14 Places to Pitch Your Writing that Pay Way Better than Indie Lit
Good Lord! (Shannan said 'holy shit' but we're better than that)
Welcome to the world of pitching article ideas and finding one-off writing gigs. It can feel like an unreliable neverending search with only the promise of a potential a reward — kind of like a lottery or spin the wheel. But! When you do get a pitch accepted or even if an editor shows interest, it can be pretty damn fun.
Also — money.1
Most places that accept pitches and help you develop full-fledged articles will pay a hell of a lot more than lit mags. One thing to remember however is that an accepted pitch doesn’t necessarily guarantee an accepted and fully paid-for article—most of the time, you have to write the piece and then they will decide if they go ahead with publishing it. It’s risky business at its finest, but it can be lucrative when done successfully.
Besides money, by writing for a variety of outlets, you not only have a diverse portfolio of your work but you also learn how to write different types of content for different audiences. These are skills and experiences that aren’t always learned in academic writing programs or when writing for and submitting to lit mags.
Some important things to note for pitching:
Be confident in your email. Introduce yourself but also focus on why YOU are the write person to tell this story.
Learn a bit about the publication. Editors love knowing that you actually care about the specific place you’re pitching to. Reference a few articles that you love on the site, or some that are comparable to the one you are pitching yourself.
Copyedit that pitch to death. Or life. No grammatical and spelling errors. It’s an easy way for editors to hit “delete”.
Keep your ideas fresh. Remember, the good thing about pitches is you generally do not need a full article ready to go. So, keep returning to your ideas and seeing how you can tweak them or make them more relevant based on what’s happening in that niche and/or the general world around us.
This is one of our paid subscriber lists this month. Our paid subscriptions are what give us the ability to gather all of this information and maintain our database. If you have the means, you can upgrade here.
Of course, we are always happy to comp those in need, just let us know.