Copyright 2010 Sean MacEntee/Creative Commons

It’s been 18 months since I started working as a freelance editor of InsideEdge, a startup online finance website created by American Express and Federated Media. So far, I’ve edited close to 120 features and have a couple dozen more in some state of being assigned, reviewed or packaged for publication.

The process has put me on the receiving end of a lot of queries, which has given me a new appreciation for what editors go through when it comes to that part of the story process.

Based on my experience, I believe more than ever that writing the perfect query is difficult. Not impossible, but definitely hard. A query can be great on many levels, fantastic even, and yet be rejected for failing to meet one or two essential criteria.

Here are some of the typical reasons why freelance queries fail, and what a writer can do to get things right.

1. The timing’s off. Pitch a tax story on April 15 or a Christmas story on Dec. 24 and chances are they’ll be rejected. That’s pretty obvious. But because publications have different publishing cycles, it can be hard to know how far in advance to pitch a tax or Christmas story. Women’s magazines are well-known for working on issues six or more months in advance. A regional business magazine I know works on features three to four months out. Some publications that publish every day or week consider story ideas at a story budget meeting that’s held at the same time each day or week. Finding out a publication’s publishing cycle and pitching accordingly can take the guesswork out of knowing when to pitch. Or look for the yearly editorial calendars some publications post on their websites to gauge when to send in pitches for a particular issue or month. If a publication doesn’t have one posted call and ask.

2. The subject isn’t something the publication covers. A pitch could be on a timely, popular subject and you could have sources lined up and ready to talk. But if it’s about a topic that falls outside of a publication’s editorial mission, it’s going to get rejected. That’s the main reason one of the most common pieces of advice editors give is – read the publication. The more you read the better feel you’ll have for what a publication covers. Many publications have posted their mission statement somewhere online – inside their media kit is a common place – spelling out the subjects they cover. Read it.

3. The subject isn’t relevant to the publication’s readers. As with No. 2, some queries are great, just not relevant to the publication’s readers. This happens a lot at magazines that serve specific niches – the editor of a magazine for parents of children up to 2 years old aren’t going to accept a pitch for a story about sending your sweetie off to kindergarten. Likewise, the editor of a website covering Fortune 1000 companies isn’t going to want a pitch for a story on how to get financing for your start-up business. Again, a great place to find out how a publication defines its readership is its media kit. Better yet, look online or call and ask for writer’s guidelines, which editors sometimes put together to take some of the guesswork out of pitching.

4. The publication recently ran  something similar or has something in the works. You could pitch a story that’s a perfect fit – a great angle on a subject the publication covers. But if the publication already has a story in the works or just run or assigned something, chances are they won’t buy it. As a writer, these kinds of rejections are hardest for me because it means I was right on – but another writer beat me to it. When this happens, try querying a publication’s competitors (if those publications haven’t already run something similar) – though that’s tricky because it could mess up whatever relationship you have with the first publication. Or use the opportunity to ask the editor if there are subjects that haven’t been covered as much he or she would like to see pitches for.

5. The query is too short. Some queries have so little detail they’re more of an idea than a pitch. Sometimes that’s OK. If I work with a writer enough to know they understand the publication, I’m OK getting pitched in a line or two. That way if I’m not interested I can say “No thanks” right away and neither the writer nor I have spent much time on the process. If it’s something I’m interested in, I’ll ask them to send me a more fleshed-out pitch. But if you’re querying a publication you’ve never worked with before, the editor will use your pitch, along with your resume and clips, to go on to decide whether you’ve got what it takes to deliver the story. So make it count. On the other hand….

6. The query’s too long. ….don’t write a query that’s as long as the piece. Some editors  like – even encourage – lengthy pitches. I’m not one of them. A writer should be able to state the subject of the query, why now’s a good time to write about it, who they’d interview, what other research or reporting they’d do and why they’re the one to do it and contain all of that information within the space of one computer screen, maybe slightly longer if they’re pitching a lengthy feature. Queries that go on too long are a good indication – at least to me – that a writer can’t be concise, can’t summarize, can’t distinguish between important details and details that could be left out, all important storytelling skills. As the old saying goes, when it doubt leave it out.

What query tactics do you swear by?

Not long after, Cettina met up with two other freelancer friends at a writer’s conference who’d had similar thoughts. Coincidentally, all three wrote for parenting magazines. What, they asked each other, if we pooled our resources and came up with a money-making venture we could do together.

With that, the idea for Cash in on Your Kids: Parenting Queries that Worked was born. The e-book, written by Cettina, Kris Bordessa and Jeannette Moninger is a collection of 16 queries that landed the three assignments with national magazines such as Real Simple, Parenting, Parents and Redbook.

In addition to queries, the 61-page e-book includes information on getting started in freelancing and other tricks of the trade aspiring parenting writers might find helpful.

Currently, the three writers are busy marketing the $14.95 e-book through a website and other channels.

WordCount talked to Cettina, a long-time freelancer based in Portland, Oregon, recently about how the e-book came together, working with co-authors and more. Read on:

How did you connect with your partners on this project?
We were in a query challenge group where we’d email each other every day, then we created a Google group and then we met in person at the Freelance Success conference last October in Florida. We hit it off in person.

How did you come up with the idea of re-selling your queries?
I’ve downloaded query packets from places like Renegade Writer, which shares a packet of actual queries they sold to publications. Six or seven years ago, I bought a packet of queries from an editor who had compiled queries from five or six nationally known magazine writers. That was a way to get inside  information on how much detail they put into their queries, how they’d gotten theirs ideas, and how much money they made. I thought, why can’t I do this for parenting markets? I could pitch queries to newbie mom writers, woman who were mommy bloggers and thinking about moving into querying magazines.

What made you decide to do this as an e-book through Lulu.com, the print on demand publisher?
Kris had done some e-books and she said it sounded like something we could do as an e-book. She’s worked with Lulu.com. It’s a great low-risk way to try your idea. You don’t pay anything to have the product up, only when you sell, they take a percentage.

How did you decide which queries to include?
We pulled our queries together, shared the ones we thought were best and made sure we have diversity of markets and topics. We included queries for short and long assignments, and then came up with the queries we wanted to offer. We decided we needed to add some introductory information on how to get started as a freelance parenting writer and what a query is.

What information is included?
The e-book has 16 queries that netted us up to $3,600 a piece, some were shorts where we maybe made $300 and a lot were features. We shared what we made on each, which is part of the draw for people, understanding that they could make decent money at this. We shared a little about how we came up with the idea, changes we made and how we found sources.

How long did it take?
It took a few months to put the whole thing together, learn about working together and how to create a .pdf. We hired a graphic designer to do a cover. It’s been out 6 or 8 weeks and now we’re figuring out how to market it. Just by word of mouth we’ve sold copies, less than 100, but we’re just getting started and haven’t done intensive marketing yet.

What are your marketing plans?
We started with simple stuff, like the website. We’ve added our e-book reference to our email signatures, which seems like a small thing but we’ve gotten a few people who’ve noticed it from that. We’re mentioning it on writer’s websites and mommy blog websites. We’re doing a mass mailing of free tips from our book to regional parenting publications. I’ve also been playing around with doing a Google AdWords campaign. One thing I learned from a friend in the computer business, if you can get on Craigslist it boosts your Google search results, so we put the e-book on in a couple markets to see what would happen. But Craigslist people don’t like e-books, they don’t feel they’re tangible products, so we got complaints that it wasn’t the right place. And it was hard to place. I was putting it under babies and kids items for sale, but that wasn’t an exact fit. We’re just learning about marketing, none of us have done direct marketing before.

How do you split the proceeds on Lulu.com?
One person is the banker and they pay expenses, like the graphic designer, and distribute money to the others. So far that’s worked out fine. It’s not like we’re making money yet, but we’re figuring out how we’ll do it on an ongoing basis. We hope it will be successful so you have to figure out how it’ll be managed. Probably we’ll do a partnership agreement and the partnership will get the proceeds and then we’ll do a distribution once a quarter.

What’s the investment been on your part?
Time only. The queries were written. It took a little time to find them because some of them were a couple years old. Creating the intro and the materials took time. But we were re-purposing what we had, so it was worth a try.

As a result, I’ve got a couple works in progress that now need new homes and openings on my calendar that I need to fill. I also need to find some new markets to replace the one that’s dried up.

What that all boils down to is writing more queries.

All queries are not equal. The queries I send to a few editors I write for on a regular basis are short, either because those editors know me and know my work, or because the stories I’m pitching aren’t that long and involved. Queries I send to editors at publications and Websites I haven’t written for before need to be longer because I want to explain more about how I’d tackle the story and why I’m the perfect writer to do it.

Writing short queries – I recently heard some writers refer to them as “queries lite” – is easier for me because they’re very similar to the story budget lines I did as a newspaper reporter. Longer queries are harder because they involve doing more research and in some cases writing them as you would the beginning of a story to show an editor your writing chops.

Although I’ve been in the business for a while, when it comes to writing queries I’m still unsure of myself. So I’m looking for resources to learn more about them. Here are a few I’ve come up with:

The Renegade Writer’s Query Letter’s That Rock – Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell followed up their book on freelance writing with this one, which includes real examples of queries “that earned great assignments from major magazines.” Burrell also teaches a three-week online course on developing story ideas; the next one starts on Monday, Nov. 3.

Write knock dead query letters – This February 2008 article from Writer’s Digest is chock full of suggestions, such as write a query in the style of the publication you’re pitching and include a couple clips that demonstrate you can write about the topic you’re pitching.

Pitching Practice: Write Six Queries in Six Weeks – Another online class, this one taught by freelance writer Christina Katz, author of Get Known Before the Book Deal and the popular Writer Mama blog.

What are your go-to resources for learning more about queries?