Organizing Your Pitches

I’ve been a bad blogger. Like calling home (love you all) or renewing my tourist visa (just did it!), writing these posts is something that grows bigger and bigger the longer I wait. It grows so big that it becomes a chore, and then it’s easy to put off. Of course once I sit down to do it, I’m relieved and excited and happy. This in contrast to my beautiful wife, who can plunk down every couple days, spit out a thousand beautiful words, add some photos, and update. Here’s her blog, if you’re curious: inocentesabroad.wordpress.com. Good stuff.

Now creeping toward the end of our second month, the process of organizing my pitches (contacts, ideas, dates, decisions, etc …) is becoming increasingly hectic. Freelancing, even if your the best huckster in the world, is a numbers game. As such, information tends to pile up. Without an organizational strategy, the information can become overwhelming. This calls for — du du du daaaa — a spreadsheet! Yup, all that temping I did after college is paying off in spades.

So here it is. This is my life in pitches, exposed to the world. The pitch destinations are blocked out (because, well, that seems strategic) and so are the ideas (because you’re all thieving scofflaws!), but you get the idea. As you can see, by far the biggest response from editors is … no response at all. There could be a number of reasons for this. Primarily, some of my pitches may be falling flat. On the other hand, I’m getting some acceptances. It may also be that I’ve got the wrong contact info. My first stop when digging up places to pitch is mediabistro.com. If you become an “AvantGuild” member, you get access to their “How to Pitch” page (thanks to a good friend and great writer Sebastian Stockman for the heads on this one). The page has a couple hundred magazines with detailed information about the kinds of freelance content editors are looking for, the best part of the book (front, back) to pitch, and some common mistakes to avoid. It also gives contact info. It’s a wonderful resource and it’s pretty cheap. The yearly fee, which is sub-$50, includes a magazine subscription (there’s a limited but worthwhile selection).

The problem, of course, is that like any online database, not everything is going to be up-to-date. The folks at MediaBistro.com do a really good job, but there’s a lot of turnover in the publishing industry. I got a taste of this when I pitched Miller-McCune, followed up, and then received an email back from a different editor explaining that the editor I pitched had left in May. Fortunately someone forwarded the email to the web editor, who forwarded it to the new print editor, and now I’ve got a new assignment. In a non-digital world, a paper pitch could have taken weeks to circulate. Another win for the internet!

The best bet, of course — and this is what I’ve been trying to do — is to scour the magazines you’re pitching, get an idea of the voice, the content, the length of the articles, and — IMPORTANT — the current masthead. This isn’t always available online, and since I’m out of the country it isn’t exactly possible to run out and pick up the latest copy of the Seattle Stranger (etc …), so sometimes you’ve just got to submit that pitch to “info@magazine.com.” Not a high probability game, but better than nothing.

Okay … a new post. I feel better as a blogger.