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Last updated on
8 September, 2007

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Magazine Query Letters
with Stephen Morrill

REGISTRATION:

COST, LENGTH, PREREQUISITES:

No prerequisites.

Standard course: $100 / 4 weeks. Click here to register

Extended course: $125 / 8 weeks. Click here to register
Extended course gives you two weeks to do each lesson but contains NO additional material.

For questions about this COURSE, e-mail Steve Morrill at

I teach five course modules for freelance nonfiction writers. This is the magazine query course, a how-to in selling the idea for a magazine article to an editor using a specialized one-page letter.

Like my other courses, this one centers upon extensive written materials in a private library. Students download these at their convenience and interact with me via e-mail.

Amateurs write nonfiction magazine articles and then look for someone to buy them. Pros know to query first, using a one-page letter to sound out an editor on an idea. Only after the editor agrees to buy the manuscript do they then start writing. This course will teach you how to write a query letter that can attract the interest of an editor and clinch the sale. In this course you will focus your idea and write a queryãwith hands-on help from a professional writer who has seen it all and who is totally non-judgmental about your writing. Expect advice and help, not criticism and arrogance.

The class consists of two parts. Each week I upload, to our private library, materials you should read before the next week. Each week you also receive an assignment to carry out before the next class.

Week 1: Why do we use a query letter? Getting a slanted, focused idea. A brief word about marketing.
Homework: Prepare a slanted, focused idea.

Week 2: Multiple ideas and "shotgun" queries. Style and format options. The six paragraphs
Homework: Send in your query letter first draft.

Week 3: Your theme sentence. Reslanting, refocusing for different markets.
Homework: Rewrite your query letter.

Week 4: Clips: the Catch-22. Handling the paperwork: tracking queries. Dealing with editors: things not to do.
Homework: Final rewrite of your query letter.

Stephen Morrill has been freelancing full-time since 1984. During that time he has written more than 1000 articles for national and local magazines and for newspapers. Nationally, his work has appeared in such magazines as Horizon, World Wide Shipper, The Robb Report, Vista, The New York Times Magazine, and Business Age. In Florida his work has appeared in Changing Homes, Florida Business, Southern Homes, and in a variety of city magazines and local newspapers.

For ten years he wrote a biweekly column about maritime trade for Florida Shipper magazine and he has written about maritime shipping for other trade publications. As a Reuters News Agency correspondent for the west coast of Florida, his writing has been used by newspapers, radio and television around the world.

In addition to general-interest articles, Steve has written extensively about wine, humor, international shipping and trade, business and finance, architecture and the outdoors, and military affairs. He was the founding editor of Know Tampa Bay, a 25,000-circulation quarterly relocation guide to the Tampa Bay area. Steve has been honored by the Florida Magazine Association for his short humor and by the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects for his writing about architecture. Steve is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

In addition to his ongoing magazine assignments and the occasional brochure or other non-magazine work, Steve wrote St. Petersburg: City in the Sun, a history of St. Petersburg, Florida and a ghost written history of Pan American-Grace Airways, Flying the Andes. He's working on two more books: a mystery (almost finished) and a handbook of businesslike freelance writing practices.