You don’t like to be rejected—no one does. But it’s part of being a freelance writer. And when you send more than five queries a week, rejection happens. A lot.
Turns out there are five common reasons that editors are passing on your ideas. Head these off at the pass, and you’re likely to see more yeses than nos.
You idea isn’t fresh.
We freelancers cringe when we hear this F-word. The demand for fresh ideas is unavoidable—so pitching an article about a tried-and-true topic or trend is going to get a “no thank you.”
But you can avoid the “not fresh enough” brush off. Work to come up with clever angles to hot topics. For example, when urban farming became big, I noticed that more and more farm animals were being dumped at animal shelters, when homesteaders got tired of raising small livestock. That story sold.
It’s not the right fit for the magazine.
You’d never pitch a best-burger-joint story to Vegetarian Times, right? There are even more subtle instances when an idea isn’t a good fit. For example, don’t pitch a travel idea to an in-flight magazine that the airline doesn’t service.
I used to write a regular feature for Entrepreneur about startups founded by college students. About 95 percent of the PR pitches I received were about businesses started by middle-aged men, not college students. Delete, delete, delete.
Avoid these gaffes by studying a magazine closely.
The topic was covered in a recent issue.
In a burst of enthusiasm for an idea, you send a pitch to a magazine without doing due diligence. It happens to all of us. One of the most memorable rejections I received was from an editor who said, “We love this idea. We loved it so much that we made it the cover story in our current issue. You might want to pick it up and read it.” Ouch.
Unless you have an eidetic memory, you can’t be expected to memorize every article that every magazine has ever published. But a few moments on a magazine’s website or flipping through the most recent issues at the library can save you some embarrassment and time.
It’s not a good idea.
Sometimes an idea just isn’t up to snuff. Your pitch might be too broad, without a well-defined angle. Or it may be too ho-hum to take up valuable space in the magazine.
In my writing classes and mentoring sessions, I’ve discovered that we’re often too close to ideas to be impartial about them. If you’re not sure whether your idea has merit, ask for feedback from a writing group, goal buddy, writing instructor or coach. Fresh eyes can help you tweak—or toss—an idea that lacks polish.
The query is poorly written.
If the pitch is riddled with misplaced commas, passive voice and mixed metaphors, an editor might think, “How much worse would an entire article be?”
Your query is your introduction to an editor. It should be (pardon the pun) pitch perfect. Write, rewrite, revise and revise even more before hitting send. Minimize your chances of rejection with good writing and editing.