What constitutes an essay?
There are different kinds of essays but the common denominator is that it reveals the writer's opinions or personal experience with a subject. As you learned in freshman English class, an essay can be used to compare and contrast to issues, or to related one subject to the other or to relay an experience, among many other things.
Who wants essays?
A variety of publications seek essays. In newspapers, the op-ed pages are full of political and social essays. A lot of magazines have a "back page" essay, which is somehow related to the theme of that issue, and of course, to the readership.
Chicken Soup for the Soul spurred a keen interest in the personal essay. Similar book series followed including A Cup of Comfort. Literary magazines favor more scholar essays, sometimes call criticisms on authors and books as well as cultural or philosophical topics.
What do editors want in an essay?
First in foremost, the guidelines qualify their needs as "well-thought-out essays." A common mistake with new essay writers is that they can write whatever they think. Like that college English class, you need to have support for what you write, especially when writing an op-ed piece or a literary essay. Yes, your opinion matters, but the reader wants to know how you formed your opinion before he/she is going to agree with you.
With personal essays, you do rely on your personal experiences, obviously, but say you're writing a personal essay for a travel magazine. You want to make sure you have the correct name for that exotic local dish you ate at that hole-in-the-wall restaurant on such and such street. The more facts you have and side notes, the more interesting your essay will be.
The word count varies depending on the market. For most consumer magazines, the word count is 300-700 words. Literary magazines might push that to 1000-1200 words. The anthologies like their essays to be about 1000 words.
Especially in consumer magazines, the essays fall under "the departments," sections in the front of the magazine that are topic specific. If you are going to submit to them, be sure to read several issues to get a feel for the specific department, then submit to that editor. If no specific editor is listed, you can put "Attn: department name" on your proposal/query, and of course, explain your purpose in your cover letter.
Here are a few markets that publish essays: click on the names for more information
A Cup of Comfort - book series that seeks "real stories of extraordinary experiences in ordinary lives," editions are themed.
Angels On Earth Magazine - seeks first person stories of "heavenly angels and…humans who have played angelic roles."
Atlantic Monthly - a general interest magazine that says to check past issues to see what they want, has a web-only journal as well.
Chicken Soup for the Soul - a book series with themed editions.
Christian Science Monitor - seeks op-ed essays on politics, family, society and culture.
Creative Nonfiction Foundation - seeks complete essays (no queries) that are informative or instructive.
God Allows U-Turns - a book series that seeks "true faith-filled stories" about life, editions are themed.
Newsweek - seeks personal essays for both print and web editions of "My Turn."
Open Spaces - regional magazine in the Northwest but is not limited to topics of that area, seeks personal experience, observation, and humorous essays.
The Sun Magazine - a literary magazine looking for essays on political, cultural and philosophical themes. (also seeking a part-time manuscript reader: click here)
1 comments:
Thank you so much for this informative work. I love writing essays, but I figured that only college professors had any real interest in reading them.
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