publication. Last year he said, "I'm going to put away my fishing rod 

 and my shotgun and my rifle and I'm just going to take pictures." And 

 I h^d a lot of fun traveling with him last summer on fishing pictures. 

 I ■'Was doing all the fishing and he was doing all the photo taking. He 

 sold seven stories to national magazines last year just because he had 

 concentrated on taking photographs. One of the big three is going 

 toward more staff photography. Sports Afield is emphasizing good 

 writing and they'll say "We'll get the photographs by our staff if the 

 story is worth running." But also you enhance your chance of selling 

 with SPORTS AFIELD if you have good photographs. Guidelines and 

 copies of the magazines are a must to obtain before you start trying to 

 publish. Any writer that sends in and asks for a sample copy of THE 

 AMERICAN HUNTER will get a sample copy of the magazine and the 

 guidelines, basically telling what our basic mechanical requirements are 

 for a story. Get the magazine, study it, and see what kind of stories 

 they run. See how they run their features. Know the market you're 

 trying to sell to. I get two or three fishing stories a year submitted to 

 THE AMERICAN HUNTER. I get poems. We never run any poems. I 

 get cartoons. We never run any cartoons. These are just a waste of 

 postage and postage is money for the free-lancer. So if you know your 

 market, know what types of stories and how they play, you can get 

 ready to start selling a story. 



So your next step is to write a query letter. I get probably 20 or 

 30 query letters a week and most of them will say, "Oh, how would you 

 like a deer hunting story on on deer in western Montana?" Sometimes 

 question mark. So, I say, "Do I want a story on western Montana?" 

 About what? What kind of tactics? I just need to learn more about it. 

 You need to be more specific. Another sample of a query that I get 

 quite a few of is two-and-a-half, single spaced page letter. Now I 

 don't have time to read all that. I do it, but it takes a lot of time. 

 You don't have to tell the whole story. Make your query 

 brief, to the point and tell exactly what angle you intend to take, how 

 many words. and what your photographic package is like. If you've 

 got your photographs, send your photographs with your query because 

 that's going to be the most important aspect of whether they're going to 

 buy it or not anyway. We read every manuscript that comes in, but if 

 you send in a query and get an okay, you know that's a subject we're 

 not already covered with. So don't spend all your time typing a letter 

 or writing a story ona subject we can't possibly use because we've got 

 four or five of them in the files already. The query can save you a lot 

 of time that way. You could query me and if I say "No, "you can query 

 somebody else like OUTDOOR LIFE since they have a little bit different 

 style than we do. If you've written a story all ready for me, you're 

 going to have to rewrite it for OUTDOOR LIFE. So wait until you get 

 the okay on the query before you go ahead. 



Here's a couple of don'ts. A lot of people send their credits with 

 their query. Sometimes there will be over two pages, including every 

 story they've sold. I'd rather have a good query saying "This is the 

 story I have." Tell me about the story. Don't tell me what you've 

 sold before. I want a good idea, a good story idea. 



