Pitching a Magazine Article: Resources for Beginning Freelance Writers

Jerz > Writing > Journalism

A “pitch” is the publishing industry’s term for “proposal.” Your goal is to find out whether an editor is interested in a story you’ve written (or that you’re about to write). An editor with deadlines to meet and a flood of pitches from established authors will need a very good reason to take a chance on a new writer. 

• How to Pitch a Journal or Magazine Article (Harvard.edu)
• How to Pitch an Article to a Magazine (MasterClass.com)
• Pitching Articles: 5 Tips for a Successful Freelance Writing Pitch (WritersDigest.com)
• How to Write a Pitch to Editors That WINS (15m video from Megan Grant)
• The Ultimate Guide to Magazine Pitching (around 12:20 they discuss about “the perfect pitch”; the whole 40m podcast is very useful if you want to be a freelance writer, and if you like listening to British dialects)
• 10 Awful Pitches the Editors Reject Every Time (WritingRevolt.com)
• A story pitch is a professional email. The structure and purpose of a professional email is very different from the back-and-forth communications we often send to our friends on social media.
  Email Tips: Top 10 Strategies for Writing Effective Email
• Find your own results: Google for “How to pitch a magazine article about [your chosen topic]”. What do the results tell you?