Customer Reviews

The Magazine Writer's Handbook

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This handbook is a must have for anyone who wants to break in to freelance magazine writing on a professional level. It provides up-to-date information, instructional guidance and concrete examples. Peterson and Turkel make sure it stands out from the crowd with the chapter organization and use of real examples.

Parts I - III all deal with marketing and sales. As a freelancer, I have found that you can write great material but if you don't have the motivation to put it in front of the right editor, you will never sell your work. The authors make that clear up front and emphasize to their reader that developing strength in those areas is a necessity.

Each point that the authors make in this book is illustrated and supported by an example. They use their own published articles, the pages of popular magazines and query letters to demonstrate the topics. From a readers perspective, this is a great help. As I went through the book there were some areas I felt comfortable with, I only skimmed those examples but when a topic was new to me, I could carefully read through the sample and get a clearer picture of the expectations of editors.

The information provided in this book is extremely valuable and the format makes it very understandable. After reading this guide, you will have the skills to become a professional.

Since I've been able to do a little writing online and in print, I thought this would be helpful to learn more about the process. This title compiles easily compiled knowledge from your local library or from countless web sites or blogs. Save yourself the money and just print out useful information from a writing website, where the information is more up to date and free.

In fact, be cautious in choosing titles that claim to help you write better or market your material better. Many of them are just filled with basic information and are promoted by companies that want you to buy their products, not actually help your career. Their promotional ads push more and more titles, but after awhile they all appear the same. Get one or two resources (Strunk & White's Elements of Style or the Chicago Manual of Style) and then go online for the rest.