Grammdæmonium: the biz

Showing posts with label the biz. Show all posts

If your tweet today mentions AIDS, the color of your text will be red, Kudos, Twitter, for marketing a campaign of awareness through colored fonts.

words to ponder

The writing community is full of lame-o people who want to be published in journals even though they don’t read the magazines that they want to be published in. These people deserve the rejections that they will undoubtedly receive, and no one should feel sorry for them when they cry about how they can’t get anyone to accept their stories.

The rest is here.

As the former editor of a bunch of magazines, I can attest. We'd get a lot of submissions, and about nine times out of 10 the reason we rejected them was because it was flagrantly clear that the authors had never read the magazine they were submitting to.

That's not to say we rejected them because they weren't customers (though being one helped), ... See Morerather they had no feel for the magazine or its type of content. Didn't matter how well it was written--some of the stuff we got from our regulars was only a few steps away from cocktail-napkin scrawl--it's just that they wanted to get published in Elle but wrote something for Maxim.

If you're still too lazy to read the magazine, at least do us editors a favor and check out the magazine's website--the writers' guidelines will give you an idea of what gets published.

My own tips for writing for submission are here.

more on print from trunk

The more I read of Penelope Trunk, the more I wish I read more of her.

An oldie but goodie is her advice on how to get your blog mentioned in print. My favorite:

1. Don't pitch yourself, pitch an idea.

Yes, yes, yes, yes yes.

Unless you're a celebrity (or someone moderately famous and beddable [or just attractive and beddable]), you're going to be disappointed over how few people care to hear you talking about yourself.

One of the first things I learned in this business is that the people who have the fun jobs--writing editorials, the lyrical pieces, the humor column (well, to an extent)--are the guys and gals who made their bones by first writing really good, really informative articles--and that holds true in a lot of print mediums, not just magazines.

Number 5--answer questions strategically (read: succinctly, then flesh out the details if they ask) is another gem--the only thing I would add to it is, if you're explaining something, do it in terms of an anecdote. Nothing especially long--just four or five sentences--if you keep it interesting, informative, and short (and in that order), it'll be tough not to mention you.

Anyway, the whole thing's worth a read and available here.

Anyone else have some advice?

how much are freelancers paid?

A friend recently asked me what the going rate is for a freelance article. Specifically, she said, "I have no idea how writers are paid or what I should look for."

And the more I thought about her question, the more my own sweeping ignorance became apparent. I've been in this business quite a while, but there's no way in Hell you could give me a summary of your article and whom you're submitting it to, and expect me to estimate how much they'd be willing to pay.

But I kinda feel like I should...

Anyway, it's a really good question, and while I can't give a ironclad answer, there are a few things I do know...

First off, there's not really a set rate that everyone in the publishing industry agrees upon; payment depends on the publication.

However, most publications (at least in my experience) base their payments on a few things:

1) Circulation, circulation, circulation. If the pub has a large circulation, you should expect more; a nationwide magazine obviously is going to pay more than a local newsletter. The more people read the magazine, the more money the magazine has to spend on writers. To give you an idea, one of our magazines has a subscribership of 30,000+; for a 2,000-word article, we'd pay around $400--that's a pretty good deal.

2) Length of article. Most articles don't run more than 2,500 words; if they do, they're probably a feature (though not all features have to be that long), which usually pays more. Low-end pay for a 2,500 article is $100--and that's very, very low end. I doubt they want more than 2,500, but if you're not getting at least $100 for it--regardless of their readership--I suggest you don't do it.

3) Freelance versus staff. Staff writers are generally paid more--with our magazines it's usually $50-$150 more per article, so it's nothing ungodly--conversely, the grand-daddy of all writing gigs--working for The New Yorker--netted author Dan Baum $90,000 a year for 30,000 words--I understand that's their standard.

I can't speak for everyone, but with our magazines, we pay more to staff because we can count on them to consistently deliver content. That's a big plus. In fact, about 90% of our content is provided by on-staff writers. That's not to say we don't take many freelance submissions, because we do, but you can't always rely on freelancers to meet deadlines as much as you can staff. That's also why a lot of magazines will publish articles by the same freelancers--even if they're not as good as your article--we've worked with them before, and we can trust them.

Likewise, some staffed writers are contracted to write exclusively for one publication. Obviously, if you don't want them writing for anyone else, you have to sweeten the pot--quite a bit. But exclusivity clauses are generally not the case with most publications--usually just big-name magazines. Newspapers, I don't know.

4) Nature of the article. Technical writers are usually paid more than generalized writers--so if you're doing research for your piece or writing from a specialized field (such as giving medical, financial, legal advice), you'll likely be paid more than the opinion columnist. That's not set in stone, and the difference may be negligible, but it's worth mentioning.

5) Print versus web-based. Print pays much more. At least for now. The reason is a lot of publishers are still tinkering around with sustainable Web-based income. With print magazines (hard-copies), you pretty much have two revenue streams: subscriptions and advertisements. We make our money from subscriptions--though that's not the case with a lot of magazines.

For one, a one-year subscription pretty much guarantees us a specific amount of money for a specific period of time. Knowing that makes it much, much easier for the accountants and gives us a concrete circulation number we can then present to a potential advertiser.

Other magazines, especially ones with outrageous circulations like People make their money from advertisements. They can do it because they have a circulation of around 3.75 million, their paper quality is low, they're a weekly periodical, and, last I checked, the going rate for a 4-color full-page ad is about a quarter million. That said, pick up any copy of People and about thirty Subscribe Now! fliers will fall out.

They're already making a killing on ads, why would they want you to subscribe? Probably for the same reasons I listed above, but I suspect they also don't want you reading anything else: You only have so much time in the day to sit down and read something, and when you're a subscriber you feel a bit obligated to use that time reading the thing you subscribed to. So I think it's a way of keeping the competition down. Granted I don't have any evidence for that, but it seems right.

Now, the income from Web-based publications is mostly (if not totally) based on ads. When the Web was young, a lot of publishers tried to go with a subscription model and very soon found themselves out of business. If you do a Google search for...anything, you'll see why: There's a lot more competition, and most of it you can get for free. Not only that, but a lot of the competition is from blogs, whose posts tend to be much shorter than a full- or even medium-length article.

That puts Web-based freelancers and publishers in a Catch-22--the publisher's not going to pay 100 or so dollars for a freelancer to write a few sentences, and the readers are less likely to spend time going over an entire article when they can get the main idea from a few short blog posts.

Long story short, publishers don't make much from Web-based articles, so don't expect to be paid much for them.

Do I really need to remind you?

Before you go around telling everyone you're a writer and joining every writers' group in Christendom and getting it and everything literate else printed on your business cards, please learn basic grammar, the author's guidelines for whatever publication you're submitting to, and remove the goddamn hyperlinks!

stripping (publishing)

Scanning through the style guide index, we noticed the entry "Stripping."

Did our professional just get a lot hotter?

You better believe it:

In the traditional method, individual page negatives are taped down onto a sheet big enough to hold all the negatives for the pages that will be printed from a single plate. The sheet, or flat is itself opaque but has cutouts the size of the page area on the negatives, into which the latter are stripped or imposed...this traditional manual stripping is increasingly being replaced by computerized stripping; in the direct-to-plate process, the computer positions all the images electronically and then projects them onto the plate.

The Three Deadly Sins of Dog Writing

1. Never use the term "boundless enthusiasm" to describe your dog or anything in the remotiest of connections to it.

"Boundless" is one of those words, like "salubrius," in that no one can ever use it without sounding like an a$$hole. Unfortunately, it actually sounds kind of good when it's used with "enthusiasm," so it's really, really tempting. But leave it alone --some words were meant to be lonely and bitter 35-year-old virgins living in the basement of their mother's boyfriend's house, scarfing down ho-hos and honestly believing that Babylon Five was a good show--and this is one of them. For all the times we've cringed at "boundless enthusiam" or "boundless zest for life" or "boundless elan," we wish that those authors would have a boundless stroke or a boundless pancreatic cancer. Actually that sounds pretty good. So does "boundless bosoms."

2. Writing something from the dog's point of view is neither clever nor cute nor original nor any of the things you think it is.

This is part of a vicious cycle: We don't publish things written from the dog's perspective in our dog magazines (or, as far as I know, any of our other magazines), so when a would-be freelancer flips through them, he's thinking, I know! I'll write something from the dog's perspective! They'll have to publish it because none of their authors ever thought of that!

They have, and we won't. Good writing's about substance, not gimmicks.

And for the record, your dog does not refer to you as its "Mommy"; your dog does not "wike" "widdle snugglies" (and in all likelihood would have its throat torn out in the wild and probably even Key West by all members of the pack for even thinking that), and above all, your dog -- for the love of GOD -- your dog DOES NOT WRITE POETRY. Nor does it find anything clever or witty in rhyming "snausages" with "sausages."

3. Unconditional love.

"Labs love you with that wonderful, unconditional love"; "It's that unconditional love that only a Gordon Setter can give"; "You may think it's incontinence, but it's just the unconditional love of a [insert breed]."

It's just a dopey term.

submitting an article for a specific journal

What do I do when I'm editing a journal article and I'm unsure of whether a word is spelled/hyphenated correctly?

First check out the journal's website to see if they have a style sheet or submission guidelines. If you can't find them online, send an e-mail to the assistant editor. You can e-mail the managing editor or the editor-in-chief, but they'll probably be busy planning or working on the next issue; you're more likely to get a faster response from an assistant editor.

Most periodicals have style sheets, but on the off chance they don't, scour a few back issues and see if you can find some of the words you're not sure how to spell. Once you have a few, you can make up your own style guide for reference. While you're at it, check out how they do citations, too. And at the very least the periodical should be able to tell you what style guide they follow, so consult that, too.

Finally, if you're fortunate enough to get published and you plan to submit future articles to the same periodical, it's a huge help to compare the version of the article you submitted with the published version. If nothing else, it gives you an idea of how/what they edit.

DM Gaffes

We do a lot of advertising at our company, particularly with direct mailings. Those nice glossy campaign flyers that've been filling up your mailbox the last few months? Those are direct mailings.

And usually ours are nice and glossy, too. With nice copy written and/or edited by yours truly and pretty pictures and so on.

We're on the lookout for new ways to make our DMs more appealing, which for us usually means writing nicer copy and using prettier pictures. Other DMs can be a bit nastier, such as the piece we received from Charter this morning that arrived in a threatening envelope marked with the even-more-threatening message Open Immediately and written in an ominous bold-condensed font. Was something wrong? Was a payment overdo? Worse, had someone hacked our account? We ripped it open. It was an ad.

The ad's certainly effective, because we were spooked into opening the envelope, but upon reading its contents and realizing it was an ad, we were pretty incensed, so we threw it in the trash.

Maybe the offer was really good, maybe it would have saved us a lot of money on our bills, but we didn't like being fooled, so we didn't bother to find out. And we imagine this is the reaction most people would have.

So this is a pretty bad ad campaign. Charter's use of intimidation is a clever way of getting the recipient to open the envelope, which is the biggie when you're running a DM campaign that uses envelopes (as opposed to flyers like the ones that've been filling up your mailbox the last few months), but it's a cheap trick, and once we understood that we were in no mood to read the ad.

But let's back up; we just wrote, "this is a pretty bad ad campaign"--that's a moral judgment; the ad itself is very effective. We also wrote, "we were in no mood to read the ad"--is anyone ever in the mood to read an ad?

It stuck in our mind; it doesn't matter how we felt when we saw it--we remembered it, that's what's important. In fact, it stuck with us so bad we dedicated an entire post to it. More to the point, we've already fished it from the trash.

Anyone out there have any stick-in-the-mind ads to share?

me and I

People who, like my wife and me, are in the second half of life...

Is it right as is, or should it be "like my wife and I"?

The rule is that if it's doing something (which usually makes it the subject), it's I; if something's done to it (which usually makes it an object), it's me.

My wife and me isn't the subject, so the wording seems right as it is. Then again, it's not really having anything done to it either, so we're not 100% comfortable leaving it.

me is correct if it's following a preposition, but we're not sure if like is a preposition. We generally think of prepositions as indicating locations--up, down, above, below, around, near, to, from, at--not similarities.

So we look it up. It is a preposition. We leave it as is.

How Shall I Begin?

When we were studying abroad, our assignment each week was to read about six million books and prepare an essay of similar length. One of the essays was on the treatment of justice in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Over the week's course, we read the play, we read law; we covered theories of retribution, we pored over the concept of being wronged. By the time we sat down to type the paper, we had everything we wanted to cover laid out, arguments arranged, and Smirnoff blue label uncorked.

And we just stared at the blank screen like a chimp slogged on mescal. How should we begin?

Intros are the toughest part of writing for many people--and we were often among them--but here's a tip to make them a bit easier:

Open with an anecdote.

That's about it.

It's pretty dull to just say what you're writing about, so tell your reader a story. People enjoy stories, even if they're (the stories, not the people) short, say a paragraph or two, so it's a great way to get them interested in your article. It also puts your main idea in context. Say you're writing an informative piece on using MS Word's autocorrect function. The kind of person who's going to benefit from reading your article is probably going to ignore it if you begin with a list of instructions and a lot of intimidating technical jargon--after all, that's what manuels are for. Plus, they may not think that what you have to say is especially important to them. But if you open with a quick recap of the time your co-worker wrote up a memo to Mr. Big Client and autocorrect changed his last name to "Bitchpatrick," you demonstrate your article's relevance--in plain English--and get your reader wanting more.

Plus, anecdotes are easy to write and do wonders toward upping your word count--in college that meant our papers were done faster; in the publication world, that means you get paid more.

Things Our Seventh Grade Teacher Was Right About

Essays, articles, screenplays, and most anything worth writing can generally be divided into three parts: Beginning, middle, and end.

No doubt you've heard that before are probably tired of hearing it because everyone says it. Well, everyone says it because no one realizes it. Simple as the three-part piece sounds, most folks would prefer to just sit their computer and start pounding out their thoughts.

That's fine if you're writing out a packing list, but if someone other than you is supposed to read it, it helps to constantly remind the reader what your piece is about. It may be stupefyingly clear to you, but yeah, of course it's clear to you, you're the one writing it, but it's not obvious to your reader--that's largely why they're reading your piece. Readers need to be guided through the dark forest of your mind, so your writing should provide plenty of markers to keep them on the path--or, as our seventh grade comp teacher would say

Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em,
Tell 'em what you tell 'em, and
Tell 'em what you told 'em

In the Beginning, give your reader a quick summary of what you plan to say, and maybe include an anecdote to indicate why they should read your piece.

In the Middle, elaborate on your points and offer proof to back them up. If you're writing a magazine or (especially) newspaper article, it's probably best to put the most convincing evidence/arguments first, the reason being that space in periodicals is generally less flexible than in a book, and oftentimes large portions end up getting cut.

The End is more like a reinforcement of the Beginning--recap and once more touch on why whatever it is you're writing about is relevant to the reader--while you're at it, feel free to speculate on the implications of your argument. The poor sap's probably stopped reading anyway, so go hog wild!

After that, read over your piece and make sure your points are clear and rife. After all, you don't want your reader to forget them, do you? Then identify your piece's Beginning, Middle, and End and ensure that each clearly performs its proper function.

Do that, and you're sure to be on your way to wherever!

Web Cites

Holy Smokes! We got some mail!

(Especially odd, since we don't give out our e-mail address)

From: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:02 AM
To: The Editorial We
Subject: Hypersensitive

Dear Editorial We,

What's the proper way to cite hyperlinks?

--Darren Hootey

From: The Editorial We
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 19:12 AM
To: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Subject:

We'll tell you what's not the proper way: Leaving the damn autoformat on. Before you do anything else, go to Word (which you should be using to write anything you plan to submit for publication—having to manually retype a printed manuscript is a pain, as is resaving a damn .rtf file as a .doc). Now go to Tools, then AutoCorrect Options, and click on AutoFormat As You Type. The box labeled Internet and Network Paths With Hyperlinks should have a check in it, click on the check and it should disappear. Now click OK.

It's an unbelievable pain to remove hyperlinks from everything that begins with http://www...and, outside of an e-mail or personal blog entry (which would unlikely require proper citations), having the link included in the text doesn't really serve any purpose or make it any easier for the editor or the designer—regardless of whether the piece is for print or digital publication.

From: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:38 AM
To: The Editorial We
Subject: Re: Hypersensitive

That really doesn't help me at all.

--DH

From: The Editorial We
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 10:49 AM
To: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Subject:

Okay then, let's look at the link. Chances are, it'll look something like this: http://www.hyperlink.com. Nice and simple, easy to type and remember, all-around good. Only thing is, it doesn't really stand out, does it? Well, we take that back: It does stand out, but mainly because it has those hideous and eye-gouging forward slashes. Let's axe 'em.

Now we have www.hyperlink.com. That looks much less convoluted, but it still doesn't really stand out, so let's italicize it: www.hyperlink.com. There we go, now we know we're dealing with a hyperlink.

Nevertheless, sometimes it's appropriate to leave the http:// -- grotesque as it looks – in. For example, say we have a link http://hyperlink.com/page1.php/ -- you'll notice that there's no www. And while most links will have a www (and if they don't, you probably shouldn't be citing them anyway [more on that in a moment]), some won't, and the easiest way to do that is to just write out the whole damn link.

From: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 10:51 AM
To: The Editorial We
Subject: Re: Re: Hypersensitive

Why shouldn't I be citing links that don't have www in them?

From: The Editorial We
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 11:09 AM
To: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Subject:

Piss off; we're getting to that.

Most links that don't have www in them are going to be specific pages on the site and are going to have equally specific and labyrinthinely mind-blowing addresses, such as http://hyperlink.com/page1/labyrinthine%20link%20address/horrendously%20confusing/M1N0T4UR.php

If you saw such a magnificent beast of a link in print, you'd throw down the magazine and make like Hell for the exit; there'd be no damn way you'd try typing that vicious bastard into your browser. Your reader would probably react the same way.

So what do you do?

If it's for print, just write the link to the site's homepage. Say it's www.hyperlink.com. Now, chances are the site'll have a search function, so tell your reader to go to the search bar on the home page and type in whatever keywords will lead him to the page http://hyperlink.com/page1/labyrinthine%20link%20address/horrendously%20confusing/M1N0T4UR.php

Sometimes just walking someone through it is better than dumping a trauma-inducing, flesh-eating monster of link on them. Plus it uses more words, so you'll get paid more for the piece.

If it's for digital media, say a Web page, you should be sterilized for posting such a link. Digital gives us the luxury of not having to worry about how long the damn link is because we can insert it into any word we want. You could have something 10 gazillion characters long, and it could all be contained in the simple instruction, "Click here."

From: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 11:11 AM
To: The Editorial We
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Hypersensitive

Anything else?

From: The Editorial We
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 11:20 AM
To: Darren Hootey [mailto: xxxxxxxxx]
Subject:

Before anything else, you should first consult the style guide of your recipient. We admit that our advice is based on personal preference, but it’s a preference borne of many hours’ deep contemplation—mostly when we should have been working—so if you have a problem with it, bite us.

proper use of italics

Underlining words and phrases for emphasis:

Originally this was done to indicate italics to the typesetter.

(It's a bit difficult to handwrite italics.)

Now that we have computers and Ctrl + I, underlining should be dead as Latin.

But it's not. People do it ALL THE TIME.

And it looks dreadful.

So don't do it.

Got it?

Exchanges with Our Boss

From: We
To: Our Boss

We just discovered that the gerund of “benefit” is spelled “benefiting.”
One t.
That’s insane.

From: Our Boss

To: We

You didn't know that already?
Typical English major...
What about committment/commitment/committed/commited

From: We
To: Our Boss

What about tacking on a question mark to that interrogative?
He shoots, he scores!

From: Our Boss
To: We

He shoots, he scores!...
... and doesn't answer!

From: We
To: Our Boss

We’d say “commitment” makes sense because you don’t pronounce it as “commit” + “tment” or “commit-teh-ment.” Whereas you do say “commit-ted,” hence the extra t.

From: Our Boss
To: We
You just looked them up, didn't you?

From: We
To: Our Boss

No, a while ago. Every time We start talkin’ about odd spellings you always gotta pull out “commitment” and “committed”—that’s your one, that’s your one. Commitment, committed. Commitment, committed. Let me tell you something once and for all: Commitment, committed was good, but compared to “benefiting,” commitment, committed ain't shit.

From: Our Boss
To: We

Accommodate...accomodate...recommend...reccommend..occasionally...ocassionally... F&&%#$*&!

Tales from the Biz

Want to submit something for publication (well, paid publication)? Take heed of these tips.

1. Read the publication. Like every Number-One reason, this should be fundamentally obvious. Unfortunately, writers are fundamentally oblivious. And whiny. And they always want to be “paid.”

But seriously: Know for whom you are writing. Know that most of them would crack a bar stool over your delicate tête for writing that. Your diction may be impeccable, but will your readers be able to understand you? Is your topic consistent with the publication’s content? If you want to get published in Elle, don’t submit your piece to Maxim

2. Check out the Web site. Most publications will have all the answers you seek on their Web sites, usually under the Submission Guidelines. Go there. Explore. Read the publication. Don’t waste Editors’ time with questions you could have looked up yourself.

3. Don’t ask for ideas. If you’re querying a publication for the first time and you ask for ideas, you’ll be lucky to hear back at all. Why? Because Editors are not here to advance your career; we’re here to manage a publication. When someone submits a query to the effect of:

Dear Editor: I’d like to write for your magazine, and was wondering if you had any ideas for what I could write on.

we read that as

Dear Blumblepuss: You don’t know me and, save for this query (in which I improperly used a comma, ended my only sentence with a preposition, and asked a question altogether different than what I intended and which I should be so fortunate not to have answered with ‘Try a desk’), have never read anything I’ve written, but in my mind I’m a brilliant writer who deserves a chance (and, of course, my standard fee) and you should be so fortunate to publish me and by the way, I never read your magazine (much less subscribe to it), so cough up some great ideas so I can write them up and submit to a better publication.

We’re paying you for your ideas; if we had the idea we'd save some money and write it ourselves.

4. Include pictures. Well, good pictures, which is to say, digital pictures, which is to say large digital pictures. Regular photos, prints, x-rays, etc. take time, which is to say money, to scan, so most publishers will prefer digital images, which is to say digital images larger than 3k, you idiot.

5. Don’t ask if you can trust Us. We’re still amazed at how hesitant freelancers are to an on-spec request.

Terrified Freelancer: How do I know you won’t steal my article if I send it to you before you buy it?

Us: You don’t….MWAHAHAHAHAHA! [Presses button, sending Terrified Freelancer to the Rancor pit.]

For starters, how do you expect us to answer that?

In general: No, you should never trust an Editor: Our hearts are frosty-cold, our fists clench tightly our money, and we feed on kittens and tender Grandmothers. But we’re also terrified of copyright laws as well as tarnish on our reputations. If you’re still worried, read the publication—if they’ve had the same writers working for them since before the Hoover Administration, chances are they’re marginally honest.

Grammdæmonium

words to ponder

more on print from trunk

how much are freelancers paid?

Do I really need to remind you?

stripping (publishing)

The Three Deadly Sins of Dog Writing

submitting an article for a specific journal

DM Gaffes

me and I

How Shall I Begin?

Things Our Seventh Grade Teacher Was Right About

Web Cites

proper use of italics

Exchanges with Our Boss

Tales from the Biz

First time here?

About Me

Twitter Updates

Twitter Updates

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