Sell and Resell Your Magazine Articles

by Gordon Burgett and Burgett

Book Overview

Get more mileage from ideas and research, and make more money with less work through his unique, easy-to-learn system called "topic spoking" (turning one idea into many). This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898797993
• ISBN13: 9780898797992
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A misleading title

I bought this book specifically to get a better handle on repackaging my articles & the bigger ideas that spawned them so that I could get more reach without so much work. Not that I'm particularly lazy (for a writer), but there's only so many hours in the day, & the rent-clock's always ticking. I've been sporadically writing paid articles for 20 years, so I was looking for something that'd give me better reach & (hopefully) improved income. I'm a good interviewer, a great researcher, & a top-notch writer. This title grabbed me. Burgett's book, though -- despite the title -- reserves the discussion of repackaging for the last three chapters. That's 29 pages out of 227 that ACTUALLY DEAL with the topic promised in the title, in the subtitle, & in half the back-cover matter. So pardon me if I feel just the least little bit MISLED. What makes this more disappointing is that Burgett certainly has the credentials & experience to write a thorough book on re-selling articles!! I'd simply hoped for much more than a couple of tacked-on chapters. I almost took the book back to the store. After I cooled down, I decided to skim over it. Since I sometimes coach absolute beginners, I decided to keep it. Burgett's got a good, engaging style, even if it does tend to wander a little from the main thread, but these divergences are usually illustrative of a point he's trying to make, so can mostly be forgiven. Most writers I talk to want to be big-shot novelists -- a fraction want to write nonfiction, & even fewer are looking at writing articles, whether as a career or an adjunct. That's not only a shame, but shows that us writers aren't necessarily very bright: the market for articles is far bigger ( & often better paying) than for books, & the number of nonfiction books published & sold is at least triple that of fiction. Therefore, most writers have never learned how to analyze the market to get a feel for what is most likely to sell to editors. Burgett's book is a very good intro to this sort of "mercenary" slanting & shaping. It'll give you an idea of how to find the most likely outlet, how to submit properly, & even gives an idea of what you can use from other peoples' writing without getting into trouble, & what sorts of expenses can be deducted on your tax forms. Oh, yeah, & three good (if brief) chapters on reselling & "topic-spoking" your great ideas to reach a wide range of small audiences, rather than one big mass market. Three stars for messing around with me, but another star for a pretty good intro to magazine & newspaper freelancing.

SELL AND RESELL YOUR MAGAZINE ARTICLES

After batting my head against the freelance writing wall for about 40 years, I had worked out reasonable methods for writing and selling magazine and newspaper articles. Or so I thought. Then I encountered an earlier incarnation of Gordon Burgett's SELL AND RESELL YOUR MAGAZINE ARTICLES. How I wished I had that book at the beginning of my career. It would have changed my professional life by extracting much of the pain from the trial-and-error approach. The present edition is an even better rendition of simply the mext marketing advice availabe to the freelancer. I recommend it especially to beginners.

TRAVEL WRITER'S GUIDE

For years I'd take a trip, take notes, take weeks writing travel articles, take months searching for a place to publish them, and take little pleasure or profit in the process. Without knowing it I was doing everything the hard way. Then I discovered an early edition of TRAVEL WRITER'S GUIDE, now a classic, by Gordon Burgett. What an epiphany. The third edition is even better. I recommend it to casual or serious travel writers or to the newcomer who wants to avoid a hit-or-miss travel-writing career.

Sell & Resell Your Magazine Articles

This book clears up an otherwise murky process for most writers. And the querying information is first-rate since Burgett had already written the query book that most writers learned from.