THE ICE PICK

Writer’s Market Online, www.writersmarket.com.

This nicely arranged site comes up fast and gives you quick access to its features so you don’t waste time. Even if you don’t subscribe to the service, there is much available here.

The Featured Web Resource has links to writers’ groups, newsletters, and other websites of interest to writers, and is worth checking out.

The Featured Marketing Tip has information on targeting markets, query and cover letters, agents, manuscript formatting, mailing and recording submissions, writing tools, etc. For example, the advice on book proposals tells what to include if the publisher’s listing doesn’t specify what they want.

The Market Watch has publishing news about changes of editors, etc. and links to the publishers’ websites, plus marketing trends, societal changes, and postal information.

The daily Spotlight Market features different markets with full descriptions and links to the market. If you point to the dollar sign, it will tell you the pay rate. Stars indicate "high opportunity markets for freelancers."

The online Writer’s Encyclopedia and entertaining and informative "Ask the Agent" column by Sheree Bykofsky will help answer questions you have.

If you subscribe to the service, you get access to daily updated listings for thousands of markets and hundreds of literary agents. Searching the markets is easy by type of market, market name or website URL if you know it, by genre, by location if you want something local or regional, or by fiction or nonfiction subject. You can search for only newly listed markets or those markets that have changed their information in the last two months. You can qualify your search by such things as pay rate, whether they accept simultaneous submissions, pay on acceptance or not, buy reprints, or by kind of rights purchased. You can even find markets that publish online exclusive material or accept queries by phone, fax, or e-mail. For book publishers, you can easily find those that accept unagented submissions if that is what you need.

Each market entry is laid out very clearly, and you can quickly locate what you are looking for. The information is like that in the book, or check "Sample listings" on the website to see the kind of information available.

A Submission Tracker is provided for you to keep records of queries, submissions, rejections, and successes. This section is protected by the Secure Sockets Layer encryption for your safety and privacy. You can list and describe a manuscript and then search for a market to submit it to, or you can choose a market and then search for one of your manuscripts to submit to it. If you use the Task feature, it will remind you of deadlines, etc.

You will be alerted to changes in markets in your Favorites Folder and to any updated markets that may fit your personal profile. And you can change your personal profile at any time.

So, how much does it cost? For $29.99 a year you can have access to the most up-to-date marketing information available. This comes with a thirty-day money-back guarantee if you change your mind. Or you can subscribe for $2.99 a month and cancel anytime. For $39.99, members of Writer’s Digest Book Club can get both the online service and the Writer’s Market book. Or, if you’ve already purchased the book, you can get $10 off the subscription price.

The question always is, if you buy the book, do you need this online service? (Or vice versa.) Well, individual preferences vary. Personally, I find it faster and easier to work with printed pages than flipping back and forth on screen, but you lose the "up-to-the-minuteness" of the website, with its changes in editors, addresses, closed markets, etc. And some listings appear only on the website, e.g. Absolute Magnitude, so if you can afford it, a combination of the two is ideal.

If you’re trying to sell a story or get a book published or you are looking for an agent, you owe it to yourself to check out this website and see what it can offer you.

{Published in SF and Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Feb. 2002.}