Q: I have a fulltime job but also write a weekly humor column for my local newspaper and write a weekly humor column for a television newsmagazine website (which I run). I have great confidence in my audience popularity and success as I've been published in New Jersey monthly for humor and am a former national champion after-dinner speaker (college).
Here's the big Q. I have access to contact information for every newspaper in America (thank you, job). How do I winnow this down to a list of 100 or so to query for self-syndication?
Joel
A: By chance, 100 newspapers would include pretty much every paper with a circulation of greater than 100,000.
Knowing that syndicates charge according to circulation size, the smaller you go, the less newspapers are used to paying. I would just take the top 100, adding any favorites form below that mark, and I would not spend a lot of time swapping out some of the big papers to make room for them. You should have a list of the papers you want to take a crack almost as fast as you can crack a joke. (I'll leave humor to you.)
