How to locate more markets.
How to locate more markets By David Geer
I don't own a copy of Writer's Market (the book published by
Writers Digest Books). No offense, but I already have access to
more markets than the book provides without the additional cost.
Here's how.
By using the right combination of keywords and search techniques
you can find new markets to query all day long. Here are some
examples of useful searches.
Go to http://www.google.com/. Type in exactly the following,
quotes included:
"editorial calendar"
How many hits? 402,000! They won't all be unique, nor all on
target, but you will find enough markets to make this method a
mainstay in your stable of ways to find work. So what did we
find? Variety.com, Internet World, Post Magazine, Network
Computing, Communications Engineering & Design, Crains New York
Business, The Journal of Commerce, New Architect Magazine,
Transform Magazine and many, many others. A seemingly countless
array of publications - substantially more and most are more
current than those found in Writer's Market.
Want to narrow your search? Go to the link at the bottom of the
search results page that says "Search within results". Open that
link and, in the search field at the top, type a representative
keyword for the topic area you write for. Remember, it must be a
word that will show up on the sites of publications that you
would write for. In my case, a good word might be "technical"
(no quotes). What do I get? Communications Convergence, MacTech,
Technical Support magazine, IEEE Software, Design News, Rural
Electric Magazine, JavaWorld and, again, many, many other
publications. How many? Well there are 41,100 hits, and I'd bet
you that at least 15%, or 6,165 hits, are unique, viable writer
markets.
You can run searches for your keywords within the larger body of
results or you can begin with a different conglomerate of
findings by starting your search with:
"writer's guidelines" "writers' guidelines" "authors'
guidelines" "contributor guidelines" "contributor's guidelines"
Leave out the quotes when searching for single words and use
them when searching for phrases. Always use lower case as this
will search for both small and large case appearances. You can
try other search engines too, though Google is my current
recommendation.
Is Writer's Market the only book of its kind?
Oh, no my friends, it is only one of many. And though it may be
among the cheapest, it is far from the most exhaustive.
So what else is there? Consider The Gebbie Press All-In-One
Media Directory. The paper version (also available on CD) has
over 22,000 listings of print and broadcast media. It's
currently available [at the time of this writing] for $105.00
prepaid. That may sound steep, but figure this. If you're a
working writer looking for more work, wouldn't even just one or
two additional decent gigs pay for the resource and still leave
you with a profit?
Are there other books like it? Sure. The Gale Directory of
Publications and Broadcast Media. That, however, is a much more
expensive proposition.
BTW, I told the editor I was going to cover all this "and more",
so, in keeping with my promise, here's a real topper! Surf to
Web sites like http://barnesandnoble.enews.com/ [link no longer
available], which lists the over 100,000 different publications
that it sells subscriptions to by name. Find the publications
you are looking for, then just look for the magazine's Web site
using Google. Now, find their writer guidelines or editorial
calendar directly on their site and start querying!