Dan Baum on Magazine Proposals

The Renegade Writer has a good interview with former New Yorker writer Dan Baum. Much of the talk is what it takes to write for the bigger name magazines,and if you want to get into the likes of Wired, Rolling Stone, or Playboy, it's worth the read. So are some actual proposals that Baum used, both successfully and not.

I would take some of the things he says with a grain of salt, and not just because the New Yorker wouldn't renew his contract. In the proposal about a Mexican government official, he noted that the New Yorker never responds on ideas it doesn't like and he mentioned John Bennet, who was an editor there for years. However, when Bennet was on a panel I moderated on narrative nonfiction, he mentioned that any editor should tell you whether an idea was potentially interesting or not within two weeks, and that if they didn't, the writer should touch base. Personally, I had received a rejection or two from Bennet, so know that the New Yorker will say no.

Second, he says that length and detail are key to get assignments. But I remember getting an assignment from the New York Times Magazine from a query that ran a few graphs in an email. I think the lesson is get in the detail that will grab the editor, but that amount can vary.

Another interesting point is that he talks about a 5,000-word LA Times assignment paying $5K and being work for two to three weeks. If it's closer to three, suddenly those big, time-consuming assignments may not sound quite so appealing, unless they pay significantly better than a buck a word. Clearly some of these big name magazines pay a lot more, but you also have to consider how many you can get in a year. Baum says that he can't get work these days. The lesson is that planning a writing business is more complex than "I'll write for the biggies" or "I do big-name consumer" and probably requires more project diversity than ever before.