How to Pitch a Story to a Major Magazine

Many writers don't feel they've hit the big time until they've placed a story in a big, national magazine their friends have heard of-titles like The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, or Cosmopolitan, to name a few. Cracking a national glossy can be hard, even for experienced writers, but you'll find the task a bit easier if you heed the following steps.

Instructions

1. Do your homework. Before you pitch any magazine (large or small) you should pick up a couple of recent issues, or browse through the magazine's online archives, to see what kinds of articles it publishes and of what length and style. If you do a thorough online search, you may also be able to determine if the magazine has published an article on a topic similar to yours within the last couple of years.

2. Start small. The New Yorker doesn't accept many 10,000-word essays from unknown writers (unless you've just landed a major book deal). If you don't have many published clips to your credit, you'll have to sneak in under the editorial radar by writing something small-a 200-word blurb about a local bar, say, or a quick profile of an up-and-coming performance artist.

3. Find the email address of the appropriate editor. With a little online digging, you can usually locate a magazine's masthead, as well as its email protocol (which will enable you to figure out an individual editor's email address even if it isn't published). A common mistake of newbies is to target their pitches to the editor-in-chief, which is useless: At most major magazines, story ideas filter up from associate or senior editors, who receive the bulk of the unsolicited pitches.

4. Be brief and professional. Editors at magazines like GQ or Vanity Fair dig through hundreds of emails every day, many of them from desperate writers. State your story idea in the subject line. ("Pitch: handbags made from endangered rhinos" is a much better header than "A story idea you'll just love!") If you're pitching a small story for the front of the magazine, there's no need to go into a vast amount of detail, but you should reference your published clips (if any) and tell the editor why you're the best person to write the piece.

5. Hurry up and wait. Although some people think you should follow up an email pitch with a phone call, this is a bad idea: most busy editors hate to be called, especially by someone they don't already know. If you don't hear back within a couple of weeks, feel free to email your pitch again, or move on to the next magazine. The key is to always have multiple pitches bouncing around inboxes at any given time, increasing the odds that some friendly editor will finally give you a break.