The Renegade Writer Blog

Maybe it’s because I worked in advertising and marketing for ten years that I’ve developed the hide of a crocodile around rejections. An editor doesn’t want to buy my article? Her loss, I think, then I figure out a new market for my brilliant idea. A magazine isn’t crazy about my lede? So I’ll rework [...]

Since I teach an e-course that tells writers how to write queries that will hopefully land magazine assignments, one question I get a lot at the end of the course is, “What happens if I do get an assignment? What can I expect?”
Well, first, you do the happy dance. Then you e-mail me and let [...]

FOLIO: reached out to a wide selection of magazine/media industry professionals — publishers, editors, chief executives, dealmakers, bloggers — to channel their inner Nostradamus and work up some predictions for 2010. Which magazines will survive? Which won’t? Which technologies will propel the industry next year? What are the keys to staying in business while hopefully [...]

A couple of weeks ago, someone posted a comment on this blog saying that in dissing content mills like Associated Content we “just don’t get it,” and bragged that she earns $1,200 per month on her articles on Associated Content and similar sites. (When I checked, I saw that the writer had over 1,000 articles [...]

Dan Baum has written for Rolling Stone, Playboy, Wired, and other big-name magazines, and is a former staff writer for The New Yorker; on his website, you can download proposals that landed assignments with these magazines. Baum is the author of Nine Lives, and runs a blog called WordWork. The account of his “short career [...]

I just heard from Marina Krakovsky, one of my travel writing workshop alumna, on the success she had in placing an essay she worked on during the course. I love getting news like that! And working with Marina, who is such an accomplished writer, was a total joy.
Marina’s goal, when she signed up for the [...]

With the economy being what it is, you may have had the idea to start pitching more in hopes of bringing in more cash. Or maybe you were inspired by my idea of doing a pitch blitz in How to Gain Control Over Your Freelancing Life. Whatever the reason, you want to expand your client [...]

Here’s a good article on how to break into custom publishing by Joe Pulizzi on the American Society of Business Publication Editors blog. I’ve found that custom publishers pay well and are easier to work for than many consumer magazines. [lf]

more cat pictures [lf]

MSNBC blogger Gael Fashingbauer Cooper just posted the five magazines she can’t do without. As a freelance magazine writer, I, too, get dozens of magazines in the mail each month — and still manage to pick up a few at checkout counters. And like Cooper, I adore Cook’s Illustrated, although I don’t read the editor’s [...]