RE: You don't always need a query.

---

• Subject: RE: [GWL]: You don't always need a query.
• From: Carol Deppe caroldeppe@yahoo.com>
• Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 17:41:24 +0000
• List-archive: <http://topica.com/lists/Gardenwriters/read>

BrookBarb@aol.com wrote:
> 
> This raises an interesting point. Selling by phone can be 
> effective----Friend Wife sells about 70% of her work that way. But, 
> having sat behind the editor's desk for as many years as I did, I can't 
> bring myself to do it. 
> 
> When I was editing, if you called to pitch a story, one of two things 
> would happen. Either you'd get a flat "no." Or, if the idea sounded 
> interesting, I'd tell you to send me paper on it. I would _never_ make a 
> snap decision like that. 

I think pitching by phone only works in some cases.  First, you have to 
be good at pitching that way.  Second, the editor usually has to already 
be working with you or already be reading your work elsewhere and 
already knowing he wants you.  Third, he has to be comfortable making 
instant decisions on the phone; not all are.  Finally, that editor has 
to have the authority to assign stories based upon just his own say-so.  
There is usually at most just one person on the mast-head who has that 
authority.  The other editors on the masthead cannot assign a story from 
a phone query.  Finally, at many magazines, no one has that authority; 
virtually all assignments are made by consensus.  In those cases, the 
best a phone call does is leads to a "Sounds interesting.  Send us a 
query."  
 
> I think something else beginners have to be aware of is that, in 
> general, there are no hard and fast "this is right, this is wrong" 
> rules. There are guidelines to what works. What works for me, after more 
> than two decades freelancing fulltime, may not work for somebody else.

Very true.  Every successful freelance writer develops his or her own 
repertoire of approaches that work.  And no two career paths are 
identical.


Carol Deppe
Author of BREED YOUR OWN VEGETABLE VARIETIES:  THE GARDENER'S AND 
FARMER'S GUIDE TO PLANT BREEDING AND SEED SAVING (See table of contents, 
excerpts, & reviews at http://www.chelseagreen.com.)  

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