Writing for Profit excerpt by Pamela Rice Hahn

Books available from
Pamela Rice Hahn:

My agent, Sheree Bykofsky, has a couple of books that you may find helpful in your writing career:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles

This book is now out of print.

Book excerpt:

Confirming Assignments
by Pamela Rice Hahn

One of my book doctoring clients got a call from an editor accepting that client's proposal for a home decorating article. The writer understandably was excited. This was to be her first feature article in a major national magazine. She'd come up with a different approach to what could be considered a general topic. She'd worked hard on the query, and with my help, she'd refined it through several revisions. The acceptance was conditional, however; rather than run the article in the general magazine, the editor had explained she wished to feature it in a special holiday edition. The writer's deadline was to be in July.

When I received the first draft of the article ready for my critiques, I questioned the author about the "generic" slant. After all, the article was to appear in a Holidays Issue. I told the author that I'd only ever seen a Holiday Season magazine from this publication, and that special issue focused on Christmas and Hanukkah. The author argued that with a July deadline, the magazine would be on the stands in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving; she disagreed with the "logic" that such "special issues" are sold a few months prior to the holidays to allow the readers time to complete craft projects and other gift ideas included in the issue. When I suggested that the author should contact the editor to confirm this, the author insisted that because that wasn't how her query was written, that was not how she was going to write the article. She insisted that "if the editor wanted it changed, she should have been more specific." Any questions to the author about whether or not she'd sent this editor any subsequent correspondence confirming the assignment was met with an "it shouldn't have to work that way" reply.

Sure enough, once the author submitted her final version to that editor, she received a call advising her that because she hadn't written the article as assigned, the editor could not use the entire article. However, rather than pay a kill fee, the editor explained the magazine would run the Christmas portion only as a filler.

Not taking the time to make a follow-up phone call or to draft an assignment confirmation letter cost the author more than $1500.00; she received $500.00 for a filler culled from an article that would have paid her more than two thousand. A few minutes spent confirming her assignment would have resulted in an article written as the editor needed for that issue, and a full paycheck.