Veteran writer Norm Rohrer has a saying that should be the motto for writers, “Sell it first, then write it.” This idea may sound odd but it’s the best strategy for success in penning a news article, feature story, inspiration piece or any other work you hope to have published.

Publications have personalities, just like people. Your news story on a student who took a train, taxi, airplane and boat to return to school during the worst blizzard in United States history may sound as if any publication would want it, but that may not be the case. A periodical published by American Automobile Association may find the idea suitable for its purposes, but the Valley Entertainment Guide may have no use for this piece.

So what’s a gifted writer such as you suppose to do?

Sell it first, and then write it.

Before conducting the interview, getting the quotations, verifying the facts, experienced writers know to contact the editor of the publication for which they are interested in working and earning a freelancer’s paycheck. Sometimes an article presents itself and a writer takes her chances that someone will want an interview with a luminary who is in town to give a speech, or a young woman who rescued a child from a fire, or a plethora of other ideas. Most likely, however, the periodical for which you want to write has a publishing schedule and topics of its own. For this reason, you must think of a feature story idea and then approach the editor.

Part of your job is to start today to scout for feature stories. In the words of journalism professor William Ruehlmann, stalk the feature story by following the advice of philosopher Henry James, “Be one on whom nothing is lost.”

By reviewing the ideas in this book and reading the magazines you love (and forcing yourself to read those you dislike), you will develop a sense for the feature article. Soon your vision will radiate with unlimited possibilities and your idea notebook will burst with ideas.

Resist the urge to write these articles without an assignment. Find the article a home, and then work with abandon. Here’s a sales plan in 1-2-3 order.

Steps to selling an article the old-fashioned way

1. Write a short letter suggesting the idea and include the crucial information that you possess access to the valuable source. Access is crucial. Suggest a word length, deadline and a working headline or title. This letter is known as a query letter. You can end your missive by requesting the publication’s writer’s guidelines, their letter to you on the publication’s personality highlights.
2. Enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope, commonly called the SASE. It’s expensive to correspond with writers. This touch will alert the editor to your maturity as a writer, even if it’s your first attempt.
3. Include a one-page resume highlighting your writing victories or other information that suggests you are a professional.

Or you can try the 21st century approach and use some of the tools mentioned below.

You may be wondering where a writer gets the address of a publication or, equally important, the editor’s name. Periodicals feature this information toward the front of the issue; however, most libraries possess the Writer’s Market, a valuable reference book that lists the names of publications across the United States. In addition to the editor’s name, the listing includes the magazine’s address along with its editorial needs and other pertinent information. The Writer’s Market is an excellent research tool, and you may want to request it as a Christmas present.

For the inspirational market, Sally E. Stuart’s Christian Writers’ Market Guide, published by Harold Shaw, is considered the best source for contact information. Periodicals for writers are helpful, too, and many are online. Magazines such as The Writer, Writer’s Digest, The Christian Communicator, Editor & Publisher, Columbia Journalism Review and many others will help you keep abreast on who is doing what in publishing. Organizations from the National Association of Black Journalists to Religion Newswriters Association to Society of Professional Journalists are just a few writer organizations that can help you succeed in your feature-writing career. Consider joining some of these groups, which entitles you to receive a newsletter, and gain access to member benefits such as exclusive job opportunities.

When you locate a publication for which you’d like to write, pay careful attention to the guidelines and the contact information. More and more periodicals accept e-mail queries, which streamlines the process and gives writers quicker feedback, but some still prefer snail mail. It is acceptable to call an editor after having sent your query and waiting a couple of weeks after the publication’s typical response time.

When you correspond, be sure to alert the editor of your ability to provide photographs and other art. Editors are always in need of illustrations and photographs to accompany articles. If you can take photographs or prepare computer images, include that information in your letter.

Make sure your letter is word perfect with no typographical errors, known derisively as typos.

Allow between four and six weeks for the editor to respond. These people are very busy, but they need content and they need writers such as you to fill their pages day after day, week after week, and month after month.

That’s fine, you may be thinking, but what about timely articles that have a short shelf life. In these cases, editors are glad to take a telephone call. A daily newspaper, for instance, wants the information now and will talk to writers about getting the story to them fast17. The same rule still applies–sell it first, then write it. Obviously, a writer in search of a sale must have some information to share with the editor or the conversation will be short indeed, but avoid conducting a windy interview with a source before the sale is made. Get enough facts to make the call and sell the story.

While this process sounds as if only writing hacks deign to do it, it’s not. Having made that point, let me urge you not to argue with an editor. They say no sometimes, often, in fact. Don’t be discouraged. There are hundreds of publications and what one rejects this morning, another may thank Heaven for this afternoon. When an editor does reject your idea, take a minute to determine if the idea is just not interesting. Once you have confirmed the legitimacy of your instincts, try again. As Churchill once said, “Never give up. Never.”

Keep in mind that most publications are planned in advanced, so the prospect that your idea will fit exactly into the editor’s plans is unlikely. For this reason, don’t be unduly offended if one editor passes on your idea. If nothing else, you made a valuable contact for the future. Ask the editor to keep you mind for assignments and contact another publication with the same idea.

However, if the first editor raises a question that you couldn’t answer, find that answer before moving on to your next target. That way you are prepared if the second or third editor raises the original point.

Keep your story idea antennae up at all times and your possibility well will never be dry.

Larry Hicks is a prize-winning columnist in York, Pa., and he worried that he would run out of ideas when he began his columns in the early 1990s. Now his files are backed up with ideas because he’s always on the prowl for material. Seek and ye shall find, says the book of wisdom.

Larry’s story can be your story, too. Read newspapers, watch TV, talk to friends and always keep some paper and pen handy to jot down the next idea you can develop into a story for that next byline and paycheck.

Depending on the publication, cold calling, or initially calling an editor may be an option, but be advised, don’t expect a hero’s welcome. The editor will be busy on some project when you telephone. This call means she will have to stop her progress and think about your idea. While it’s her business to be on the lookout for new ideas, the interruption may not put the editor in the mental and psychological state that you want to get the best reception for your award-winning story. Use the U.S. postal service and you can excite the editor from the safety of your letter, or try a well-written email.

Build goodwill with the editor by proving that you studied her publication. Seasoned writers say to make sure and study it beforehand. Get a sample copy. Often it is free for the asking along with writer guidelines. Often, guidelines are available online. Monitor the topics and the advertising of the publication or the online service. Read between the lines to sense the bias and prejudice of the editor. It is best to create a grid and take notes on each article. How many sources are used? How many anecdotes are mentioned? Are articles top-heavy with statistics such as numbers, or is the magazine or online service built around long narratives with personal references? The grid will help you understand the slant used by the publication, but you’ll have to do the interpretation and your findings will be subjective. Nonetheless, this approach will help you gain an edge on sensing the content that is most likely to be used.

Road trips

Among the best advice I ever received on selling articles is to befriend editors. Make a point of introducing yourself to editors when you are on the road, or when you attend a conference.

Offer to take her to lunch. Explain your interests and offer to keep in touch with ideas.

Enterprising writers make initial contact with editors by telephone or email and request a 10-minute session the next time they are in town. Most editors know the writer will be coming with an agenda. That’s OK. Editors need writers as much as writers need editors.

You may want to try a fact-finding, get-acquainted trip to a number of publications. An inexpensive trip may be planned by restricting your meals to sandwiches in the cooler and overnight stays at inexpensive hotels. Websites such as Travelocity.com will allow a guest to submit a bid for a room. I have stayed at a Washington-area Hilton for $60 per night using this kind of service.

When you arrive for your get-acquainted chat, keep to the time schedule. The editor can always extend it, but be sensitive to her time. Editors are always facing a deadline. It’s OK to leave a resume or one of your articles that you recently published. It’s very likely that the editor will ask if you have any feature article ideas. Be ready with a list of five ideas that target her audience. Practice pitching the idea in one well-crafted sentence. Practice saying the line with grace and speed. Your new friend will be impressed. Monitor your time and then offer to take your leave. Ask permission to stay in touch. Assuming that you don’t drag mud into the office, the editor is very likely to encourage you to submit future ideas.

If all else fails, ask the editor if she can give you one piece of advice on succeeding in writing. This approach may sound demanding, even too self-serving. It isn’t for everyone, but it may work for the new writer with lava coursing her veins who is need of a place to erupt in print or online. Published authors sometime quip. “Writing is easy; you just open a vein and bleed.” For new writers, you can open a vein and let the fire saturate the paper. The words may be too hot to handle, but at least you got it out of your system! Getting to know editors on a personal level will help you use your eruptions for the byline and the paycheck.

Submitting the article

Editors can be very forgiving to writers on the format of the submission, but why risk it? It’s very likely that the periodical will want you to send the manuscript electronically using a software program such as Microsoft Word as a document with a name such as “tires.doc” when writing about trends in tire swings. Double space your piece and use a 12-point size font in

Times or something similar. Include your name, address, telephone number, email address on top, left side of the article. The top right-hand side of the document is a good place to include the rights you are selling, word length, social security number, copyright symbol, year and your name.

The right side of the top of your title page is the area where most writers tell the publication they are selling first rights, which means that the publication will be the first to use the piece.

After it is published once, the writer can sell it again using one-time rights. In both cases, there is one-time usage.

These days some publications are asking writers to sign a work-for-hire contract, which allows the publication to retain exclusive rights, including the right to publish the article on the Internet. This phrase means that the writer gives up copyright privileges. Most writers avoid those kinds of contracts when marketing their own freelance articles because the work cannot be resold (because the writer doesn’t own it). With first-rights and one-time rights, the writer is free to sell the article, once it is published, to another publication as long as the audiences don’t overlap. (More information on your rights follows this section, but let’s stay with the typical format for the look of your article.)

About halfway down the page, insert the suggested headline or title for your work and your byline. Allow some white space and begin your article. If you plan to submit it by paper, it’s a good idea to format the manuscript to have a running head that includes a keyword from the headline or title and your name and page number. Some publications maintain a tradition of listing the number of total papers in the upper right-hand corner. For each successive page, the writer would list the order. So, “2/4” means “second of four pages.” It’s a technique that allows an editor to be sure that all the pages are intact. Another old convention is to add “30” to the end of the article to alert the editor that the article concluded. Numbers like these were the rage during the 1970s, the heyday of Citizen Band radios with sayings such as “10-4, good buddy.” The number “30” is the radio version of good-bye, or this is the end of the transmission.

Your rights

A word about copyright. No one can copyright an idea, but your creative work can be copyrighted. Copyright protects a writer’s right to copy the work, to use a portion of it elsewhere and make money on it. New writers tend to worry needlessly about copyright. The work is copyrighted once it is published, but if you feel uneasy about someone purloining your unpublished intellectual property, write something such as “© 2025. Your name. All Rights Reserved,” or just “copyright,” and try to use the copyright symbol from your keyboard or handwrite it on the work. For $30, the U.S. Copyright Office will register unpublished works, which ensure you protection in the unlikely event of a copyright infringement suit.

Writers may sell many different rights. As stated earlier, when a writer sells a publication the right to be the first publication to use the material, those rights are called First North American Serial Rights. Once the publication in North America publishes your article, all the rights to it revert back to the writer. In general, First North American Serial Rights is sometimes called First Rights, but you could sell first rights for an electronic service. In addition, writers sell onetime rights, which isn’t the same as First North American Serial Rights. One-time rights means a publication can print the article once. Reprint Rights means that your article has appeared somewhere else and now you are selling the right to reprint it. First Electronic Rights or First World Electronic Rights is the right to be the first to publish the piece to electronic media. Writers are cautious of selling this right because it is so broad.

A work-made-for-hire (WMFH) contract gives exclusive rights, including the copyright to the publisher. Complete ownership of the work is transferred to the publisher, and if the publisher so chooses, the writer may not even be considered the author of the work anymore. A WMFH can’t be resold because the writer no longer owns it and can’t resell it. As stated earlier, many freelance writers are refusing to sign WMFH contracts because of this odious practice. For in-depth information on rights, visit www.writing-world.com. Moira Allen, the owner of this commercial site, publishes articles on rights and copyright information and other aspects of writing.

This is an excerpt from Dr. Michael Ray Smith’s book FeatureWriting.net. Used with permission.

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