Getting Your Real Life Story Published

Anyone that has been online for more than five minutes has come across one hare-brained get-rich-quick scheme. They all sound so easy don't they? All you have to do is sit there clicking ads till your fingers fall off and whaddaya know, you'll be able to pay off your mortage before you can say 'What a Scam!'.

But the internet is not all bad. There are legitimate ways to make money on it, including traditional work that the internet has made easier to find or deliver.



Everyone has read those readers' true stories, haven't they? You know the kind:



•     My Partner is a Cheat

•    I Won the Lottery and Spent the Lot

•    I Left my Baby at the Checkout



The stories can be absolutely tragic; true live tales of love lost or parental bereavement. Sometimes they are triumphant tales of courage or endurance and sometimes they are stories of healing or success, but they all have one thing in common - true life stories touch the reader in ways that fiction cannot.



 What On Earth Would I Write About?





Have you loved and lost? Have you survived a life-threatening operation? Did you have to deal with the boss from hell? You have no doubt lived through several events in your life that have affected you deeply or changed you in some way.

And that is really the secret of a successful true life story. It is the tale of an ordinary person who has experienced something extraordinary and lived to write about it.



But I Can't Write!



Those magazines that publish true life stories will pay a significant amount of cash for them. The thing is there are only so many of true stories available and the magazines need new content to satisfy their regular readers.

Those considering selling their stories think about the polished articles that they have read in the past, and instantly doubt their own ability to create something similar.What they don't realise is that the real life stories you find in magazines have very likely been ghost written by an agency writer to get them ready for sale to a publication.


Selling Your True Story

Publications each have their own policy for processing reader-submitted content. Some offer a flat rate to anyone who has a half-way decent story to tell regardless of the significance or uniqueness of the situation. For example a story about surviving a catastrophic event might be paid the same as a story about a holiday romance.

However enjoyable the romantic tale is, it could not match the story of survival for thrill factor and suspense. It does not seem fair that both stories should receive the same flat rate.

Other magazines have a representative who is responsible for finding real life tales. The disadvantage is that these individuals have a spending budget and her job is as much about getting your story for as little amount of money as possible as it is sourcing new material.



So what to do?
Sell Your Story


Your best bet, whether you have a true story, featured article or even a <a target="_self" title="Sell Celebrity Photos" href="http://www.paparazzle.com">celebrity tip or photograph</a> to sell is to get in touch with a content agency. Having experience in the media business, the content agencies have friends and contacts in the editorial division of hundreds of publications. They know precisely what kind of story sells and who will pay the most for it. As their agency fee is commission based, it is in the agency's best interests to get you the best possible deal for your unique story and what's more, they will have professional writers on staff to help you get your story down.