Is pitching pointless?

Give me a P

Give me an I

Give me a T C H!

How not to land an assignment: the pitch letter

Take any magazine writing class, and you’ll be drilled on how to write the perfect pitch letter. You’ll be told how the perfect pitch is crucial to scoring an assignment. And you’ll get all pumped up about pitching and how it’s going to change your writing life.

Writer Abroad would love to go to bat for pitching. But the reality is, she is a strike out.

Her big pitching effort began in 2008, three years after she began her newspaper and magazine writing career. She took a $400 travel writing course with Mediabistro hoping it would help her take her writing to the next level, publication-wise. She spent hours of time (not to mention money—buying English-language pubs when living abroad is expensive, think $15 for one copy of NG’s Traveler) researching publications, perfecting her pitches, and tracking down emails of appropriate editors. Then she proofread her pitches at least 100 times, sent out the suckers like fly balls, and waited for her home run.

But she heard nothing.

Nothing.

Silence. Maybe a rejection here and there, three months after sending the pitch.

Fair enough. Rejection is a part of the writing process. Writer Abroad was not naïve. And she was not going to give up easily. So she pitched other publications...reworking the same idea two or three times. And...

Nothing.

Well, once, a bite. An assignment. And then, a month later, an un-assignment...

So, let’s see here. After 100+ hours with a batting score of .001, Writer Abroad learned something maybe some of you already know: pitching is a gigantic waste of time and money (especially considering the rates magazines pay these days).

So now, Writer Abroad has a new approach to landing assignments.

She does (insert drum roll here)…

Nothing.

  

And she’s much more successful.

How is this possible?

Ok, well, maybe she doesn't exactly do nothing. But she sure does a heck of lot less work that she was doing before.

Instead of spending 10 hours a week perfecting magazine and newspaper pitches, Writer Abroad spends one or two hours a week blogging and about twice a year she updates her personal writing website.

As it turns out, this is the 21^st century. So editors have something they didn’t have before: an easy way to find writers living abroad.

Here’s the thing. As a writer abroad, your location sets you apart. In fact, editors are probably searching right now for a writer in your very location. Make sure they can find you. Fast.

How? Have a blog. Have a website. Have a tweet worth a re-tweet. Have something smart Writer Abroad hasn’t even thought of yet. Then pretend you’re an editor searching Google for a writer. Do you show up in the search results?

If not, take a course on SEO. But heaven forbid, do not take a course on how to pitch.

Unless…we can find writers out there who can prove Writer Abroad wrong.

So let’s hear it.

Are there still writers out there with respectable batting averages? If you pitch, do you score magazine and newspaper assignments? (Excluding personal essays—Writer Abroad still is able to place personal essays through pitching completed pieces). Or do you think pitching is pointless?