Monday Markets for March 16, 2009
March 17, 2009 by Jodee
Filed under Monday Markets
In this week’s edition of Monday Markets, I have three examples of very specific niche publications. One is for stamp enthusiasts, the second one is a parenting magazine for Kansas City area residents. The third one on today’s list publishes stories of interest to people living in Washington, D.C.
The goal of Linn’s Stamp News is to create a weekly publication that is indispensable to stamp collectors. Everything we do, from the broadest editorial policy to the most trivial stylistic idiosyncrasy, is thought out in the light of this one overriding goal.
We try to achieve indispensability in various ways:
Every collector, from the beginner to the most sophisticated, wants to know the news. Our aim is to provide all the news, as conveniently and as accessibly as we can. In this regard, we feel we are the New York Times of philately.
In stamp collecting, the news is not just club and show announcements, new issues and auction realizations.
New discoveries are constantly being made, sometimes involving material that is decades or even centuries old. We cover this news too, relying on the worldwide network of columnists and correspondents who contribute to our pages.
Of course, we rely on these contributors for much more than hard news. Many of the feature items in Linn’s, which make up the bulk of our editorial content, originate with free-lance contributors in the collector community.
Here Linn’s performs an important educational function, by bringing to the attention of approximately 65,000 subscribers (and hundreds of thousands of readers) a diverse selection of facts, thoughts and observations about stamps, postal markings, covers and stamp-related subjects.
Writing in Linn’s, the free-lance contributor has the opportunity to share his specialized knowledge with the largest stamp collector audience of any periodical in the world.
Linn’s Stamp News buys “first worldwide periodical rights plus a non-exclusive right to anthologize or otherwise reuse on a proportionate royalty basis”. Pays $40-$75 per feature.
Kansas City Parent Magazine and Kansas City Baby Magazine enjoy receiving submissions from freelance writers. Each month we have feature articles which relate to our monthly themes (see our editorial calendar below), however we do accept articles on other topics as well. In addition, we run monthly columns including Teacher Talk, Healthy Kids, A Word from Dad, Media Review, Women’s Health, and more. Please pick up a recent copy of our magazines to see an up-to-date department list.
We prefer articles and essays with local relevancy or a local quote. We are usually looking for articles to match our monthly themes 2-3 months prior. Articles should be submitted via e-mail preferably as a Microsoft Word document with a word count of 300 to 1,100 words. Include the word count with the article. Please remember that we receive many more submissions than we can use. We may not be able to respond personally to every query. If the editor wants to review your submission more thoroughly, she will contact you directly. We pay usually pay $25 for each article. Submit articles to: Editor@KCParent.com.
The Washingtonian is a city magazine-it focuses almost exclusively on the Washington metropolitan area. The magazine was started in October 1965, and its ABC circulation is over 150,000, including 50,000 copies sold each month on area newsstands.
Our readers are concentrated in the District, in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, in Arlington and Fairfax counties and the city of Alexandria in Virginia, and in Loudoun and other counties surrounding the metropolitan area. About 75 percent of our readers live in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, 15 percent in the District, and 10 percent outside the metro area.
We are very open-minded-as long as the article idea is interesting and relates to the Washington area.
If you have not worked with us before, send us a query about your article idea via mail or e-mail us at editorial@washingtonian.com. Tell us who you are and what kind of article you’d like to write. If your article is already written, mail or e-mail it or drop it off. If you want a manuscript returned, include a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Give us at least two weeks to respond to a query or submission.
The types of articles we publish include service pieces (weekend getaways, great places to live, wedding guides); profiles of people (Dan Snyder, Barack Obama); investigative articles (“Why Is Lead Still Poisoning Our Children?”); rating pieces (Bush’s Cabinet, top home-repair services); institutional profiles (“How the Carlyle Group Is Making Billions,” “Cracking DC’s Masonic Code”); first-person articles (“Confessions of a Car Salesman,” “My Son, the Mormon”); stories that cut across the grain of conventional thinking (“First, Kill All the Lawyers”); articles that tell the reader how Washington got to be the way it is; light or satirical pieces (send the completed article, not the idea, because in this case execution is everything); and fiction that tells readers how a part of Washington works or reveals something about the character or mood or people of Washington.
Subjects of articles include federal and local government, business, sports, education, medicine, fashion, the environment, how to make money, how to spend money, real estate, performing arts, visual arts, dining out, travel, health, nightlife, home and garden, self-improvement, places to go, and things to do. Again, we are interested in almost anything as long as it relates to the Washington area.
We don’t like puff stories or what we call “isn’t it interesting” pieces. There should be an idea behind the story. We don’t run articles on people, places, or businesses just because they’re there.
In general, we try to help our readers understand Washington better, to help our readers live better, and to make Washington a better place to live.
Pays $0.75 per word on publication.
