Selling your Personal Essay

Selling your Personal Essay. Guide for Beginners

Publication date: 2018 Feb 14

Each work of art is seeking for an audience. Writing good essays in college and selling them to a magazine do have some significant distinctions. Do you feel that touching people’s hearts with words is your true calling you can make a living for in future? Then follow up the article to enclose all the nuances to become a selling essayist.

FIGURE OUT THE MARKET

There are hundreds of great magazines targeted on a wide range of topics: science fiction, politics, economics, society and entertainment. And each one has its one style – a recognizable and distinguished patterns of delivering information. For that reason your own essay has to fit some demand of the magazine as well.

After a deliberate market research outline the magazines you find the most appealing in terms of content and style. Then check the archives and read a couple of essays to identify what peculiarities are hidden: what is the length, is it a serious magazine or do they encourage some humor and irony?

Matching your essays to the demand of the magazine raises the chances to get published for sure.

SUBMITTING AN ESSAY TO AN EDITOR

The next important step is finding the submission information for the particular magazine. It’s worth reminding that you may apply for an online magazine as well. In any case, the information on both printed and online journals is usually easy to find on the Internet.

It’s a good idea to look for an email address of a particular column writer, let’s say popular science. If you don’t get lack to find the address, do not get disappointed. There’s always a phone number to consult the office and ask for help to reach the writer you are looking for.

Writing an email should get some of your attention as well. Do not forget to include the subject, so it won’t be regarded as spam.  Give some relevant information on yourself and explain the reason why the topic can get the writer interested. Be short – no more than 4 sentences.

DON’T GET DISCOURAGED

Do not think of a rejection as of a stone into your fence. There may be various reasons why the essay didn’t work out not meaning you have no talent for writing.

Remember the first tip in the article about the demand for articles? Well, that may be the case as well. The work is good enough but it may simply not fit in the usual content type. Stepping out of the regular boundaries is okey and is even encouraged but the magazines have a consistent audience that read it because they enjoy the form and style. There’s not much sense to include something people are not looking for to get.

Another reason that may come in the way is unprocessed material. Having a good idea is not enough. Probably, the research you’ve made is not deep enough or you simply lack some skills of attracting and catching reader’s attention because you lack some experience.

The more you write, the better your structure and formatting will get.

DEVELOPING AN EXCLUSIVE STYLE

Thinks that have some particular qualities always stick for long time in memory. Find your own style is essential: a unique, permanent formula will build a steady audience that appreciates it. If you are not sure which way to hit, read a lot. I mean a lot. Ray Bradbury came out of a poor family and had never got a chance to go to college, what didn’t prevent him from constant reading. He later would joke that by the time his peers finished college he finished the library. And it successfully paid back, don’t you think?

Through reading not only essay and magazines you underline literary devices and hooks that keep your attention focus; tricks that make you want the book to be everlasting.  It enriches your vocabulary as well. Books and journals can get you inspired and help develop an individual manner of writing.