The Atavist Magazine Freelance Market Guide
Created June 18, 2021; revised Aug. 29, 2024.
Fees: The baseline fee is $8,000 for feature stories, which are a minimum of 8,000 words. The magazine may pay more for longer stories, and it will cover expenses, when applicable. It also guarantees 25% payment for all assigned stories that do not get published.
Submit to: Editor-in-Chief Seyward Darby, seyward@atavist.com or Articles Editor Jonah Ogles, jonah@atavist.com.
Website: https://magazine.atavist.com
Owner: Automattic (https://automattic.com), the owner of WordPress.com, Tumblr and related software products.
Readership demographics: Anyone interested in reading longform narratives.
Frequency of publication: This digital storyteller “publishes one incredible true story every month,” according to its website.
What they look for in a pitch: (From the submission guidelines) “Atavist stories can be historical or current; they can be about crime or science, adventure or romance; they can be rooted in investigative reporting or in first-person experiences. What unites them is their narrative approach — our stories are plot- and character-driven, cinematic, the kind of yarns you don’t want to stop reading because you can’t wait to see what happens next.”
“The Atavist is sort of strange in that we’re a little bit subject agnostic. So the same guidelines that apply to any story — the need for a dramatic arc, colorful characters, and lots of scenes — apply to health stories as well,” says Ogles.
Health care reporters interested in writing for the magazine might want to read the following “personal favorites of mine that deal with health/medical issues,” says Ogles.
Do editors accept pre-pitches? “I’m not opposed to a pre-pitch on principle, but I generally find it’s not all that helpful for publication or a writer,” said Ogles.
Most common mistake editors see with pitches: The magazine is not interested in “news dispatches, think pieces, trend pieces, reviews, round-ups on a subject, profiles of well-known figures, and most any other topic driven feature,” according to its guidelines.
Lead time for pitching: The editors accept pitches on a rolling basis and try to respond within two weeks.