OK you’ve written a bestseller or you have written an article how do you get it published and start to coin in all those royalties every month.

I will give you some of my experience in the feature article market and give you some suggestions in the book publishing market as well in another Hub I will write shortly.

I was always interested in writing and even more importantly reading anything and everything in books, magazines and newspapers from an early age. The Internet and Hubs were made for me as an incessant reader and writer.

To begin with I had become very interested in computing and software and how it worked and whether one piece of software was better than another. This interest led me to write review articles about software – photographic software like Picasa and anything by Adobe.

Here beginneth rule number one, choose something to write about that you know or enjoy. I enjoyed taking photo’s and manipulating them so I got to know very quickly what was good graphics software - Paint shop Pro, Photoshop and Elements family.

I read articles about software reviews and thought I can do that.

I wrote a software review on one of the above applications (I forget which) and sent it in via snail mail to two or three magazines that I read regularly. These were computer magazines that I was familiar with. I knew their style and I also knew the format of the submissions they used in articles. I included a self-addressed envelope in case of rejection and also supplied a short letter demonstrating what I could do and what I was prepared to do to get a break. It worked and I got my first article/review published in a national magazine whooopeeeeedoooo!!!

Since then I have had articles published in two national magazines and have been rewarded with a good living and enjoyment of doing something I really like. I have had reports and articles published in national newspapers and I also ghost write under various names for other people – sorry can’t tell won’t tell.

Rule number two follow the magazine guidelines or you will find your article going straight into the waste disposal system. Look at the front pages of the magazine and you should find submission details for unrequested or speculative articles. These may tell you where to send it, who to send it to, how they expect the article to be laid out and all sorts of other details that they want you to comply with. Remember they get lots of speculative articles and in order to get read and possibly accepted in the first place you need to get past this first hurdle – do not take shortcuts.

If they want it written in a Word document, if they want double line spacing between each line, if they want Jpegs if they want cream with there coffee ask them 'is that double or single cream' – just do it?

The editor or person who will commission the article will obviously give you enough information to get the article written and in a way that fits in with the overall image of the magazine - but you will be expected to be a self-starter and do your own research and make things happen.

Do it at least until your masterpiece is published and if you are so hot you will be the one getting asked about cream and coffee.

Next, rule number three if you get accepted stick to the publishing guidelines or sometimes it is referred to as the brief and of course any deadlines. Deadlines are sacrosanct, I repeat deadlines are sacrosanct you must meet any deadline or you will be dead as a writer – have I said deadlines are sacrosanct yet - you get the message. If you are writing an article for a magazine, which comes out monthly many writers, may be involved and it is important that all articles are ready to go to print at the right time. Make sure your article is not the one holding up the printing presses. You want to make sure that your article is not the one causing the hold-up with the magazine being available and on the magazine rack to get in the advertising revenues.

Last rule –rule four never, ever, ever, ever give up if this is what you want to do.