When starting out as a writer, it can be difficult to find places to be published. After figuring out what you want to write, you have to figure out which outlet is the best fit for your work. Then you have to navigate the daunting world of pitching.
As a freelancer, the standard goal is receiving 100 rejections a year. That means you pitch as often as CC Sabathia (baseball humor!). It also requires you to find evergreen and timely pitches. What if you have one that’s gold, and you want to make sure it gets picked up? Can you pitch the same story simultaneously to multiple outlets?
I reached out to a few editor friends of mine to get their perspective. They represent a cross-section of publishers in the business.
Kim Stravers, Managing Editor at Nowhere Magazine recognizes that writers are trying to get published and submit stories to a variety of outlets. “As active artists ourselves, we support writers in their craft and passion, and we not only accept simultaneous submissions, but encourage people to cast a wide net.” Strayers adds, that for her literary travel magazine, “If a piece is a great fit for Nowhere, but it finds a home elsewhere first, we often offer to run the piece as a reprint with attribution.”
Travis Hill, Managing Editor at The Golfer’s Journal, concurs.“Freelancers should be doing everything they can to get their work published — I expect that most stories pitched to me are getting pitched elsewhere.
But he does provide a caveat that each editor I talked with expressed, “I care most about the quality of the story; if it’s something that our readers would love, then I’ll get into the details of competing for it.”
Editors are busy people with a lot of work that they must efficiently tend to. They are at the nexus of story ideas, creativity of the written word, and the business of selling it to the audience (and advertisers!). Finding the best work for their audience is priority number one.
So when submitting, know the audience you want to write for. Thomas Dunne at Managing Editor at McKellar Magazine reflected on his freelancing days, “I never employed [the simultaneous submission] method. I always knew my outlets well enough to have a sense of where I’d get the best outcome.”
Jared Sullivan, Editor at Men’s Journal doesn’t think pitching to multiple outlets shows the writer knows the story or outlet well enough, “When a writer tells me that they’ve submitted a pitch to multiple outlets, I tend to assume that they haven’t carefully thought through why the idea is a perfect fit for Men’s Journal, and, more times than not, the idea doesn’t end up working out for us.”
He also says that simultaneous pitches put him in a difficult position, “It usually takes a few days of back-and-forth with my boss to get an idea green-lit, and if during that process, I learn that a story is no longer available because another magazine has accepted it, I have to go back to my boss and explain to him why I lost the story. Don’t put me in that situation.”
At this juncture, it’s important to distinguish between pitches and stories. Literary magazines like Nowhere except simultaneous story submissions, while national magazines prefer story pitches.
Check the submission guidelines for what publications will and will not accept, and then submit. If you believe in your story/pitch, then be patient but not passive.
If after you submit you haven’t heard anything, then follow up. Sullivan says, “it never, ever bothers me when a writer follows up with me about a pitch.”
Dunne adds, “If I had to nudge an editor for a response, I’d do so, but I’d proceed one place at a time.”
