Scary Story Writers Group Forum Bootstrap your sales

While I find writing fiction far more fun than non-fiction, it's highly competitive, especially when your goal is to earn an income from your writing.  (More competitive still, if you're really not interested in publishing the same novel, 10 times in a row; we applaud John Grisham who broke free of the fetters.)  So when 250 agents rejected one of my novels solely on the basis of a one-page query, I decided to self-publish.  Alas, while the cost of self-publishing has gone down dramatically, it ain't free.  So I turned to magazine writing, first for the trades, and then (when I had a few credits under my belt) to the more popular mass-circulation magazines.

  The trick to making money writing for magazines ( :evil:  [color=#FF8040]wait a minute, what happened to the novel?[/color]  :lol:  [color=#00FF00]be patient; it's hard to remember you're out to drain the swamp, when you're up to your a*s in alligators[/color]) lies in volume and the best way to achieve volume is in selling articles that can be slanted several different ways.

   Most articles can; usually only the lead paragraphs need undergo revision.  And if interviews are necessary, then an interview with an accountant goes to CPA Monthly and an interview with a farmer enhances your article for Dirt.  The rest of the article remains more or less the same.

   More to come.