Just when we get done shaping up our prospective story pitches for magazines, Media Bistro tips us off to a webby contest that's looking for crazy magazine queries!Check it out:
"The Renegade Writers have a new contest: Write the query letter you'd love to write but would never send -- for example, a query for Dog Fancy about 10 ways cats rock out over dogs, or a query for Ms. magazine on how to make your floors sparkle. Make up sources, make up quotes. Make us laugh! We'll post our favorite three here on the blog and let you vote for your favorite. The winner will get a free, signed copy of The Renegade Writer's Query Letters That Rock when it's released in November."
As for your regular pitches, my invitation still stands for our readers: Send in prospective story pitches for magazines, and we will edit these together on the site, and send the revised product to the publication of your dreams.
If you need some help getting started, Pat Marcello has a good guide to pitching magazines, Jed Hartman gives an editor's POV on magazine pitches, and finally, Miss Snark points us to a site dedicated to rejected pitches.
Thanks for the link! I feel obliged to mention, though, that I was talking primarily about queries having to do with formatting issues. In general, most science fiction and fantasy magazines (including Strange Horizons, the magazine I edit for) would rather not receive "pitches" per se for fiction; in general, such magazines would rather that authors just submit the story rather than querying ahead of time about it. (Assuming the story matches the guidelines.) I know that for nonfiction and novels, it's often best to query first; I'm just talking about short stories.
Btw, your other two links in that last paragraph also appear to be about submitting complete stories rather than about pitches/queries per se.
Posted by: Jed | July 19, 2006 7:49 PM | Permalink to Comment