Selling, Not Writing

On page 3 of a new book on short-story writing by Della Galton, I came across a powerful statement: “Because writing is a creative pursuit, it’s easy to forget that it’s also a business.” The whole of chapter one focused on selling, not writing.

I’ve been so into the process of learning how to write a better story that I’ve not considered the business aspect at all.

Selling she says is about producing stories tailored to match the requirements of the target magazine: number of words, tense, preferred VP, tone, sentence length, percentage dialogue to narrative, use of adjectives / adverbs, twists ending ( or no twist ending ) etc.

Matching their preferred format is not going to guarantee a sale but it is certainly going to increase the chances of one, since failing to match their format risks an instant rejection.