How to Parlay Your Consumer Magazine Experience into Trade Magazine Success

How to Parlay Your Consumer Magazine Experience into Trade Magazine Success I often find, at parties and at networking events, that even fellow journalists are rarely intrigued The truth, however, is that some of the best work I’ve done is for trade publications. Some of the coolest reporting stories I have to share have been made possible because these publications had the funds to send me to strange places to cover even stranger topics. The topics and the trade publications may not seem sexy, but the fatter paycheck, the friendly editors, and the challenge of discovering new and exciting fields certainly make them worth the effort of querying. If you haven’t had much luck with trade magazines so far, here are five quick ways you can parlay your consumer magazine or newspaper experience for the trades: 1. Take a consumer magazine or newspaper article you’ve written and identify the major trades in that story. For instance, I once wrote a piece for a national women’s magazine about women-only trains in India. I didn’t ever think it could be a trade story, so I was really surprised when an editor at â€Å"Trains† magazine paid me to reprint the story. If you look closely, you’ll find at least one major identifiable trade in every story that you write. Find a magazine that caters to that trade. Pitch it. 2. Most trade magazines are not dull, dry, and dreary, like the writing gurus would have you believe. Many of them feature articles that are written with just as much craft and care as those in consumer publications. I have won an award for a story I wrote for a trade that resonated with the judges because of its human aspect. Look through national and regional magazines and find ideas that could potentially work for trade magazines.   I often find new and breaking stories in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal that other freelancers haven’t thought to pitch to trade magazine editors. 3. Tie your ideas to current events. When the Commonwealth Games came to Delhi in 2010, most freelancers I knew were (unsuccessfully) pitching to major newspapers and magazines. I, instead offered stories to a construction magazine and an engineering news magazine and earned several thousand dollars and a cover story. 4. When you travel, don’t forget to target these magazines. The trades have several US-based writers they can hire regularly but their networks are limited abroad. If you’re traveling out of the country, e-mail some of the trade magazine editors (even if you don’t know them) and offer to bring back something. The best-case scenario is that editors might just hand you assignments of their own even before you’ve left and the worst case is that you may come back with some fascinating ideas and an already established relationship with an editor. 5. Everything is a trade. Think about the truth of that statement for a minute. No matter what you’re writing about, you can find a trade magazine angle to it. And once you start noticing that potential, you’ll never run out of markets for your work.