by Linda Gilden @LindaGilden
As a fulltime freelance writer, people are often surprised when I say I love to write articles. “Articles?” they say. “How did you learn to do that? Why do you want to write articles?”
When I hear that I am amazed. I cut my writing teeth on articles. They were shorter therefore my research took less time. I could write on many different subjects and learn about things I never knew existed. In fact, when I started out the idea of writing an entire book was overwhelming because I had small children who were not nap lovers.
There are a few things to keep in mind as you start writing articles.
- 1. Just because articles have less words, you should not relax your writing style. Always write with excellence and present the editor the best writing you can.
- 2. If you are researching a book, you can write articles using your research as you are writing. This establishes you as an expert in your field and people will be looking for the release of your book.
- 3. Articles are a great way to create additional income from your material. There are thousands of publications and websites out there looking for material. Why not create a new stream of income from your research? For many people, the pay per word for articles exceeds the pay per word of a book.
- 4. When submitting a book proposal, one of the first things the publisher looks at is your platform. Are you established in your field? Do you have a large realm of influence? Does your passion support the subject of your book? Articles can help you build and sustain your platform.
- 5. Once you have a book published, articles are a great marketing tool. However, don’t write articles encouraging people to buy your book. Don’t summarize your entire book. Pick one story or issue from your book. Write an article about that. You don’t need to mention your book in the article. In your bio, mention you are the author of the soon to be released book, NAME of BOOK. Also include your website where they can go learn more about you and your book.
- 6. Writing articles will give you a solid way to build “clips” that will help you create your portfolio. Often publishers will ask for samples of your work and if you have written a lot of digital material, you can just send them a link, which will let them know what kind of websites you like to write for. This will give you a good sampling of your work, and the types of articles you can share with their readers as they explore whether or not your writing is a good fit for their publication.
Articles connect you to many different sources. As you build a following, you are building readership. Each publication has a different set of readers who also have friends. If each publication’s readership looks for your book in a bookstore, you will create quite a buzz.
Do you have some creative ideas you can share with our readers? Perhaps you have a good market to start with for articles. Or maybe you know of a new market that is searching for writers. Article writing is a great side hustle for writers and we need to be searching for new markets all the time.
TWEETABLE
I love writing articles, too! I began writing that way, loving the short within-reach deadlines, plus freedom to choose to write about anything that caught my fancy. But mostly I banked dozens of parenting articles, which were later compiled in books.
ReplyDeleteIt’s great that a writer can get paid (and often, well) for first rights for an article, then sell reprint rights to other magazines, use in a book, then later republish the same article again for book marketing.
Thanks for telling writers about this, and reminding me to do it again! It’s especially critical for me now, as I’m trying to branch out into new genres with different readers.