In my last post, we talked about how to nail the unique selling proposition (USP) for your pitch.

Now what?

Well, if you have a unique selling proposition, sell it uniquely.

If you’re a freelance writer pitching a magazine article (or a book, a radio show, a blog post; it doesn’t matter) on French pastries, as we were in the previous post, you could send the editor a sample. (It’d arrive stale, but you know what I mean.)

You could include some photos in your pitch.

You can give your pitch a groovy headline and a pithy dek, using the magazine or website’s own display-copy style. That suggests that you’ve been reading the publication, that you “get it.” You’re on the inside. You’re a peer, not a supplicant.

The point is, you need to be a bit of salesperson. Let other writers send in stiff, passive query letters. (“Dear Mr. Editor, I read in your writer’s guidelines that you are looking for….”) That’s essentially what all the the wannabe-a-writer books and blogs advise. Two hundred fifty words of banal predictability. Do you honestly think you’ll get assignments by looking and sounding like every other query letter that crosses your editor’s desk?

It’s a crowded market out there. Make your pitch stand out.

Heed this passage from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (that’s my own well-worn copy of this wonderful classic shown here):

“This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship.”

Showmanship within the limits of good taste, of course. Dressing up like a pastry chef and dancing into the editor’s office might not score you big points. (Unless you bring a bunch of pastries with you.)

Showmanship is not hype. No need to hype your pitch. No need for superlatives. It does no good to tell the editor how good your idea is, how exactly right it is for her publication, or what a great, experienced writer you are.

Show it. Show it in the presentation of your pitch. And obviously, show it in the strength of your USP in the first place.

Dale Carnegie again:

“…if a salesman can show us how his services or his merchandise will help us solve our problems he won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And a customer likes to feel that he is buying—not being sold.”

Remember, that’s exactly what you’re doing for your editors or publishers or for any type of writing client: You’re solving their problems.

If the how of that is clear in your USP, you don’t need to say that you’re doing it. You don’t need to say, “Boy, have I got a solution for your problem.”

Show it.

"Melts in your mouth, not in your hand" is a pretty darn good USP.

USP? It’s a buzz-acronym from the sales world that means unique selling proposition. Identifying it is the key to selling anything. It’s a sine qua non for sales success, and, really, for success in business of any type.

Identifying a USP requires some honest answers to key questions, such as: What makes your product special? What sets it apart? And if the product is the same as a dozen others, what kind of deal are you offering that can become your unique proposition for selling it?

The answers inform every aspect of any marketing campaign, from slogan and tagline right on through sales letters and even packaging.

So does this apply to freelance journalists?

Duh. Of course it does. But maybe not the way you’d think.

Because in freelance writing, your unique selling proposition has almost nothing to do with you.

If you think that your USP is your unique writing flair, your ability to breathe life into any subject or story, get over yourself. Unless your pitch is for a memoir of your fascinating life, stay out of the way. The “you” part of the equation will shine through in the way you frame your pitch. “You” becomes subliminal, a whisper in the editor’s ear. When it comes to getting published, ideas rule.

Shout your ideas. Whisper “you.”

Your USP should be boldly obvious, enticingly resonant, irresistibly unforgettable in every pitch you write. Here are those questions again, recast for our purposes, ready to ask yourself before you write the first sentence of your next query letter.

• What makes your story special?
• What sets it apart?
• And if the story is the same as a dozen others, what kind of deal are you offering that can become your unique proposition for selling it?

If your doesn’t pass USP muster, pump it up. Dial it in. Give it the twist that sets it apart. A story about Paris isn’t special. A story about patisseries in Paris is getting there. A story about your search for the best pain au chocolat in Paris has some zing to it.

But dial it in even more. Maybe you’ll use social media to get your answer, and write about how tweeting with locals and expats sent you on a delectable quest.

Or maybe you ask five different fussy chefs where each thinks the best pain au chocolat resides. And find out why these pastries are special: Is it the flour, the water? Where do they source the chocolate?

Suggest a couple of sidebars. They can be part of your USP “deal.” They show that you’re thinking like an editor—and they offer the possibility of a higher word count; i.e., more moolah.

Timeliness can play in to a freelance writer’s USP. Maybe there’s a chocolate festival happening in Paris, but you feel the attention is too focused on straight chocolate and not enough about its pastrified apotheosis. Anything you can do to make your pitch timely—keeping in mind lead time for print publications, of course—will make it more compelling.

Okay, so you’ve nailed the USP for your pitch. What next? How do you carry that over into actually selling your story?

That will form the USP for my next post.

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If you want to learn more about using USPs in their original context, copywriting, check out John Carlton’s Simple Writing System.

“Can I submit more than one story idea in a freelance query letter?”

That subject came up on a freelance writers’ forum recently. Some people said no, you shouldn’t; just lead with your best shot. Others said it’s fine to include two or three pitches.

I weighed in. I said I once submitted a query with 30 story ideas. I came away owning a department in the magazine and spent the next several years ticking off many of those ideas as four-page features—for very good money. That led to yet another department in the magazine. Two great steady gigs in National Geographic Adventure for several years because I had the audacity to bundle a bunch of pitches.

Guess what else? I put all of those pitches into a Word doc and illustrated most of them with photos. Each one read like a mini story, with a headline and inset illustration.

BUT… You’re not supposed to do any of that stuff. If you read the writer blogs and the how-to-be-a-freelancer books, they prescribe all sorts of rules. What you should do. What you mustn’t do.

You see all sorts of nonsense: One pitch to a query. Don’t send attachments. No pitch longer than one page, whatever that means these days. Follow the publisher’s writer’s guidelines as if they were stone tablets delivered from on high. Open each pitch with the lede to your article. Send it to the submissions editor or some other designated flunky. Include clips. Don’t include clips. Mention your credentials. Don’t mention your credentials. Don’t follow up before the time cited in the writer’s guidelines. No simultaneous queries.

• Here’s what you SHOULD do: Send in good ideas.
• Here’s what you MUSTN’T do: Send in stupid ideas.

Okay, you also shouldn’t send in anything that’s tough on a poor beleaguered editor’s eyes. And those readable good ideas should go to someone who can actually act on them.

Everything else is folklore.

I go into a lot more detail in my book about how you can better your chances of getting articles accepted. Many of them are absolutely critical to your success as a freelance writer. But those have to do with how to formulate great story ideas, how to research them, how to make sure they’re absolutely right on and irresistible. And, yes, I add some suggestions on how to format your queries. But no rules.

If you want rules, see the two above.

“The thing that is scaring you the most is exactly what you need to do.”

I was listening to a podcast this morning—successful entrepreneurs James Schramko, Dean Hunt, and Peter Parks talking about what makes them tick. The question was raised: “What advice would you give to yourself if you could go back to when you were first starting out?” That’s when James Schramko came out with the line above.

Does this ring true to you? I bet it does. It rang like a gong in my ears. Every freelance writer knows what it’s like to dance around an idea as if it will somehow miraculously arise on its own and spontaneously come to fruition. Anyone who’s ever dated knows this syndrome.

But it’s one thing to serve up platitudes about breaking through your fears and blah blah blah. Everyone knows we shouldn’t be ruled by fear, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and so on.

This is a far more interesting point. James is saying that precisely…the very thing… you’re most afraid of…is exactly what you need to do.

So why does THIS particular task, concept, or story idea stand out as The Scary One?

Here’s one possibility: It’s your best shot. It’s the single thing that you absolutely know will most advance your career. Wow. The Big One. The idea begins to grow out of proportion. It takes over. It becomes your identity. If you sit on it, at least it will never get rejected. It’ll always be there for you to fondle, to look back on like a musty old memento. “One of these days….” But if you put it out and it gets shot down, your entire being would suffer. The end of life as you know it.

Here’s another possibility: The reason it’s scary to you is simply because you know it’s a dang good idea. Not a make-or-break-your-career deal. Just a solid idea. Some of the psychology above is at play, but really, the reason it’s scary is this:

Things will change when you act on it.

One way or another, things will change. Maybe that seems scary, but it’s GOOD. By definition, your life can never be the same once you take action on that One Scary Thing.

Same-ol’ same-ol’ is death to writers. We succeed by stretching, by trying new things.

So what’s scaring you right now? Different things are scary at different points in our careers. I’ll toss out a few possibilities:

• Writing your first query letter
• Following up on that query you sent out six months ago
• Pitching a big-time publication
• Asking to interview a source who will help you with a great story pitch
• Putting together a book proposal
• Writing an ebook
• Starting your own blog
• Quitting your day job
• Taking a writing course
• Trying a new avenue of writing: copywriting, for instance
• Creating your portfolio website
• Pitching a whole rash of stories to publications that pay real money
• Offering to guest post on someone’s blog
• Leveraging your writing in a new way, such as learning Internet marketing
• Continuing your education
• Attending a writer’s conference
• Teaching a course in writing
• Getting your clips together
• Revising some rejected stories and pitches to make them viable
• Buying useful reference materials that will help you write or market better

Whatever your One Scary Thing is, please realize that the second scenario is what’s true. It’s a dang good idea, not your identity. No matter what happens, your being will remain intact.

You’ll have more great ideas and you may stand at more Scary Thing thresholds. But each time you move forward anyway, you’ll become more successful.

You’ll change. You’ll grow. You’ll succeed.

The antidote to myth and folklore.

I just put a bunch of my best freelance-writing tips into a special report called 7 Stealth Secrets of Successful Freelance Writing. It’s free. Really. Just fill out that form over there to the right.

Now, you could argue that there’s really no such thing as a “secret” when it comes to freelance writing for money. (That may be true, but you have to admit it’s a catchy hed.)

My feeling is there shouldn’t be any secrets when it comes to getting work published and getting paid decent money for it. But what happens is this: Practices that work have gotten obscured by a lot of folklore. Books and blogs about freelance writing all seem to mimic one another and impart the same bad advice. (I’m talking about even the highest echelons here.) Too many writers are willing to follow that advice with sheeplike obedience and thereby consign themselves to the reject bin or the dark recesses of editors’ in-boxes where their queries will never see the light of day.

So my common-sense, cut-through-the-crap approaches seem like secrets. I mean, some experts will still have you sending SASEs with a hard-copy manuscript, photocopied clips, and one-page query. That may be de rigueur in the book world, but magazine editors will scratch their heads over such arcana. (If you don’t know what an SASE is, good. Don’t worry about it.)

That’s one small example of the kind idiotic advice you’ll find, not only for free online, but in expensive books as well. Another is the carefully prescribed template for writing a query letter. Trust me: No editor has ever read these prescriptions. There are many keys to delivering a strong query, but following a template is not one of them. I’ve even seen query templates for sale. Blimey. How much time do you think an intelligent magazine or Web editor will spend reading one of those?

My favorite Stealth Secret is the last one in my little 20-page report. It’s one that really seems like common sense. It includes this little nugget I dug up from the world of advertising, circa 1923: “Genius is the art of taking pains.”

Take a look at this report for some pretty darn valuable, inside-the-business lessons. Are they really secrets? Is there genius in this booklet? I’ll tell you this: I practice the art of taking pains.

The authentic globe.

I watched some of the Golden Globes the other night. Good thing the honorees weren’t trying to get writing assignments.

Have you ever seen so many displays of BS? Such unbridled pretentiousness?

I admire actors. When they’re acting. When they’re acting well. What they do is amazing. But when they can’t stop acting, when they ooze and emote and dramatize without any trace of authenticity, it’s embarrassing and off-putting.

Which brings me to a crucial point for freelance writers writing query letters:

Be authentic.

Don’t go all writerly on the poor editor. That’s what often happens when writers take their cue from the godawful books and blogs out there brimming with advice about how to write a query letter. Writers then think they’re supposed to adopt some sort of magical writerly tone, and follow a scripted writerly template for their pitch.

Those often manifest as gagworthy blunders like opening your query with your story’s lede. If you called the editor on the phone to pitch (a no-no, of course), you wouldn’t launch into reading your article without first saying hello, would you? Say hello. Be conversational. Say:

Dear Joe,

I’d like to pitch you a story about an emerging craze: penguin tourism. I call it “Waddling to Antarctica.”

See? Friendly but catchy. Authentic. Then spell out the gist of the story, refer the editor to some clips, and get outta there. If it’s a complex pitch, don’t worry about length. Spell out the gist and then set up the extra information with a subhed like “A Bit of Background.” But don’t make a simple pitch complex.

Even worse is when writers drop all sorts of clues that they’ve read the publication’s or the website’s writers’ guidelines in Writer’s Market. Like, “I understand you’re looking for exciting first-person accounts of challenge in trying situations.”

No editor is impressed one doodly bit by the fact that you read their (undoubtedly out-of-date) blurb in Writer’s Market. They’re more likely unimpressed to the point of hitting “delete” immediately. Editors are impressed by the fact that you’ve bothered to read their publication. (Drop hints!) And that you’re pitching the kind of story they actually need and want.

One other thing the get-published books and blogs have spawned: Blind adherence to every gospel word of a publication’s writers’ guidelines. If they say their response time is eight weeks, that’s just code for “We’re swamped. We may not get back to you for ages. If ever.”

Don’t be a chump. Follow up. Two weeks is fine.

Oh yeah: While we’re talking authenticity, don’t be so frigging important that you make a responding editor jump through antispam hoops to reach you. Duh.

I go into a lot of detail about other query do’s and query don’ts in Write Where the Money Is. But after seeing the Golden Globes, I had to get this off my chest.

Be authentic. Or an authentic person on the other end will simply change the channel.

Nearly three decades ago (yipes!), I was the young editor of Leisureguide, a network of those in-hotel-room city guidebooks you see lying on the coffee table in nice hotels. (The company was long ago swallowed up by Guest Informant.)

One day a letter came from Writer’s Market asking if I’d be interested in a listing in their annual publication. I couldn’t resist—mainly because I’d get to see my name listed in it. I did use some freelance work, but not much. But seeing those words “contact Bob Howells, editor….” in a fancy book—that was cool.

I wrote a little graf about what I was looking for and the markets I dealt with—13 U.S. cities such as Miami, Houston, and Chicago—and specified how to submit a query.

Soon after publication, I started getting queries. Lordy, did I get queries. Some were of this ilk:

Dear Mr. Howells:

The elephants of Gabon are among the most endangered in the world…

Others were like this:

Dear Editor:

Please find enclosed a list of stories available for purchase….

Or this:

Dear Mr. Howell: (sic)

Your readers will delight in visiting Chicago, the City of Big Shoulders…

(Uh, if they’re reading Chicago Leisureguide, they’re already in the City of Big Shoulders!)

The queries piled up. At first I dutifully sent out preprinted postcards informing my correspondents that their story didn’t meet our editorial needs at the moment. But after a while, whenever the stack reached a foot high, I just threw them all away. I couldn’t possibly keep up with the volume.

My confession continues: Before the queries went into the round file, we engaged in an end-of-the-week ritual of query reading—a time of great mirth. We’d read aloud horribly off-the-mark queries, way worse than what I characterized above, and laugh till we were in tears. We’d shake our heads in wonder at all the typos, misspelled words, and ideas grossly not suited for Leisureguide, not to mention the crazy shopping-list pitches like the second one above.

So how many queries that came to me via Writer’s Market actually resulted in a published story? None. I received hundreds of queries that year, and not a single one was remotely on target. I found my own freelancers.

My book Write Where the Money Is covers in detail how to avoid egregious query gaffes.

But there’s another thing to keep in mind. Many other editors have had similar experiences—and hence don’t list themselves in Writer’s Market or numerous other compilations of the publishing market. No editor I work with regularly lists in Writer’s Market. That’s not necessarily WM’s fault. It’s the fault of fools who think they can pitch a publication based only on a blurb in a big fat book (or website).

Do your own research. For many, many publications and websites, you have no choice. You have to find out on your own whom to contact and what they’re looking for. And please, please—have a look at the mag or site before you pitch.