What Comes First, The Story or the Publication?

There are two ways to approach querying a magazine for your travel writing, and both have their advantages and disadvantages.

First, you can start with the travel writing story. You traveled somewhere, or are about to travel somewhere, and you have a great travel writing article idea to pitch to a travel writing magazine. You study the travel writing markets, make a list of possible travel writing publications to pitch your travel writing article to, draft a careful query and send it off.

The second option for getting your travel writing published is to target a specific travel writing magazine you would like to break into. With this approach, you focus on one or two specific travel writing magazines that you want to see your byline in. Next, you carefully study these publications to get a clear understanding of the style of travel writing articles they want. Then you brainstorm and develop a travel writing article idea to pitch to them.

Although the end is the same in both of these approaches – namely to get your travel writing published – the means are different. Essentially, this difference comes down to whether or not the story finds the magazine or the magazine leads to the travel writing story. The advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches to selling your travel writing will be discussed further in next week’s posting, so stay tuned to Klenske, Ink.…