Nuts & Bolts
Public Relations

Marketing Strategies For Writers

By Jennifer Cruse

According to Mike Sedge, the author of Marketing Strategies For Writers, many freelance writers do not succeed because they fail to create a marketing plan. For success, he writes, we must divide our time evenly between writing and marketing. This is unwelcome news for many writers (like me) who consider marketing drudgery. But to my surprise, Sedge has made marketing sound like fun.

Sedge compares the marketing strategies needed to succeed in today’s competitive markets to military maneuvers, and he calls his breed of marketing “guerrilla marketing.” He writes, “Each time you set out to conquer a new client, obtain an assignment or sell a proposal or a completed work, you are going into battle.” He warns us, however, that this type of marketing is aggressive, requiring total confidence and a willingness to break rules.

He also warns us in the introduction that not everyone will agree with his methods. His strategies have included sending e-mail queries when the guidelines said not to send e-mail queries, getting his wife to sign a letter as his literary agent and producing one e-mail query and sending it to as many as 50 editors simultaneously.

Using examples from his own career, he explains how the guerrilla marketer operates as a business, uncovers the needs of editors, uses one success to generate another (and another and another) and negotiates his or her own rights.

Operating as a business
Sedge writes, “It is not enough, in today’s competitive marketplace, to simply be a freelance writer. You must also be the chief executive officer, the sales and marketing manager, the accountant and the secretary. But most important, you must think like a business rather than an individual.”

He tells us how he transformed his freelance operation into an editorial service, which he named Strawberry Media Inc. When asked what he does, he replies, “I run an international editorial services agency.” Since he lists two business addresses, his own in Italy and that of his parents in Tennessee, he can make this impressive-sounding claim.

Sedge writes that establishing yourself as a business should be a top priority in your marketing plan, and he gives advice on the different types of business structures and where to go for more information. For example, if you wish to set up a sole proprietorship in your state you can get information by calling or visiting your local chamber of commerce or better business bureau. If you’d like to incorporate, you can contact Delaware Registry, Ltd. at (800) 321-2677 or The Company, Corp. at (800) 542-2677. For additional small business information and answers to questions, Sedge recommends the Web sites www.bizoffice.com and www.smartbiz.com.

Uncovering editors’ needs
Sedge writes that he was once called a “brown-nose” in school because of his talent for filling the needs of teachers. For instance, he discovered that one teacher needed someone to carry her bags and listen to her stories; he filled that need and was rewarded when grades came out.

This quality of uncovering a need has served him well in the marketing world, where it is one of the basic principles. Sedge advises that we “use guerrilla marketing to uncover the needs of editors who will be eager to receive our ideas, rather than those seeking only to stop the uncontrollable surge of submissions from writers.” He writes that the first place to go to uncover that need is the advertising department of the magazine or newspaper.

Sedge writes that magazines and newspapers do not make most of their money through subscriptions but through advertising. Thus, the advertising department is usually better staffed, better paid and more willing to reply to your queries. One of his favorite techniques for discovering the editorial schedule of a publication is to write a letter to the advertising manager asking for a media kit. He explains that if you approach the advertising manager as a freelance writer, you probably won’t be sent the media kit, but if you approach him or her as a successful editorial agency with clients who wish to advertise, you probably will. Once you have the editorial schedule and know what topics the magazine plans to cover, you can tailor your queries to fit.

The spin-off approach: using one success to generate another
The spin-off approach is another of Sedge’s favorite marketing tactics. He writes, “Over the years I have developed a plus-two formula for business success. Each time I provide a service or product, I try to get at least two spin-off benefits.” For instance, when enthusiasm was at a peak for his first book, The Writer’s and Photographer’s Guide to Global Markets, he proposed his most recent book. He also used the enthusiasm generated by his first book to entice more than six editors to purchase articles on the topic of global marketing for writers and photographers. In addition, an editor asked him to write the monthly column “Mike’s International Picks,” and Writer On Line hired him as a contributor to produce the feature called “Going Global with Mike Sedge.”

Writers’ rights
Sedge’s ideas on writers’ rights are similarly illuminating. He describes some of the most common types of rights you can offer publishers, explaining that you should be the one to decide which rights are for sale, not the publisher. He states that the rights a publication receives should be proportional to the price paid—and the rights sold should never exceed the needs of the publication.

He tells the story of how the Army Times offered him $225 to write a feature on Italy’s sunken city of Baiae. He agreed—until he heard that they wanted all rights. For $225, he was willing to give them only exclusive rights in the Department of Defense and U.S. military market. He then went on to sell the Baiae story 27 times. “There are no rules that say you cannot make up your own rights,” he says.

Going beyond writing
In addition to offering lots of advice to help you market your writing, Sedge explains how you can market yourself by speaking engagements, radio and television appearances and teaching classes. In short, he teaches you how to become a celebrity.

While celebrity status is not everyone’s goal, most of us desire to reap greater financial rewards from our writing. This book can help us attain that goal. As Sedge writes, “Once you get into the swing of guerrilla marketing, you’ll find that the river of opportunity flows endlessly. Today’s efforts will grow like wildflowers, creating the opportunities of tomorrow.”