editors speak

The Cobblestone Group

[Sorry, we're still behind with the editor interviews, but we're trying. If you're a magazine editor and you'd like to see your magazine featured here -- please, do let me know.

This month I was delighted to find Marcia Lusted, an editorial assistant for the Cobblestone group, helping out by sharing inside information on the WritingforHire mailing list. [If you don’t know this list, you might want to check it out on Yahoogroups] Naturally, I grabbed her and immediately began asking pushy questions, and the gracious Ms. Lusted gave me plenty to share with y’all.

KMW: How are queries and due dates handled at the Cobblestone Group?
ML: The due date is for your idea query only, not a complete article. The editor takes those queries and her own ideas and research and constructs an outline for the issue, which sometimes changes a little after her consulting editor (an expert in that field) looks at it, and then she assigns the articles to actually be written. She may ask for the article idea you queried or she might want a slightly different focus. The reason why she uses the same authors frequently is that sometimes she's on a tight deadline and assigns articles to people who she knows will write what she needs and can be relied upon to do so quickly , but she also likes to include new writers and is always open to them. Other times she may not receive enough queries that she can use for the issue theme, and has to start from scratch assigning them to writers.

This year has been a bit more difficult because the themes were decided on very late and several issues were already closed by the time the themes went onto the web site. But there are still three open themes for this year, with query due dates in the next three months. All you need to do is query the idea and your bibliography, not write the entire article.

KMW: I happen to know of a few writers who sent a draft of the actual article as their "writing sample" for magazines in the Cobblestone group -- do editors hate that or is it kind of helpful to see how a writer you're not really familiar with would actually handle the article (making it clear that it's a draft and totally open to reconstructing to suit the editor)?
ML: I think I'd hesitate to use a draft of the actual article as a writing sample because the editor might wonder if you'd really be willing to rewrite it if necessary, or might even think that you misunderstood the process and submitted the actual article for the issue. I'd pick a similar topic but not what you've queried on.

KMW: Could you give us an idea of what an editorial assistant does? We see so many different titles at magazines and it's nice to know what kind of jobs go with each.
ML: The editorial assistant does anything and everything: creating the contracts, sending out author copies of magazines, writing rejection letter (not for queries, but for things we receive that are totally off-base for the magazines), dealing with the mail, requesting books for reference, ordering supplies, some marketing tasks, sending out materials for writer's conferences, researching, maintaining the library of back issues, sending out samples and writer's guidelines, and...oh yeah, writing, my favorite part!

KMW: Now I know sources are key to an article with any of the Cobblestone group, but some of our readers are a bit new to writing. Could you mention some sources that make a Cobblestone editor happy, and some that would make an editor shudder?
ML: Encyclopedias used as references in a bibliography definitely make editors shudder! I've heard them say that encyclopedias and Wikipedia are fine for fact-checking, but not as sources. I'd also avoid a bibliography entirely of internet sources. Primary sources are great but may be hard to come by for writers. Books are good as long as they are current...not bibliographies containing books that are all ten or twenty years old. Having a possible interview with an expert is an advantage, or having your own expertise in a theme area. Other than that, it probably depends on the topic.

KMW: Thank you so much. Anything else you want to slip in?
ML: One more note: you may have a terrific idea, and you might wonder why the editor didn't choose it, only to find the same idea written about by someone else in the actual issue. Editors tend to get multiple queries on the same ideas for their themes, and they may go with a writer they're familiar with or the writer with the most interesting approach to that topic.

And read the magazines before you submit! I write so many rejection letters to authors who have obviously never read a single issue of our magazines.

This page last updated on 01 April 2008