Is There A Career In Fishing Journalism/freelance Writing?

[Sam]

PJ, that is a great biography.

We need to talk about the Potomac!!!!

Thanks for sharing the information.

You still need a better photo with a MONSTER bass!!!!!

Merry Christmas.

[basslover12345]

Basslover, do us two favors:

1. Check out this site and contact Bruce for his input on freelance writing. See his credentials and why he a success: http://www.bruceingramoutdoors.com/

Note his education.

2. Can you add your location?

Knowing where you are is very helpful when giving our input to you.

Bruce and I have been emailing each other, he's given me a lot of great advice

[basslover12345]

Look up Danny Barker....he writes free lance articles for several bass publications (i.e. Mike Long Outdoors, etc..) and is a really great guy. I'm sure he will give you some straight advice which will help you with your decision.

If this is what you really wanna do...go for it! But go in with your eyes wide open.

Can you message me his email?

[JayKumar]

If it's your passion stick with it, but it's a TOUGH road.

[coryn h. fishowl]

THat depends, has any body heard of ohhh i don't know: Bill heavey, David e. Petzal, Bill Heavey, Phil Bourjaly, Bill Heavey, Bill Heavey, Bill Heavey, Bill Heavey, or Bill Heavey !!!!!!!!!!!!  

[Paul Roberts]

Fishing writing caters to a relatively small audience. Parse out subsets of the fishing world and it gets smaller still. So, the big bucks just aren't there. You'll make some money that can help offset your fishing passion but you'll do it by sheer volume of published material. $5k articles don't exist in the field.

 

You'll need to be an efficient writer and producer of saleable article packages, which includes being a decent photographer, since magazines are 75% eye candy. Doing your own illustrations can help free up a busy magazine's house illustrator, but study their work as many mags like to keep a consistent look across their publication.

 

If your stuff is good you'll get published and, within fishing writing, there are a lot of markets in bass fishing writing as you are already tapping into. And you can get creative and make markets in regional pubs and other venues such as vacation rags. Get a current Writer's Market and check for any crossover. Most writers that make a "living" at it tend to have a regular gig, like a local newspaper column, and a supportive and gainfully employed spouse that can take up a chunk of slack.

 

They way I tackled magazine writing was to produce really good packages that I was confident could sell -and my sell rate was very high. But each were a bit of a project, esp with the old film cameras I used. Digital makes things much easier now. And I found the efforts not very lucrative in terms of $/hr. This may be fine but sheer volume added may serve better.

 

Some advice:

 

-Get to know your editors. Eventually I had some calling me. That helps a lot. Eventually you may be a writer they can rely on for quality work. For every 100 writers there is an editor looking for articles. But really good writer/photographers save editors tons of work. Everthing you can do to save an editor time is in your stead.

 

-There should be a point where you should not write for free. You are a professional and need to be paid. The only viable alternative to begging is to consistently produce good stuff. As you get better, good editors will pay you better.