Nonfiction, I always found, is a lot easier than fiction.  Why?  Because the basic ingredients are all around you.  I started with articles at the beginning of my career because they seemed easier and more assessable.  After all, there were hundreds of magazines.  All I had to do was to think about some of the things I was interested in.  And write articles on that.  I like the outdoors.  I did a lot of hiking.  I enjoyed gardening and I was a partner in a retail store.

That left me with a few things to start with.  The first article I did was about hiking with the family in Yosemite National Park.  That led on to a number of outdoor travel articles.  When I found the trailer magazines, I knew I had a field I could get my teeth into. So I read a lot of articles in those magazines and tried to relate them to what I knew.  At that time, most of these magazines considered mobile home residents to be part of their market.  So the first article I did for a magazine called Trailer Life was one on mobile home gardening.  Not particularly earthshaking, but it brought me a sale. I followed that with a number of RV travel articles.  All of them sold.  Were there any books there?  Probably.

I queried a small publisher of trailer books and sold them one called the Mobile Home Gardening Guide. Later I did Trailing In Canada, and The Trailer Owners Driving Guide.  By this time I had gotten quite friendly with the publisher or Trailer Life, Art Rouse, not only did I sell them a lot of articles, but he was sending me quite a few assignments, one of them, an Air Stream convention in Santa Rosa, California.

By following my interest, by sending for magazines, and by querying on articles I was building up a pretty good business.  I now knew a lot of editors who gave me regular assignments.  But I wasn't making a full-time income.  That caused me to look around and see what else I could tap.  I had run a retail store, and there were a lot of retail trade magazines, Home and Auto Retailer, Drug Topics, Progressive Grocer, Discount Store News, and a many more.  The question was could I write for them?

I found several hundred trade journals in Writers Market.  I sent for most of the retail publications.  Then I poured over them looking for articles that I could write about local stores.  I found that they liked stories about retailers who increased their sales with unusual promotions or fairly unique merchandising techniques. I wrote the queries interviewed the owner or manager and completed the articles.  I sold most of them.  Once I sold one, I sent another query to the same magazine.  Within a short time, I found myself writing and selling five to 10 articles a week.  That was enough to cover all expenses.  In addition, I kept looking for ways to speed up my writing.  One of them was to dictate into a tape recorder as I drove home.  I would drop it off at my typist, pick it up the next day and mail it to the magazine This worked well.

In the beginning, I would call the owner or manager and set up an interview.  As I went along I found I didn't need to do this.  I simply started going into the stores themselves.  Often I'd start at one end of shopping center and walk to the other end. I would stop at the stores that looked interesting.  Most magazines bought picture of good merchandising techniques, so I would go in and ask if I could take pictures. If I saw anything I thought would make a story I then did an interview with the owner or manager.  I liked having an interview set up, but I could work this way as well.  After that, within a year, I was selling a tremendous number of articles.  I also had time to try my hand at books.  Now, here are the basics that made this work for me.

1. Consider Your Interests. What do you enjoy reading about? This will lead you to the articles you could or would want to do.  You can also read the magazines and let them show you which subjects they are interested in.

2. Send For the Magazines.  I suggest you use Writers Market in the beginning.  Go through magazine by magazine and make a list of the ones that you think might take articles in your interest area. If you're interested in raising children, for instance, you would want to list all of the parenting magazines.  Besides Writers Market there are also additional listings of the these magazines on the Internet.  As your career grows, you will want to use a directory called Standard Rate and Data Service for marketing purposes.  There is a Standard Rate and Data Service business edition for magazines like Progressive Grocer and so forth.  There is also a consumer edition for magazines like Family Circle and others read by the general public.  These directories are intended for advertising agencies and contain the advertising rates and other information for each magazine. Both of them list several thousand publications, many more than you will find in Writers Market

3. Study the Magazines Carefully.  You want to determine the readership, and also how that magazine tries to reach those readers.  Some articles for instance, carry an authorities byline.  Others quote a number of authorities. Do what they do.

4. Write your query.  You will usually direct this to the managing editor.  Keep it to one page.  After I got to know an editor, I would frequently write two to three paragraph queries.  This is okay as long as the editor knows that you understand his magazine, and you can keep it directly to the point.

5. Follow-Through Immediately With Another Query.  This is very important since it will quickly help you build your relationship with the magazine.  Often writers get so they are working almost like staff with any particular publication.  This generally assures that they will get frequent assignments.  Of course, this isn't always true, but it works well most of the time.