13 out of 200: A Less-Than-Impressive Start to my Freelance Career

There's a big difference between seasoned freelancers and those just starting out, at least when it comes to marketing. Seasoned freelancers write much better queries than other writers. And new writers? Most of the times, their queries...well, they stink. 

My first year of full-time freelancing, I sent out more than 200 queries to potential markets. (This is including resubs, but that’s still a lot of pitching.) You know how many of them actually sold? Are you ready? Thirteen.

Thirteen out of more than 200. That's not a bad number for a direct mail campaign, but it's not too impressive for pitches that were supposed to be targeted to specific editors and markets. If I started out freelancing today and had that kind of result, I don’t know that I could, or would, stick with it.

          

But receiving so many “bongs” (that’s what I call rejections) thickened my skin. I stopped taking rejection personally. Yes, I was still annoyed. Disappointed. Discouraged. Frequently disgusted, and occasionally depressed. But I knew it wasn’t a rejection of me, only of my idea. (And looking back, many of my queries were terrible. They lacked focus, they were poorly researched, they weren’t written with the magazine’s audience in mind. No wonder they failed!)

            

By using the 24-hour rule, I turned each of those bongs into two opportunities. I kept pitching. I kept trying. Yes, I was discouraged but I kept my hand in, so to speak. And eventually I started getting assignments—not only because I kept pitching but because my queries got better. Much better. I learned to think about what the editor might want in a pitch, to highlight my I'm-So-Great paragraph, or ISG, and to present a "package" that made it easy for an editor--even one new to me--to say "yes." 

By my second year of freelancing, about one-quarter of my pitches sold, and that percentage continued to climb. (Today, more than half of the articles I pitch sell—and that’s a percentage I’m very happy with.)

            

I tell new writers that they will spend most of their time marketing until they start getting assignments. And that marketing doesn’t pay off until you get work. Well, that’s not quite true. Because the marketing you do makes you a better marketer. Write a lot of queries with the goal of improving your queries, and you will write better queries! And better queries=more assignments. 

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Performing CPR: When Your Story Gets Killed

            It’s happened to just about every freelancer I know. You got the assignment. You researched the piece, wrote it to your editor’s specifications, and turned it in on deadline. A week or two later, the editor requested a rewrite, or maybe two. But the end result was unexpected, and undesired. Your piece got killed.

            What’s next? How do you perform CPR to a dead story?

            First, ask why. Having a story killed is unfair. At least it feels that way. But be honest with yourself. Did you give the editor what she asked for? Did you follow her the terms of the assignment, or was yourstory subpar? If you dropped the ball, admit it. Offer to rewrite the piece if you haven’t already--better to collect the full fee for an assignment, and have it run, than a kill fee. (Kill fee provisions vary but the idea is that they pay you a percentage of the assignment--often one-quarter to one-third of the original fee--and rights revert back to you.)

            If you didn’t, well, it’s okay to be angry--especially when the piece was killed through no fault of your own. Stories are killed for unfair and nebulous reasons. Some editors routinely over-assign and then kill the stories they decide they don’t want. Sometimes your assigning editor leaves the magazines, “orphaning” your piece. His successor may decide to go in a new direction, and kill stories assigned by his predecessor. (This has happened to me several times at three different magazines.) 

            Sometimes an editor sits on a piece too long and then decides it’s no longer timely. (That’s happened, too.) Sometimes the editor changes her mind about what she wants, or her higher-up does. Sometimes they both do. You can’t control any of these scenarios but you can ask that the editor pay the full fee.

            While a kill fee provision is created to protect the writer (you get paid at least a little for your work), it shouldn’t be used without good reason. If you met the story specs, you should get paid the full fee, and I’ve argued this point (and know other writers who have as well). Alas, editors almost always fall back on the kill fee clause and refuse to pay the full fee.

            Now what? Pitch the piece elsewhere. Don’t tell the editor you’re querying that it was written and assigned and killed by someone else, possibly one of her competitors (even though you may want to!). Just pitch the piece as if you just came up with the idea, and see if another editor will bite. If so, you may be able to sell the piece you already wrote. If you do have to write a different piece, don’t be afraid to pull from your earlier research; when a publication kills a piece, all rights to it revert to you.

            Ideally you’ll be able to sell the piece to another market and negotiate a better deal for your story. I’ve had about a dozen stories killed over 15 years and managed to resell all but one to other markets, which meant that I made up for the lost fee--and even made more for several stories, which meant that being killed actually boosted my pay!

            Even if you can’t don’t take a piece being killed as a personal attack. If you know you did a good job and met the terms of the assignment, chalk it up as bad luck--and consider whether you want to work with that particular editor again. 

            ****This post was drawn from Secret 38, Perform CPR, from Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success. And don't forget that my series of Kindle e-books for freelancers are still available for only $2.99 for a limited time. Dollars and Deadlines' Guide to Selling your First Article gives you a simple blueprint to follow to break into print or pixels, and Dollars and Deadlines' 10 Essential Freelance Templates provides you with the 10 documents you need to start freelancing. 

   

The 24-Hour Rule and Why it Works

I've written before about the importance--and power of--setting specific, performance-related goals. At the Annual Writers Institute this weekend in Madison, I shared with attendees one of my most effective specific goals that I used as a fledgling freelancer--the 24-hour rule.

You'll find more about the 24-hour rule in Six-Figure Freelancing, but here it is in short:

Within 24 hours of receiving a rejection, or "thanks, but no thanks" (what I call a "bong") from an editor, I would do two things. First, I’d resubmit the query to another market; I call this a "resub."

Second, I’d send a new query to the editor who had rejected me, starting with language like, "Thank you very much for your response to my query about women and weight-lifting. While I’m sorry you can’t use the idea at this time, I have another for you to consider." Then I’d include my new query.

The 24-hour rule transformed each rejection into two new opportunities. Getting my original query idea out to another possible market (typically a national magazine) increased my chances of selling it. But even more important, getting back in touch with editors immediately helped me build relationships even before I’d written for them!

As I said this weekend, when you go to the Gap to buy a new pair of pants, and the first pair are pleated pants that look terrible, the salesgirl doesn't say, "'K, bye!" She brings you more pants to try on. So be the Gap salesgirl, and keep bringing the editor more pants.

Finally, the 24-hour rule also eliminated the question of "what should I do now?" after receiving a bong. I didn’t get derailed by a rejection; I simply applied my 24-hour rule and kept going.

If you're freelancing part-time or you're swamped with work, 24 hours may be too ambitious. Maybe a 48-hour or 72-hour rule will work better. But the idea is the same--that you give yourself a specific amount of time to resub your original idea and pitch a new idea to the editor. A rejection isn't really a rejection--it's two new opportunities for you as a freelancer.

A Month of Templates: The Follow-Up

The template I’m going to share today is one of the simplest to write, yet is often overlooked by freelancers. It’s the follow-up letter.

Failing to follow up on a query or submission is a common freelance mistake. Yet simply sending a follow-up letter increases not only the chance of a response, but of an assignment as well. (Hey, the editor may have overlooked or missed your query, or been meaning to get to it…your follow-up letter may make the difference.)

A follow-up need only include a few sentences. Here's one of mine, with my comments in purple:

Dear Stephanie:

Hope you’re doing well. I’m writing to follow up on a query I sent you (working title, “Sleep Yourself Thin”) four weeks ago; I’ve dropped it below for your convenience. [Remind the editor of which pitch you're following up on, and include it in your follow-up (in the body of the email, not as an attachment) to make it easy for her. ]

Would you let me know at your earliest opportunity if you’re interested in this story for Complete Woman? If I don’t hear from you within two weeks, I’ll assume you’re not interested in the idea at this time and may market it elsewhere. [[Here's the bonus of following up--you put the onus on the editor to get back to you. If she wants the piece, great! If not, I'm not going to sit around for months hoping for a response--I'm moving on, baby. I've found this tends to provoke a response, even it's a "no thanks." You can give a market more time to respond--say three to four weeks--if you like. The idea is to give the editor (and yourself) a deadline.]

Thank you very much for your time; I look forward to hearing from you soon. [Standard closing line.]

Very truly yours,

Kelly James-Enger

***
And when do you follow up? That depends on the publication's guidelines. If it says that it typically responds in four to six weeks, for example, I follow up in (you guessed it) four to six weeks. For markets I've written for before, I follow up in two to three weeks. For markets that are new to me and that don't provide response guidelines, I usually follow up in about four weeks.

Don't let your queries languish! Follow up and if you don't garner a response from a pitch, resub it to another market. It's not doing you any good sitting on your hard drive.