Yet another way to find markets!

For me, one of the most aggravating aspects of being an expat freelancer is not having ready access to most of the magazines for which I'd like to write. I'm always stocking up when I go home, or asking friends visiting Paris to smuggle some over when they come. But recently I had an experience that showed me a new, simpler way to find/obtain markets: ask your source.

Earlier this year, I sent a query to four popular pregnancy magazines - and got dinged from all of them. (Though I did receive a rather nice rejection from the editor Pregnancy magazine, who explained that they were already running an essay on my intended topic.) Anyway, I searched and searched on the internet for other appropriate magazines, but nothing seemed to fit the bill. Finally, I gave up. But a few days ago, I received an email from the secretary of one of the sources I'd interviewed for the query, wanting to know the status of the article. I told her that it had been passed over by four magazines, that I'd run out of ideas on where to submit it, and did she have any ideas?

Well, she did.

She gave me the name of three regional markets that clearly fly under the radar of most big magazine databases and offered to send me a copy of the magazines. So, now I'm working on revamping the query for these local markets. Fingers crossed that something comes of it. But even if these pubs don't work out either, I'm really pleased to discover that there's no shame in asking a source for ideas on where to submit a pitch. As a matter of fact, I've decided to ask all my sources for this query about pregnancy magazines in their regions!