-Nel

Thanks for your question — it’s a great one!

In my experience, editors rarely reject a query to do the story themselves. I’ve read that they don’t do this as standard practice, and when I send pitches, I’ve received responses such as, “Great article idea! We’re already working on it,” or “We’ve already assigned this story, but keep pitching!”

Though I have heard of editors misappropriating articles and seemingly lifting ideas, I think those are few and far between. Ideas can’t be copyrighted, and they seem to travel across the universe. That is, if I see a new research study or find out that a new band is doing a concert, then an idea is triggered — both in my brain and other writers’ brains, and editors’ brains….

It works for me to send in the query letter, secure the assignment, and then write the article. It saves you time and energy, and it allows editors to shape the article the way they see fit.

Good luck – and do check out the sample query letters I’ve posted here! They might help…

Laurie

Question: Should I do the article first and submit to publication or should I send query letter first?

Sending the query letter is obviously the best choice but, editors may reject the query and do the story themselves. On the other end the article may be completed and rejected… never published.

What’s the best approach?
a torn Nel