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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
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The Writer’s Market 2000
Reviewed by Maureen Murray
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The Writer’s Market 2000 (100% Updated!) is a publishing, reference guide for professional writers; a CD-Rom with a Submission Tracker is included in the $49.99 price. (I’ll just say at the outset that you can’t beat the Submission Tracker if you’re seriously trying to publish your work. This thing makes more sense than a checkbook.) Both the print reference guide and the CD-Rom give you accurate, up-to-date, and thorough information about publishers, agents, and editors. The cover of the book boasts the numbers – 1,050+ new publishing opportunities, 1,300+ consumer magazines, 1,150+ book publishers. The Writer’s Market also goes over the etiquette of publishing. The motto being: "The best way for busy writers to get along with (and flourish among) busy editors is to develop professional business habits." |
 The Writer’s Market 2000 Edited by Kirsten Holm Hardcover - $22.39 w/CD-ROM - $39.99 Published August 1999 Writers Digest Books |
The Print Version
Although most of the print Writer’s Market contains publishing listings, the front part of the book is comprised of essays by writers and editors. I thought I would skim through this section but found myself engaged by an interview with Jane Smiley, then poring over examples of good and bad query letters that were marked up with editors’ comments.
The opening essays also offer practical information, with titles such as "Selling Reprints and Rewrites" and "How Much Should I Charge?" The editors of Writer’s Market walk you through the submission process, unabashedly listing the most basic information, such as the Web site of the U.S. Postal Service. They even remind you to use paper clips instead of staples! Submitting writing, sending a query letter, finding an agent – all these activities feel like overwhelming chores for most writers. This guide takes the edge off and gets you concentrating on the steps rather than whether your work will be accepted or not.
The Electronic Edition
The electronic version of Writer’s Market is a resource database that you can easily install on your computer (as long as you do not own a Mac, which I do!). As I said, the Submission Tracker is probably the best feature of the entire package.
Each magazine, book publisher, agent has a record card with submission and general information. You can add to those cards your own writing information: what date you submitted a piece to a specific journal, whether it was rejected or accepted, when and how much payment arrived.
Searching by category is pretty easy, too. For example, you could search for literary journals, then click on Mississippi Review, read about their deadlines, get the editor’s email address, and also look at your own submission information for that journal. Or you could search for one of your stories and review where and when you submitted it. This program makes being your own agent easier.
The electronic version also includes a Writer’s Encyclopedia, which is informative, if sometimes elementary. I looked up "fiction," from there "first novels," and discovered interesting publishing information: "While approximately five thousand novels are published each year, only one to two hundred on the average are by previously unpublished authors." Also, "Booklist and Library Journal review first novels." One of the greatest strengths of both versions of Writer’s Market is this kind of insider’s information.
Writer’s Market’s greatest weakness really surprised me: it offers very little information about publishing on the Web. The printed version does have two interesting articles about writing for online journals but then lists less than ten zines. The electronic version, as far as I could tell, did not catalogue any zines, not even the ones in the book. I could not find the obvious places — Salon, HotWired, Word. In the May 1999 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, the cover story is "101 Best Web Sites for Writers." You can check out that listing by going to www.writersdigest.com, but the lack of Web sites in the electronic version is a real disappointment.
Even without a zine directory, the Writer’s Market is worth the $49.99.
Maybe those 101 Best Web Sites could be pasted into the 2001 edition.
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