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Topic: Submitting multiple queries
| Author | Message |
| ItsAMysteryNY | Posted – 5/10/2006 8:52:54 AM | show profile | email poster Is it kosher to submit the same pitch to two different health/fitness/lifestyle editors of magazines owned by the same company (i.e. if it were Conde Nast, would be Self and Glamour; if Hearst, Redbook and Cosmo)? |
| Upward Bound | Posted – 5/10/2006 9:41:17 AM | show profile The same idea, yes, the same pitch, no. If you're going to be successful at all, you need to understand that each magazine has a different audience and the editors want pitches/stories tailored specifically to the magazine's specific audience. If you're pitching Self and Glamour and your idea is on "The best dress for your body" (just for the sake of argument), your pitch to Glamour might be somehting like: How choosing the right dress will make you the talk of the town. You pitch to Self might be: How choosing the right dress will give you more self-confidence. Glamour: focus on how women present themselves to the outside world. Self: focus on ways women can feel better about themselves. Now, I haven't intimately worked with either magazine so I'm sure some editor at one of them might read this and say I've got it all wrong as far as the way to spin the topic for their magazine. But I can guarantee you that editors at each think their magazine speaks with a UNIQUE voice to their readers and that, yes, they look for pitches that show the writer understands that. So study the magazines and try to get in the "head" of each as if each magazine were an actual women who is speaking to her friends (the readers). Cheesy? Maybe. But this exercise works. |
| leftcoaster | Posted – 5/10/2006 11:57:51 AM | show profile You know, I read that advice all the time about making sure you "tailor" the pitch to each magazine. But with women's magazines, I can't tell you how often I see virtually the same article appear in almost all of them, usually within a month or two. For example, there was a period not that long ago where, over a couple of months, several of them ran articles about the perils of not getting enough sleep. And I'm sure you could have run any one of them in any of the other pubs with minimal, if any, edits required. I've seen the same thing with the release of the new food guidelines last year, studies that eating/drinking low-fat dairy foods can increase weight loss success, etc. etc. Obviously, if you can tailor certain articles to each mag's demographic (the style example given in the above post is a good one), that's great. And given the competition for writing for a lot of these pubs, anything you can do to make your pitch stand out is only to your benefit. But there are some topics that work for a pretty diverse audience and any distinctions will come out more in the style of writing, I think, then the actual content. |
| aestone | Posted – 5/10/2006 12:16:09 PM | show profile I've wondered this myself. Of course, tailor the pitch to each magazine...even if the actualy article might be the same. I do know there is very little, if no, conversations between editors at Conde Nast (used to work there). I recently pitched an essay to two health/fitness magazines owned by the same company. When the editor accepted the piece, he seemed thrilled that I thought of their magazine. He even asked why I chose them. I have to say, I felt guilty knowing that the same essay was in the hands of another editor. So, I wouldn't do it again. Wait for rejection and then picth again is my advice. |
| honahleigh | Posted – 5/10/2006 2:29:27 PM | show profile but I thought... I thought it was a BIG faux pas to submit an idea to two publications at once. A rule that is basically starving me to death as I give ever effin' editor and their mother the requiste "6 weeks" to mull over my idea. Sorry to vent... But seriously, isn't a cardinal rule that you only pitch an idea to ONE publication at a time? |
| redsocks | Posted – 5/10/2006 3:19:07 PM | show profile If it's a timely topic (as opposed to an evergreen), I think it's ok to pitch to more than one place at a time. I've done this, and just mentioned something to the effect of "due to the timeliness of this topic, I am pitching this idea to multiple publications." If it's an evergreen, I think it's best to do one at a time. Just my opinion. |
| ItsAMysteryNY | Posted – 5/12/2006 9:10:46 AM | show profile Well, the truth is I know there are some editors I may never hear from. When I've emailed editors , usually I'll get a fairly quick response and if I don't hear from them fairly quickly, I figure I may never hear from them. I had an article idea eons ago that I didn't follow up on and then it became "old news". Pitching article ideas is different from submitting fiction- in that case, simultaneous submissions is more of a no-no. |
