Write For Regional Parenting Publications For Fun & Profit: A Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners

By Christina Katz

Are you a parent writer who has always wanted to learn the ins and outs of writing for regional parenting publications?

If so, look no further! Write For Regional Parenting Publications For Fun & Profit is a step-by-step guide for any-level writer covering the basic steps of writing for and profiting from regional parenting publications.

Writers who read this book will gain:

• An overview of how writing for and earning from regional parenting publications works
• Complete how-to instructions for writing for and mass-submitting to regional parenting publications
• Insights into what sets successful RPP writers apart from those who don’t succeed
• A clear understanding of what it takes to create and maintain a writing business
• A better understanding of what professional writing looks like in day-to-day terms
• A whole new respect for hardworking parent writers

Written expressly for busy parents, this e-book guide is written in short, instructional chapters like a mini-workbook. Readers who follow the advice in this e-book will find themselves successfully writing and submitting articles to regional parenting publication editors in a professional manner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989516907

Book preview

Growing

Introduction: Writing For RPPs Still Rocks

Writing for regional parenting publications—also called regional parenting magazines—is still as fun a way to launch a writing career as it has been for the last couple decades.

With all of the changes in publishing in recent years, you might think that regional publications would have gone away by now. But many local businesses have found a foothold in their regional economies, and therefore corporations have not found a way to take over the regional magazine economy better than local folks. So, happily, the tradition of regional publications owned by local publishers continues today.

Since no one understands parenting like the moms and dads in the trenches every day, no one writes better for regional parenting publications than parent journalists, who can make the most of personal experience and solid journalism skills to provide a steady stream of content to regional parenting publications, which I often refer to as RPPs in this text.

Thanks to the Internet and e-mail, it is easier than ever for RPP editors to solicit a wide variety of quality content from writers all over North America. These editors will always be on the lookout for writers who offer the same quality and commitment to serving them as they dedicate to their readers. This creates a win-win-win cycle between the editor, writer and reader.

You can become a part of the greater service team by learning and applying the lessons in this e-book, and in the process learn skills that will pay off for the rest of your writing career. Let’s get started.

Why I Wrote This E-book

I have been writing for regional parenting publications and training writers to write for them since 2001. My students have read my books and taken my classes and gone on to write and sell their first articles, their tenth articles, their sixtieth articles, and more. And they resell many of them year after year to RPPs.

Writing for regional parenting publications is not a get-rich-quick strategy. But this fact does not make the practice any less fun and exciting than when I first learned about it from mom writers like Marjorie Holmes, Elaine Shimberg, and Brette Sember. Today, I have long-time students who have developed professional skills that allow them to sell as many as thirty articles in a single month. I also have students who have worked with me for just over a year selling as many as fifteen articles in a single month. While this level of performance is not the norm, this kind of focus and follow-through can inspire the rest of us.

How much can you earn? I have no idea. So much of what you make writing and selling regional parenting publication articles depends on consistent, professional habits. But there is only one way to find out! Thanks to the advent of digital editions, electronic marketing, and networking tools, writing for RPPs has never been easier to learn and do. This means that even a total novice writer can break in and start earning regular checks. If you can make the most of your steady stream of ideas, engage in a regular writing practice, adopt a service-oriented attitude, and you own an e-mail account, then you can do this just as well as any other writer.

As a writing instructor, the part I like best about teaching writing for RPPs is that it helps writers learn basic writing-for-publication skills so they can start to develop abilities needed to tackle more sophisticated types of freelancing down the road. So why not start writing articles for RPPs and keep the practice going as one of your many writing income streams even as you learn new skills?

Many of my students who have mastered selling articles to RPPs go on to learn additional skills that allow them to query for assignments and write e-books, books, or both. But, like me, most never forget the thrill of that very first RPP sale. I encourage you to learn the habit, get in your groove, and stay in your rhythm even as you move on to other markets, so you can create multiple sources of checks flowing into your mailbox.

Even after thirteen years as a professional writer, writing for RPPs continues to be one of