So you have a pretty original and awesome idea for a parenting and family niche magazine article. Or—look at you go!—maybe you’ve written the entire thing already and you just know it’ll be a perfect fit for a publication somewhere in the world. Now what?
Like any normal person, you hit “the Google” and are quickly overwhelmed. You remove your face from your Internet-enabled device and realize you’ve gone down a two-hour online rabbit hole filled with blog posts that scream titles like “Top 10 Parenting Magazines for 2021” and “19 Popular Parent Magazines Paying Parents to Write Stories” … except that when you started clicking on the links, you found that half of them aren’t even publishing anymore.
Does anybody ever go back and check/update these posts? It doesn’t seem like it, which is beyond frustrating. But you have to realize that the publishing industry changes DAILY.
Okay, fine. Surely that Writer’s Market you’ve heard of as the gold standard for submission information will be the answer. So you order it up from Amazon (because you can’t get an online subscription anymore, not since 2019, when writersmarket.com sold to Penguin Random House). There goes $21.49 and now you have a fat resource on your shelf taking up space.
But wait. The parenting and family section is really so very… small. Like maybe 50 markets TOPS small. That’s 43 cents a market! So you fall into a dream…
« Wouldn’t it be great if you knew someone who was actually writing for and submitting to these markets and could find out pretty quickly when a magazine went out of business or if an editor was replaced?
« What if this brilliant middle-aged female someone compiled all the most current markets in one spot (saving you time, money, and space on your bookshelves) and then worked tirelessly to find more?
« What if this rockin’ chick also updated her resource regularly (well, every few years anyway because she gets a little busy with her brood)?
« Oh, and what if this hypothetical groovy writer mom unicorn offered COMPLETELY FREE UPDATES to said resource on her lil blog?
« And then what if this supportive and non-competitive human also had a Facebook group where current and aspiring writers and editors could all hang out and vent and discuss and explain and ask for help?
What a magical fairy tale world that would be, right?
YES! Only this friendly person who loves to work from home (and travel) and write exists! And she created the resource in 2009...and has been updating it ever since. FREE UPDATES on her blog. TOTALLY accessible in her Facebook group. She has been writing for magazines since roughly 2006, not too long after her third of five kids was born. (Now I’ll switch back to first person for ya…)
You bought this resource (thank you!), downloaded it, maybe even printed it out. You’re reading through it and hopefully you have already joined the FB group. And let me guess… you are one of two kinds of people.
You are either someone who knows about this resource already and are excited to dive in and get all the updated information and hit the pavement RIGHT NOW, submitting many older pieces for sale as reprints.
Or you are someone who didn’t know you could write one article and sell it over and over again for money to dozens and dozens of different magazines all over the world. And yes, the editors know we are doing this. It’s not a secret, just something not very well known.
Maybe you are a little wary of me in general. Like, “Who does she think she is, charging this kind of price for a download? It’s not even a physical book!”
Well, writer friend, let me first speak to your question about the price. You are probably going to make somewhere around $40-50 on your first article or essay sale. Then you can pitch it to dozens of other places that love reprints and make anywhere between $15 and $150 per sale FOR THE SAME EXACT PIECE. (kinda like residual or passive income)
And then there might come a day when you have so many great pieces that you decide to REWRITE some of them and turn them into an ebook or print book that you can self-publish or traditionally publish.
And then there might also come a day when you can turn some of those expert-status pieces into a lil paid speaking engagement which also helps sell your books, which also gives you more life experience to write about, which helps you create even more articles for more niches and it’s just a great big unlimited world of writing for you and me.
Now to speak to the question of who I am. I’ve worked with all of these magazines, many of them multiple times. Some of them buy my reprints on a regular basis and some ask me to write original pieces. Some have paid me for the exact same article every few years because it just fits with what they need for a particular season.
I’m The Published Parent, I love words, and I most definitely enjoy helping others launch their freelance writing careers while working another job, while raising a family, while homeschooling, while traveling, while grandparenting...you name it.
Whew. I get a little excited talking about all of this. Okay, so now a few things you need to know about the 8th edition (2022):
1. The title of this resource has been many things over the years (see below). If you have purchased this resource in the past, rest assured that it is completely different this time around. It contains many more markets, but it does NOT contain the how-to-get-started information. I’ll be working on that in the coming weeks, along with more market books (see the end of this book for what that’s going to look like).
2. In the past, I have tried my best to only include paying markets in my resources. This edition contains markets which DO NOT pay. Submit at your own discretion after checking out the website, the digital edition, the print edition, etc. Some writers enjoy submitting a free essay here and there for the credit when they are just starting out, some think that’s the dumbest thing they have ever heard of, and this is a topic we can discuss in my Facebook group!
You gotta get this book now and get your freelance writing career going! (use promo code WRITER20 for 20% off now). And the FREE UPDATES are posted here as I get them!
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