Excerpt from interview by Jenna Glatzer of AbsoluteWrite
What’s a “niche” writer?
A niche writer is one who specializes in writing for one or more markets. Although the majority of writers work in many markets, a niche writer has build a name in a specific market.
For example, I frequently write for one genealogy magazine. Recently I did a Spotlight piece for Writer’s Digest on the genealogy market. The editors I interviewed recognized my name, even though they hadn’t worked with me before. Once you write a lot in a particular field, most of the editors in that field know your name.
You say that you originally fought against specializing, but later embraced the idea. Why?
I’m interested in just about everything, so to me specializing meant missing out–even though I saw the benefits. However, it finally dawned on me that I could specialize in more than one field. So, I picked the areas I like the most, and set out to build a name for myself in each of them. Today, I write almost exclusively about genealogy, history, computers and collecting.
Let’s say I have a passion for pets, but I’m certainly no expert on the topic. Can I reasonably expect to become a pet writer? How?
Absolutely. You know, most editors don’t expect writers to be experts, but they do expect writers to know how to find and interview experts. In fact, many new writers are surprised at how easy it is to find experts–and how willing they are to be interviewed.
But back to your pet example. Let’s say you want to specialize in writing about horses. One of the things you can do is join horse-related mailing lists. When you need expert advice, post a request to the list. People are generally very helpful. If they can’t help you, they often will refer you to someone who can. You can also use those lists to collect those great anecdotes that we all like to include in our articles.
As long as you can locate and interview experts in a field (and this is easy to do), you can reasonably expect to succeed in as a specialist in that field. My book covers how to best use mailing lists, and the other sources for finding experts.
