Writing for Trade Magazines

Trade journals are magazines published for readers in a wide variety of industries.  In general, you'll find trade journals for manufactures, wholesalers, and retailers.  A number are also published for individual professions such as medicine, law and education plus the many technical fields that exist today.

  A lot of magazine writers consider trade magazines to be too commercial. When I suggest the idea to a student I often hear: “Most of those magazines bore me to death,” “I'm not much of an expert at anything.”  “Where do I get my information?”  “I don't know how to decide what type of material they use. “

Several thousand trade journals are listed in the Standard Rate and Data, business edition, available in most libraries (this is a publication for ad agencies that list the advertising rate of magazines}.  The listings contain the name of the magazine, the address and phone number and names of the editor, publisher, advertising sales manager, and others.  You will find several thousand magazines listed in Standard Rate and Data compared to a few hundred found in Writer's Market.

The listing in Standard Rate and Data contains a statement of policy, which includes who the magazine is published for, the editorial content, news, product information, merchandising and so forth.

When I really got into it I found it fascinating.  Trade journals take a lot more material than consumer magazines.  Unfortunately they don't pay as well, yet I've had some magazines publish two to three articles a month over a period of years.  When I first started, I did mostly outdoor and travel articles.  In fact my first article was about Yosemite national Park.  Before that one came out I couldn't sell anything. After that you couldn't stop me.

Because I owned a retail store at one time, I had expertise in retail merchandising and advertising. For years I wrote dealer articles, that is, articles about how one dealer did something especially well.

One of the stories told how a particular paint retailer established a rental art gallery within the store to attract foot traffic.  Another explained how a feed in farm store did an exceptionally good job with on-shelf merchandising.  All in all, I probably wrote 5000 plus of these articles over a 10-year period.

I became so efficient at this, that I could start at one end of a shopping center, visit every store in the center, take pictures, interview the owners or managers, and come out the other end with 10 or 15 articles and picture shorts that some magazines would buy.  I would then put these pieces on my tape recorder while driving, drop them off at my typist on the way home, and send them off to the magazines the next day.

A few years ago, I decided there might be a good opportunity here to write in depth merchandising pieces that dealt with contemporary problems facing retailers.

As a result, I made up a list of 200 retail oriented magazines that would buy merchandising articles.  These included such publications as Yarn Market News, Drug Topics, National Jeweler, Fishing Tackle Trade News and others.  I was able to sell the same article a number of times because readers of jewelry magazines do not read supermarket trade magazines and these readers didn't read retail toy store magazines and so forth.

I then created what I call my inventory, a list of well researched merchandising, advertising and demographic articles.  The titles on my first list included the following:

Merchandising for Today's Great Decade of Change:  This article detailed the tremendous changes taking place today that affects retailing: couples marrying later, working women, two income families, working at home, the overall changing demographic picture and several dozen other major changes.  It also explained how retailers could use these changes to keep their businesses ahead of the times.

The Advertising Workshop.  This article explained why retailers waste a portion of their advertising dollar by placing ads in the wrong media.  It also helped retailers plan and execute each stage of their ad campaigns in newspapers, television and radio. 

Sharpen Sales Skills with Communication Sales Training.  This article, detailed sales programs developed by behavioral scientist Thomas Knutson, Ph.D., and showed how to approach retail sales in five basic steps (1) the approach, (2) the search for customers needs, (3) merchandise presentation (4) a request for action, and (5) response to customer resistance.

Other titles in the series included Creating a Selling Image for Your Business, Capturing the Moving Market, Target Marketing for the Retailer, Creating Outdoor Advertising and more.

Getting Article Assignments

Getting the go-ahead for article is about the same in the trades as it is for the consumer magazines such as Field & Stream or Family Circle. Send for the magazines first out of Writer's Market. Go through them and see if they have articles on anything you are interested in, then keep your eyes open as you go about your daily business. 

At one time I ran into some very elaborate displays for back-to-school merchandise.  There was a display school with all sorts of back-to-school items and special displays down the aisles.  I contacted the manager and set up an interview to do an article on how they merchandise the back-to-school season.

Then, I wrote a query to a drugstore magazine and got a go-ahead.  They bought the article, and asked for more.  In the newspaper I found an article about the Dean of the pharmacy school at the College of Pacific in Stockton, California.  He wanted to give pharmacists in the San Joaquin Valley (where there were few doctors) the right to write prescriptions.

I again queried and got a go-ahead.  The article became the lead story in one of their editions.  As I went along I stopped asking to do the article on speculation.  And as for assignments, in most cases, I also ask for expenses.  In addition the editors started calling me to give out assignments

I had several magazines that bought everything I could write.  Finding articles for these magazines was actually easy.  I sent for the magazine and kept my eyes open.  As you become familiar with the magazines, many possible stories will pop from everywhere.  The trick is to read the magazines, look for stories you think might sell, query, and start keeping your name before as many editors as possible.  Over time, the rest will take care of itself.