Knowable Magazine Freelance Market Guide

Fees: This digital publication pays flat fees. Writers are paid $2,250 for a Q&A, which typically is 1,500 to 2,000 words long.  A “short,” which is in the 800 to 1,200 word range, pays $1,500, and a “medium” article of between 1,200 to 1,500 words pays $2,025. The fees continue to climb with article length. Articles of more than 2,500 words are uncommon.

“We are sensitive to scope creep,” said Executive Editor Rosie Mestel. “And if the scope changes, we will talk with the writer about adjusting the fee.”

Submit to: Rosie Mestel at rmestel@annualreviews.org; Editor in Chief Eva Emerson at eemerson@annualreviews.org; or Associate Editor Rachel Ehrenberg at REhrenberg@annualreviews.org. Freelancers can find the editors’ short bios on the website.

Website: https://knowablemagazine.org

Owner: Annual Reviews, a non-profit publisher of dozens of journals whose articles review the current understanding of a topic, place it in historical context and highlight questions that remain to be addressed.

Readership demographics: People who are curious about how the world works and evidence-based ways of tackling problems in the world. They are not experts in science, and if they are scientists, there is a good chance they are not experts in the article’s topic. “So writers have to watch out for the jargon, and they have to define their terms,” said Mestel.

Frequency of publication: Editors aim for posting three fresh articles a week.

What editors look for in a pitch: Knowable covers a gamut of topics. Health care delivery all the way up to the molecular biology of health conditions is fair game, said Mestel.

Reported stories: Stories should refer to scientific studies, including at least one article from an Annual Reviews journal. “Quite often, a story is initially inspired by some Annual Reviews article, but it might be from just one paragraph in the article,” said Mestel.

The interviews should include one Annual Reviews author, “but as for the rest of it, writers go wherever they want for the story and interview whomever should be interviewed for that story,” she said.

Writers should give editors a few paragraphs explaining what the story is about, the angle, who are the people they are likely to interview and why the story is important to do now.

Q&As: These are typically with an Annual Reviews author who is an expert in an area that the editors or writer are curious about. “It could be anything from what are the weird rules in the United States about disposal of dead bodies, which we did one time, to what do we know about how neurons find the right partner to connect with during development,” Mestel said.

Writers new to Knowable should include links to a few clips and a short bio.

Do they welcome pre-pitches: “I think that’s reasonable,” Mestel said. “Maybe we already did it or we’ve got something in the works. So why should a freelancer waste their time?” But the pre-pitch should not be so skeletal or broad as to give no sense at all of what this story is about. “Asking if we are interested in a story about human fossils is not going to help us,” said Mestel.

Most common mistakes editors see with pitches: Common mistakes are pitching ideas that are too vague, that the publication has recently covered or that are too local, Mestel said.

Lead time for pitches: Editors meet to review pitches about every two weeks. Writers should feel free to send a followup email if they haven’t heard after that time. The time between acceptance of a story pitch and publication varies with the length and nature of the story. After editing is complete, freelancers need to prepare the final story for fact checking, which itself can take a week to 10 days. And then the story goes to a copy editor. Writers can invoice once the story is sent to the fact checker.

Easiest place to break into the publication: New writers will have the best chance pitching a Q&A or a short article of 800 to 1,200 words. Those articles need to be tightly focused.