Sell and Resell Your Magazine Articles

I bought this book specifically to get a better handle on repackaging my articles & the bigger ideas that spawned them so that I could get more reach without so much work. Not that I'm particularly lazy (for a writer), but there's only so many hours in the day, & the rent-clock's always ticking. I've been sporadically writing paid articles for 20 years, so I was looking for something that'd give me better reach & (hopefully) improved income. I'm a good interviewer, a great researcher, & a top-notch writer. This title grabbed me. Burgett's book, though -- despite the title -- reserves the discussion of repackaging for the last three chapters. That's 29 pages out of 227 that ACTUALLY DEAL with the topic promised in the title, in the subtitle, & in half the back-cover matter. So pardon me if I feel just the least little bit MISLED. What makes this more disappointing is that Burgett certainly has the credentials & experience to write a thorough book on re-selling articles!! I'd simply hoped for much more than a couple of tacked-on chapters. I almost took the book back to the store. After I cooled down, I decided to skim over it. Since I sometimes coach absolute beginners, I decided to keep it. Burgett's got a good, engaging style, even if it does tend to wander a little from the main thread, but these divergences are usually illustrative of a point he's trying to make, so can mostly be forgiven. Most writers I talk to want to be big-shot novelists -- a fraction want to write nonfiction, & even fewer are looking at writing articles, whether as a career or an adjunct. That's not only a shame, but shows that us writers aren't necessarily very bright: the market for articles is far bigger ( & often better paying) than for books, & the number of nonfiction books published & sold is at least triple that of fiction. Therefore, most writers have never learned how to analyze the market to get a feel for what is most likely to sell to editors. Burgett's book is a very good intro to this sort of "mercenary" slanting & shaping. It'll give you an idea of how to find the most likely outlet, how to submit properly, & even gives an idea of what you can use from other peoples' writing without getting into trouble, & what sorts of expenses can be deducted on your tax forms. Oh, yeah, & three good (if brief) chapters on reselling & "topic-spoking" your great ideas to reach a wide range of small audiences, rather than one big mass market. Three stars for messing around with me, but another star for a pretty good intro to magazine & newspaper freelancing.

After batting my head against the freelance writing wall for about 40 years, I had worked out reasonable methods for writing and selling magazine and newspaper articles. Or so I thought. Then I encountered an earlier incarnation of Gordon Burgett's SELL AND RESELL YOUR MAGAZINE ARTICLES. How I wished I had that book at the beginning of my career. It would have changed my professional life by extracting much of the pain from the trial-and-error approach. The present edition is an even better rendition of simply the mext marketing advice availabe to the freelancer. I recommend it especially to beginners.

For years I'd take a trip, take notes, take weeks writing travel articles, take months searching for a place to publish them, and take little pleasure or profit in the process. Without knowing it I was doing everything the hard way. Then I discovered an early edition of TRAVEL WRITER'S GUIDE, now a classic, by Gordon Burgett. What an epiphany. The third edition is even better. I recommend it to casual or serious travel writers or to the newcomer who wants to avoid a hit-or-miss travel-writing career.

This book clears up an otherwise murky process for most writers. And the querying information is first-rate since Burgett had already written the query book that most writers learned from.