Writing For Health Markets

The health and fitness market is one of the fastest growing segments in the marketplace today. For writers, this trend can be a real boon. Whether you're a health professional who wants to moonlight as a writer, or a writer with an interest in health issues, this fast-growing sector could be a great source of extra income and publishing credits.

Secrets to Writing Health Features by Kathy Summers is a guide to breaking into the field of health and fitness. She assumes that you haven't written in this market before, and lays out good guidelines for getting started.

At times, the information seems a little too basic. Much of the book is devoted to the process of writing, overcoming writer's block, and generating ideas. She also provides a lengthy look at structuring an article, interviewing, writing a query letter, and other general information that is geared toward the beginning freelance writer. It's not until Chapter Twelve, "What Health Editors Really Want," that she provides information that is much more specific to writing about health and fitness. The rest of the book, while well-written and informative, could easily apply to writing for just about any other field.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. While you may well want to start out writing health features, you may one day want to move on to another field. Summers provides a good background for writing features, which can be applied to most fields.

One of the most valuable pieces of advice comes in Chapter Four: Discovering Your Dream Market. Most, if not all, of us, have a copy of Writer's Market sitting on the shelf. With any luck, it's the most current copy, but often we decide we can get by with last year's edition. But, as Summers writes, even the very latest edition, bought just last week at your friendly neighborhood superstore, may not be current enough. She says, "A writer I know who was a magazine editor in a former life says she developed a pretty good nose for Writer's Market-driven submissions. She says, "We almost invariably threw them into the reject-o-matic." Why? These submissions were rarely addressed to the right names, and they often parroted out-of-date "guideline" information that some editor threw together in five minutes on the day the Writer's Market questionnaire was due."

The solution? Use Writer's Market to get a general idea of the market, then send for guidelines from the magazine. Then, just before sending our your query or article, check a recent issue of the publication for the correct address, phone, and editor's name. You might even want to call to verify the information.

Go To Page: 1 2