Category: magazines

Moving into the adult magazine market

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While I’ve been drafting BEHIND THE BIT, I’ve been thinking about my freelancing and I’m feeling the seven year itch. 😉

Since I was fourteen, I’ve been writing for teen magazines. That’s fantastic and I absolutely love it, but I think I’m going through a new phase. I’ve been reading lots of GLAMOUR, REDBOOK, ALLURE and FAMILY CIRCLE. These were magazines that I used to look at and say, “Can’t write for them yet. I just don’t have the clips and I’m not in their target age range yet. (I think Redbook is for the 25+ age group, but I might be wrong. Pretty sure, though.)

But the more I read of adult mags, the more I realize they’re JUST like SEVENTEEN, TEEN VOGUE and COSMOGIRL (RIP, CG!! Thanks to Melissa Walker for bringing that to my attention. Melissa knows EVERYTHING about the mag biz!)

No, the magazines obviously don’t publish articles in the same tone, but the subjects and topics are often the same–men or boys, beauty, health, lifestyle, etc. Just with more of an adult tone.

I almost feel as if I’m starting over in the magazine field. Maybe I am! Teen magazine clips might mean NOTHING to adult mag editors, but I’m going to try.

Now, I’ve got to:

* read a zillion back issues
* figure out the mastheads
* find a topic
* write a query
* rewrite the query
* obsess over the query
* repeat!

I’m still going to keep freelancing for teen mags, but it feels like the right time to give adult mags a try.

Fingers crossed. 🙂

Anyone else go through something similar when shifting from the teen market to the adult publications?

Waiting for the VIQ response

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Veerry busy today. I’m working an outline (and cooking up evil mean girl tricks for a book…) and writing an article for Children’s Writer. Yep, that big batch of queries I sent out at the end of April is starting to come back. Trickling, thankfully, but still coming. I’ve got a few windows open on my protesting laptop and am switching back and forth between the article, my outline and Dreamweaver for the new Website I’m designing for fall launch.

I got the SCBWI LA summer conference brochure yesterday. The line up looks fantastic! Wow. It’s neat to “know” so many people on the speaking list and it sounds like it’ll be a blast. Is anyone going? The date doesn’t look as if it’ll work for me, but I’ll be reading lots of attendees’ blogs to get the scoop.

I started blogging today as a distraction to keep myself from chasing down the mailman. I sent a VIQ (very important query) to a big, glossy teen mag about a month ago and I’m trying not to check the mail the second it is put into the box. The mailman prob thinks I’m a stalker because yesterday I almost took the mail from his hands to see if my VIQ had a response.

*dashes off to mailbox*

Edits are complete!

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Whew. I just finished my fourth round of edits on my new YA. That means…it’s finished! After one more round of reading and checking for silly grammar mistakes, off it goes! I’m so, so excited to have that *this close* to being finished. Getting the draft down was exciting, but I’m ready to have someone else read it and give me feedback.

I sent a two magazine queries out this weekend because it felt, well, weird not to have any queries out there. I’ve just been accepting assignments as they come and not querying, but I’m trying to break into bigger, glossier mags this year and I’ve got to at least send a couple queries.

Before I started writing fiction, at my peak of magazine querying, I had 30 queries out at once. So you see how zero feels odd. But I do think taking a short break from magazines and writing only fiction has helped, but I’m at the point where I can slowly start working on breaking into different magazines while keeping my focus on books.