Paradigm Shift

Lately I’ve been rethinking my strategy a lot. Getting a story accepted to an anthology was a nice affirmation, and a suggestion that maybe I have a marketing problem, not a talent deficiency.

My marketing has so far been directed mostly toward newspapers, but looking back on it, I realize that I’m getting a much greater yield from the submissions I send to anthologies and magazines. It’s almost too small of a sample to be statistically significant, but I think it’s worth considering a switch to target magazines in the future. They pay more, and are generally read by a wider (though not necessarily larger) group of people. I think it’s time I stop, or at least cut back on knocking myself out to write finished articles that either disappear into the black hole of editorial indifference or get rejected immediately because the editor can’t afford freelance work anymore.

I still have a Mongolia overview piece that’s on the desk of an editor or two, but once another week or so has gone by with no word, I’m going to start by re-working that and seeing what magazines I can tempt. I’ll let you know how that goes.