The Renegade Writer Blog

Thanks to Justin for pointing out to us that someone at amazon.com has a sense of humor — or is  simply a frustrated freelance writer filled with existential angst.
Check out the page for The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock. The best quip about the mixup in the comments below will win a signed copy. [...]

On Monday Damon Brown begins his popular Renegade Writer e-course, “Tech Journalism 2.0: Making Money With Your Inner Geek.” The Tech Chair of the 2010 American Society of Journalists and Authors conference, Damon is the author of nine books and regularly contributes to Playboy, New York Post, Family Circle and AARP: The Magazine. You can [...]

This is the query I used to break into Writer’s Digest in 1999. (I started writing for magazines and doing corporate writing in mid-1997.) I’ve been writing for them ever since, and am now a columnist. Notice how I end with a statement that shows that I understand the magazine’s market and explains how my [...]

This query resulted in a feature assignment from Fortune Small Business magazine. A friend told me that the magazine was looking for entrepreneurs with interesting hobbies, so I put out a request on Help a Reporter Out looking for entrepreneurs who were also martial artists. Laura Smith was the first person I heard from, and [...]

This is a query that sold as a feature for Woman’s Day a couple of years ago. Once I started working on the article, I suggested to the editor that we call it “The Om Of Organizing,” but she thought it was too new-agey for her readers. It ended up being called “From Chaos to [...]

A query letter is the tool that opens doors at your dream magazines, both online and off. It shows an editor not only that you have a great idea, but also that you know how to organize your thoughts, that you can write in a clear and engaging way, that you have research and interviewing [...]

Sarah asks: “If I only have one clip — and it’s print — how do I handle this when sending email queries to editors?”
You can scan the article and create a PDF file, ask the editor to send you a PDF if they have one (sometimes they do!), or simply send the text from your [...]

In my Renegade Writer survey, many readers asked for examples of query letters that worked. So here’s one I sold to Women’s Health a few years ago. Notice that I included quotes from a couple of experts and that I gave a few examples of the kinds of tips I would provide. If you have [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a question from a reader who wanted to know if he should mention his copywriting creds in a magazine query. Thanks to all of you who answered him in the Comments!
I also asked an editor of mine at a national magazine, who just sent me his reply because [...]

My first free teleclass for writers, on Querying with Confidence, was this past Tuesday evening. I think it was a great success! We had 80 writers on the call, and I got some wonderful questions during the call and afterwards in e-mail. I started out with five minutes of greeting callers as they popped on [...]