Books by SMW and ASJA
1954: 1954 Prize Articles: The Benjamin Franklin Magazine Awards
Edited by Llewellyn Miller, member of Society of Magazine Writers.
Publisher: Ballantine Books.
The Benjamin Franklin Magazine Awards were conceived and initiated by the Society of Magazine Writers and administered by the University of Illinois.
1954: A Guide to Successful Magazine Writing
Edited by Clive Howard, member of Society of Magazine Writers.
First sentence of the Introduction by Mort Sontheimer (SMW Member): “The article writer is forever chasing a greased pig.”
1961: Prose By Professionals
Edited by Terry Morris, member of the Society of Magazine Writers
Publisher: Doubleday
1965: Treasury of Tips for Writers
Edited by Marvin Weisbord, member of the Society of Magazine Writers.
Publisher: Writers Digest. Re-issued in subsequent years. Internet searches frequently skip over the original publication year of 1965.
1970: Writing the Magazine Article: from Idea to Printed Page
Edited by Beatrice Schapper, a founding member of the Society of Magazine Writers.
Publisher: Writers Digest.
The book was created by Society members to guide writers through the process of developing and publishing magazine articles. Every member of the Society received a free copy. Additional copies for members were available at a 40% discount. [Source: nl197102-ocr.pdf] This book contains actual images of query letters, other letters, and handwritten notes.
From the dust cover:
This book may come to be to the student of magazine article writing what Gray’s Anatomy is to the medical student. For here eight members of the prestigious Society of Magazine Writers have analyzed instructively their own published articles, from the conception of the idea through the final publication.
Here are dozens of exhibits of the working notes, the research sources, the rough and finished drafts, the actual query letters, the correspondence with the editors, the revisions, the problems, both personal and production, of getting the articles into print; and here are the final, finished articles, as they were published by eight top American magazines.
Tracing the articles through their production is fascinating reading for anybody, but for the serious student of article writing, such a study is invaluable in learning his trade. Here you can read Terry Morris’s account of the writing of the love story of Svetlana Alliluyeva. To get her story, Mrs. Morris had to use her wits and charm and track down her own leads and contacts. She did, and enabled McCall’s to scoop every other magazine in the country. Ted Irwin stayed on call for three weeks at New York City’s Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center to cover for Look the drama of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, which saves newborn infants from possible brain damage. Lee Hamilton has chronicled the painstaking research effort to produce a piece like Cryosurgery and recounts the human intrigue which makes even a scientific trade paper article a demanding job for a writer.
The only other casebook of this kind is now out of print, jealously guarded by collectors, but this book is no museum piece nor likely to become so. It is practical evidence of how eight magazine articles were conceived and written and sold, and it is firm and current professional guidance for the beginning writer who would like to do likewise.
Professor Beatrice Schapper, freelance writer and lecturer, founded and has led the Magazine Article Workshop of New York University for ten years. She also conducts that University’s special series, “Dialogues with Editors.” She originated and conducted a similar workshop for the College of the City of New York. In addition to being published in leading magazines, she is a contributor to two earlier Society of Magazine Writer books, Prose by Professionals and A Treasury of Tips for Writers. She is the only woman founder of the Society, has been a member of its Executive Council, and is a past secretary. She is a member of the Overseas Press Club.
1983: The Complete Guide to Writing Non-Fiction
Edited by Glan Evans, member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Publisher: Writer’s Digest
1985: The ASJA Handbook: A Writer’s Guide to Ethical and Economic Issues
Publisher: American Society of Journalists and Authors
Publicity appeared in Writer’s Digest and The Writer
Editor and co-author: Tom Bedell, ASJA member.
1990: Tools of the Writer’s Trade
Edited by Dodi Schultz, member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
From the back dust cover: “A indispensable reference guide for making the writer’s task easier, saner, more organized and more productive”.
1992: The ASJA Handbook: A Writer’s Guide to Ethical and Economic Issues (revised)
Publisher: American Society of Journalists and Authors
Editor and co-author: Tom Bedell, ASJA member.
Originally published in 1985. From an ad to ASJA members:
Our skinny little 1985 forty-pager has more than doubled in size and content and is packed with solid, nitty-gritty information no free-lance writer can afford to be without — the answers, for instance, to these questions:
- Who gets the assignment when writers have the same idea?
- What do you do when the publisher wants the advance back?
- When is work made for hire a perfectly fair arrangement?
- Where do you check out a book packager?
- Howdo you pursue a plagiarist without a lawyer?
- Why might you be lucky if your story’s lost in inventory?
The new edition of The ASJA Handbook brings you the basic principles you need in the writing business today – plus a distillation of the most useful solutions to sticky problems devised by the Editor-Writer Relations Committee over three decades.
2003: The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing: A Professional Guide to the Business, for Nonfiction Writers of All Experience Levels
Edited by Timothy Harper, a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Nine inches of information through the decades.
