So that was a weird thing that Bruce did. Um, weird things that Charlotte does is like basically everything. She, she sits weird.
She makes strange dinosaur noises. People think she's like possessed. So when we walk her and she sees deer, she makes this horrible sounding noise. Um, like I would do it, but you guys would be like super frightened. So basically when she sees deer or like, she gets very excited, she makes this like joys, like you're choking a tear dactyl, like, like when we walked Charlotte and people see her like freaking out, she's like, you know, like that's the noise she makes. Okay. And people are like, something's wrong? Like you're choking her. I'm like, no, she has a harness on, there's nothing choking her. She's, she's just excited. These are the weird noises she makes when she's excited. So, um, sometimes you'll hear her make noises on here. Like she'll make little pork noises. Like, you know, she does that all the time. Um, he'd go bug.
Um, but yeah, like the weird thing is like, when we walk Charlotte, um, people just like she's buying most of the time. Like she just gets excited and makes these crazy noises where people are like, I'm pretty sure your dog is like, needs an exorcism. Like there's, there's something wrong here. Um, but they do weird things all the time. Um, we have to just, you know, the only thing is like, we just separate their food. We just don't give them, like, they, we don't, um, share treats. Like they keep them in their little dens. Like they have, um, you know, low crates. Um, what other, what other weird things do you guys do yesterday? So many weird things. Oh, Charlotte sits weird. She like sits like a sad stuffed animal all the time. She's always, oh gosh. Everything's terrible. Like, if you could imagine your as a dog, that's, that's basically Charlotte.
I know seeing her name a lot. She's like, I should get something cool. Um, Katie says, yeah, I am glad that he's, um, energetic at 15, but I was really hoping that by now I wouldn't have to like protect my food, like on the counter. I thought he wouldn't be able to get up there by now, but here we are. Um, yeah. And dogs are different, right. Um, dogs are different than people. Right? Dogs, people have food scarcity too. Right. We just don't like use our teeth most of the time. Right? Like people do fight over things, right? Like when there's scarcity of things, people like how many times have we heard the story of someone being trampled over a 50 inch television on black Friday, people die over the scarcity of, of a flat screen TV. Right? This is the same thing. It's just like dogs communicate differently than people.
And they just trample people. Right. They just trample them, you know, which is really horrible. Um, but with dogs, you know, they just there's that snap thing that happens, they just kind of like, it's like a thing, like they're already guarded and then boom. You know, so you have to be really careful about that. Um, and they're both rescues. So there we adopted Charlotte here in Austin. Um, she was about three and a half when we adopted her and Bo was adopted one day before he was about to be put down. Um, and he was about one I think. Oh yeah. That's another thing. Yeah. When Charlotte sneezes, she makes like an elephant trumping trumpeting noise. Cause she's always farting because we think we have to take, I think we have to take her in to get her like examined it. She has food allergies. Gotcha. Um, yeah.
Yeah. True. I agree, Katie. I think scarcity scarcity mindset. It affects us as writers. It affects dogs. It affects people in all different things. Um, especially with scarcity, like we could loop it back to the topics, scarcity with magazine articles. There's only so many pages in the magazine. There's only so many stories that they're going to print, but it doesn't mean you can't keep trying. It doesn't mean that you can't pitch an idea and think like, man, I know this is a fit and they get back to, and they're like, ah, we just ran something similar, you know, try again. And you're like, okay, cool. Let me try this other idea. Um, it doesn't mean that because there's scarcity and pages in the magazine that maybe you don't make it into print. Maybe you make it online and then you have a clip and then you eventually can make it to print.
So for example, um, the print space in like travel and leisure and Conde Nast traveler is like very small. Like you don't get a lot of space. Um, there's not that many stories that get printed, but there's plenty of spaces online where stuff gets printed. Um, and of course the pay is different, but the goal isn't always to like get this main thing. Sometimes you have to take steps and sometimes the step means digital before print. And um, it's not a matter of like scarcity and LA like, oh, they only take 10 writers. They'll never take me. It's my basically like I have to have this really good idea to get in there. So we've hopped on for quite a long time today. We'll do one last, but we'll give them one last treat. We got neutrino say there are peanut butter and banana, and I can tell you right now, king Kong would love them.
Cause they just smell just totally like banana. You go, they don't smell anything like peanut butter, you go like good job. All right. Well, thanks for everybody hanging out. I feel like we had a really great little session today. So we had a whole bunch of people coming in. Thanks for showing up. Um, we're here every Friday at noon central. So if you want to join next time, um, make sure to hop in. If you have, um, episode recommendations, like things that you want to talk about, questions you have, um, things that you want help with as a freelance writer, drop them in the comments and we'll we'll have a live stream and we'll talk about them and um, make sure that we can, you know, help you out, get everything answered so you can keep moving forward with all your writing. So thanks everybody for hopping in hope you have a great Friday and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
________
Trying to figure out how to price your work for what it’s worth? Check out my FREE Pricing Guide!
Need some fantastic contract and marketing templates to make your freelance writing biz run as effectively and efficiently as possible? See my Templates!
Want to stay in touch for weekly detailed advice plus updates on new freebies and courses? Join my email list!
Want to follow me for inspiration, tips, and to stay connected?
So psyched you’re joining me on this livestream adventure!
