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Interview with Meg
Weaver
How did you get started as a freelance writer? Dumb luck, really. I was twelve and sent in a story about a dog to a magazine my mother subscribed to. It was printed and I was hooked for life. It isn’t to see my name in print or even the money but there is something magical about being able to tell "stories", whether fiction or non-fiction, and make difficult concepts simple. Why is it harder today for writers to place articles than it was when you began your career? Magazines have evolved from being totally circulation-based (only the readers mattered) towards becoming totally advertising-based (only advertisers matter). Forty years ago when I started, it was still mostly circulation-based but it was recognized that manufacturers would want to place ads and it was a nice side income for the magazines. Today, a magazine such as TV Guide has a circulation income of US$13 million while the advertising income is $453 million. We are rushing headlong towards totally advertising-based magazines, asking only: "What demographic can we capture?" We’re not there yet but we are flirting with it. I’ve seen interviews with top publishers who are earnestly looking at giving their magazines away for free. There is serious money involved in this advertising-focused new world: In 1998 Hearst's magazine logos were printed on more than 3,000 products and earned $700 million. These were products such as House Beautiful paints, Victoria calendars and Cosmopolitan "intimate apparel." A publisher is not going to jeopardize that kind of money by printing articles that don’t speak to the magazine’s target market. If writers don’t query with just the right kind of article, it won’t be considered. Never mind that it may be well-written and be informative or entertaining. It just won’t be used. To be successful, a writer must know –in detail – the demographics (who the readers are) and the psychographics (what they want.) And where do you find that information? Are they in the writer’s guidelines? Unfortunately not. That’s why I wrote Writing for Magazines: Twelve New Things Writers Must Do Today to Make Money. You can check it out at http://www.booklocker.com/bookpages/megweaver01.html. It tells you step-by-step how to find the information you need and it even has a template for a query letter in a fill-in-the-blanks format that I’ve been using for years.. An interesting part of your query letter advice is that a writer should add a sentence offering to do "the whole job." What does that entail, and why is it important? That’s a great question. As writers we believe our job is to write an article but editors think differently. They need to have a space filled in their magazine. That space must be filled with more than an article. Look at the magazine you are querying. There are also photos, sidebars and more. Editors are busy people. If you can offer to fill that space with all the elements the editor usually publishes, your chances of making a sale are many times better than another writer’s, who offers nothing but an equally good article. Every year I go to a trade conference or two for editors and publishers, usually the ones organized by Folio:, the magazine publishing trade magazine. Once there, I listen. I want to know what editors want, what they really want. I want to know what they talk about amongst themselves at a conference when they feel they are with peers. And what I hear is that they want freelancers who can do "the whole job." Who can fill that space in their magazine without the editor providing excessive editing, handholding, or – heaven forbid – rewrites. You have some interesting suggestions about getting paid by magazines that offer little or no payment. What are some alternative ways a writer can barter for his/her services? I give some examples in the book of what I have used myself very successfully but the concept is to ask for what you need as payment. OK, money is probably at the top of the list but if you’re building up clips and find yourself working for magazines that can’t pay in cash, you have to be a little inventive. To this day I barter a 300-word article for the use of the full-featured copier at a local paper because I don’t have one in my office that can zoom. It doesn’t cost the editor anything because copying services for his department are fixed expenses no matter how much the copiers are used. So a little knowledge of corporate accounting and enough chutzpah to ask and I have the copies I need without being charged an arm and a leg at the local copying place. Why is it important that writers don't accept payment "on publication?" No writer should accept "payment on publication." Think about it: A store has a Fourth-of-July sale and one of the items is a thick sweater. You think it would be great for winter so you buy it and put it away. Would the store wait to get paid until you start using it? Of course not. "Payment on publication" is unfair to writers but publishers won’t stop demanding it unless we stop accepting it. Let's say you've interviewed an expert for an article. Later, you write several offshoot articles for other publications, and you want to re-use quotes. Do you need to obtain permission again from the expert? I’m not a lawyer, so what I tell you is not legal advice. But I can tell you what I have done over the years: When I talk to a potential expert, I try to be specific and general at the same time: "I have So-and-so magazine in mind but there may also be others. I hope that’s not a problem?" Usually, no one objects. If they agreed to be interviewed they’ve did so because they wanted people to hear their story and knowing that it may be heard in additional places is usually not a problem for them. How do you conduct phone interviews? I am extremely organized. I have prepared two or three questions, which I feel I must have answered and I tape them on my computer monitor or whatever is in front of my nose, so I don’t forget. During the conversation I check those questions often to make sure that I stay on target but I also allow the interviewee to wander a bit. Often you can get a good anecdote or unexpected information that brings extra life to the article that way. Do you advise following up on queries or submissions if you haven't heard back from an editor in a reasonable amount of time? I only follow up once on "cold" queries. Regular mail, even e-mail, gets lost, so it’s good business practice to check once. Then take your cue from the response to your follow-up. A prompt e-mail saying "this sounds like a wonderful story and I love to read it but I can’t find your query anywhere" deserves a different response than "I never received it and please don’t bug me any more." Editors are extremely busy people and, except for the tiniest of magazines, they get an overwhelming amount of mail from writers. It’s the writers’ jobs to stand out of the crowd because of the excellence of our articles, not because we’ve bugged them with follow-ups. What's one thing you wish you'd learned earlier about the magazine writing business? Good question. How much space do you have? Seriously, as I think back over the forty years, the one thing I wish I had learnt earlier was what brought me to write the book. I wish I had known in the mid-nineties what a huge transformation was going on in the magazine publishing business. The slow evolution from circulation-based magazines to advertising-based suddenly rocketed forward at lightning speed and I was clueless. It took me a few years but I did find the new formula for writing successfully for magazines. But I wish I had figured it out sooner. It would have saved me a lot of rejection slips. Hopefully, "Writing for Magazines" will help others in the same situation. Anything further you'd like to add? I think it’s important to emphasize that the last couple of words in the title on my book is "…to Make Money." There are still a lot of places to write for no – or virtually no – money. For some writers that is fine and what I teach probably applies less in these markets. But, the more you want to get paid, the more you need to understand the new rules. Visit Meg's website for writers at http://www.woodenhorsepub.com, or find out more about her book here.
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Having been
published for the first time at 12 years old, Meg has had thousands of articles
published all over the world. She has an electronic engineering degree and has
worked in high-tech sales and marketing for thirty years before starting 
