Nonfiction is a huge marketplace – much larger than the fiction market. And for the most part, unless you are Stephen King, it pays better on a ‘per word’ basis. It also offers the potential of selling several nonfiction articles from one stint of research! Now that’s a bonus! So do we do this? How do we find three paying articles for three different markets from one pool of facts?

Let’s start with a topic. We’ll take home cheesemaking, something I actually do write about. We have a pool of facts here: the how to details of creating Ricotta cheese, say, from a pot of milk, for butter from a carton of whipping cream, and all that goes with that. So what can we do? Well, we can write an article that gives the recipe for making Ricotta cheese, list the utensils needed, and include a sidebar with purchasing information for specialty items required, such as rennet or bacterial cultures. We have a pool of facts here, details of the cheesemaking process in general and for Ricotta and butter specifically, with perhaps, some background history of cheesemaking over the ages.

So who are your readers? This is step two to creating slant. We have facts. Now…who cares? Here, clearly our readers are people who want to make cheese. Obviously. But…who are these people? Old ladies? Ten year old boys? Truck drivers? Housewives? Maybe all of them? Maybe none of them? And if, say, we decide that retirees, housewives and, amazingly, ten year old boys are our audience…do they read the same magazines? No. So why would you write the same article for all three of these groups? You wouldn’t. You slant it to each group of readers.

Let’s look at each group separately. We’re writing our first article for our housewives. These are woman who have chosen to stay home to parent or maybe work a part time job. They like to cook from scratch, but they have young children at home. They’re coping with laundry, toddlers, bills, and the telephone. So we write the article for that busy mom, offering tips on time management (if the phone rings right now, let the machine catch it or let Junior answer), and the economic aspect of the process. (For the price of a half gallon of milk you can end up with over a pound of fresh creamy Ricotta. If you compare prices, you’ll realize that your time is worth money here!).

Our retirees, however, are amateur gourmet cooks. They don’t care about the economy of home-made, they are interested in the conversational interest of presenting their home made ricotta with melon wedges and Prosciutto ham at their next dinner party. So there, you might mention the cutting-edge status of freshly made artisan cheese, and offer simple and elegant presentations for that fresh cheese. They will be the envy of their cooking friends! Time management isn’t an issue here, either, so you don’t bring it up.

Our ten year old boys are our next stop! These are the chemistry kids who love to wow mom with kitchen magic that she doesn’t know. Hey, cool, I can do something you can’t do!! There, of course you write for them, at their level. And you might do better with a butter recipe. Mom thinks it comes in packages. Ask her to buy you a pint of whipping cream next time she’s at the store, and make up a batch of butter for her. Bet she didn’t know how to do it! You can show her! Time management isn’t an issue here either, and neither is money. Doing a ‘magic trick’ that impresses Mom is the focus here! So you find your magazine markets for these three groups and send off your queries. These are different articles targeting different readers, so even if all three markets want to buy First North American Rights, you can still sell all three.

But how do you decide that you can write for those three groups when you first come up with that cheesemaking idea? Are there magazine markets for those three groups? What are they? Are there more that we haven’t thought of? Once you have that pool of facts and an idea of at least a couple of different slants, it’s time to go shopping.

Visit your local bookstore…one that has a large magazine section, and hopefully a coffee bar, too! Start wandering the racks and browsing. Go ahead and begin with the cooking magazines…obvious market there. But then…keep going. Hmm. Here are several family magazines and one of them features kitchen projects for parent and child. Check! What about the Girl Scouts? Do they have a magazine? This is a great Girl Scout or 4-H undertaking! Check! Here’s a magazine for Homeschooling parents. Check! Science and math rolled into one fun project! And here’s a back to the land magazine! Check! Slant it to the homesteaders with a cow or a goat! That’s a new slant. We didn’t have that one on our list!

With any luck, by the time you’ve had your fill of coffee or tea, you’ve listed ten or twelve potential markets at least. You may find that you can write for seven potential markets, not just three! Woo hoo! We are on a roll!

Decide on your best magazine choices and then…buy at least one issue of each magazine. No. You may not skip this step, not if you want to break into nonfiction quickly! Slant is very narrow. Your query letter will tell your editor if you know your magazine’s slant or not, and if you have not read the magazine…you are guessing. It is much easier to guess wrong than to guess right! So do your homework. Read the magazine. Ask yourself: Who are my readers? What does the editor seem to think they want to read? What is the style here?

This particular magazine seems to be read by wealthy older women, judging by the ads for cruises, expensive tweeds and colognes, and high priced cooking utensils. The tone is refined, with a rich vocabulary, very descriptive. So when you sit down to query the editor, you use a similar vocabulary and descriptive style, and your lead appeals to those dinner-party-conscious amateur gourmets.

This magazine has ads for play equipment, one day spa treatments, hand lotions. The editor seems to like breezy, upbeat articles about cooking after work, and several pieces are quite humorous. The vocabulary is about high school level. So your query is written with this vocabulary in a lightly humorous tone, with a nod to that overworked mom, and lead with the fact that home made Ricotta is cheaper than peanut butter and makes a great sandwich with jam. Even picky two year olds like it!

If you used the same query for our amateur gourmet…how far do you think it would get? The editor has the choice of rewriting the article to fit his magazine or asking you to rewrite it and waiting for you to do so. There’s a simpler solution. It’s called a rejection!

So pick your magazines, read them, and create your reader. This is actually a form of characterization! Look at the ads, the tone of the other articles, and build Ms. or Mr. Average Reader. She’s thirty two, with two kids (time tips, picky eater tips), worried about her weight (use fat free milk), and wants to enrich her kids lives with educational projects (have them help! Math! Science!). Then write your query to interest her, and you’ll interest your editor. When you write the article, you are writing to her. Make sure you keep her interest…and you’ll keep ours!

Remember – If you get your slant right, you’ll sell the article more often than not!