Meg White asks: How do I approach pitching as a freelancer?

Meg White is my favourite young Brisbane writer. She’s relocated to Sydney to write for Australian Penthouse in recent months, but that’s a minor formality in a nascent, yet distinguished career. Highlights? She wrote an amazing live review of Brisbane rock band Hits, launched a brilliant war against The Courier-Mail’s shoddy online music journalism [full series of posts here – read from bottom], and tore to shreds a decidedly average Butcher Birds live review I wrote for Mess+Noise last October.

Meg asked:

Hey Andrew,

I have a question for you, seeing as you’re the most successful freelancer I know of. When you contact publications, do you make a general enquiry about their freelancing capacity, do you pitch them stories or do you offer to sell them content you’ve already written?

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting involved in the freelance world because there’s no clause in my contract about writing for competing publications, and while I’ve been poking around and talking to people, these seem to be the three main approaches used. Just wondering which one works best for you.

I replied:

Hey Meg,

This is how I approach pitching new publications.

1. Find the name of the editor.
2. Try to find someone who knows her/him, and ask whether they’re able to give me a quick email intro to the editor.
3. If this approach succeeds and someone intros me, I jump into the email convo and ask whether the editor is open to freelance pitches.
4. Failing that acquaintance-intro tactic, I write a quick intro mentioning my bylines, link to my published work, and ask whether they are open to pitches.
5. From there, it’s usually a clear-cut ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

I find that just outright pitching stories, without any kind of preamble, looks (and feels, to me) rude. I try to picture the response of the editor on the other end. ‘Who is this person, and why do I care?’ *delete*

I have found that every editor who responds to my enquiry (whether intro’d through a third party or not) is upfront about their freelance budget. Most are happy to see story ideas – that is their job, or at least a big part of it, to commission stories – but some will state that it’s rare for freelance pitches to be approved. Which is part of the challenge, of course, and it’s nice to see an initial ‘no, we don’t take freelancers’ turn into a ‘well, that’s a good idea’ after a few weeks/months of persistence.

In response to the third approach you mentioned – I have never written content before it is commissioned. I do not intend to. I don’t like the idea of spending time on something when I’m unsure whether I’ll be paid for it. You know?

Thanks for the message. I kinda wish you didn’t smoke and drink so much, but then, your writing mightn’t be half as interesting if you didn’t put yourself in those situations.

More of Meg at Uberwensch.

More on the topic of pitching stories to newspapers and magazines in these excellent blog posts by freelance writer/editor Rachel Hills.

And more questions about freelance writing answered – eventually – if you ask me.

Post Category: Writing | Tags: advice, australian-penthouse, Brisbane, editors, freelancing, meg-white, Music writing, pitching, q-and-a, rachel-hills, the-courier-mail, Writing