Updated 1/22/26
In most cases, not only is nonfiction easier to publish than fiction, it's lucrative. Professional rates of several hundred dollars up to a thousand for features are not unusual. And some magazines with substantial circulations, like Cosmopolitan, are willing to accept pitches from freelancers.
If you are a fiction writer, don't be discouraged. Personal essays are well within your grasp. They have the same structure as short fiction - a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you can write short fiction, you can write a personal essay.
For more nonfiction publishing opportunities see:
The New York Times Wants Your Personal Essays - Paying market
27 Magazines that Publish Freelance Book Reviews - Paying markets
Freelancing: Getting Paid to Write Nonfiction Articles
(Image: Flickr)
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Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan is looking for personal essays, reported pieces, and cultural criticism for the opinion section. From the editor: "Your pitch should center on an opinion that you’ll justify with thoughtful reasoning, insightful facts, and strong resources that support your viewpoint. Show me how your piece will help readers make sense of and better understand people, events, ideas, trends, or culture. Topics can range from irreverent pop culture rants to nuanced takes on public policy. Whether it's niche or mainstream, beloved or unpopular, timely or random, I’m down as long as you’ve got a clear opinion and a strong, thoughtful argument to back it up."
Payment: Rates typically start between $250-$350 and can scale up depending on the scope and requirements of each piece. Ideal word count typically ranges from 600-900. Send an email to patrice dot peck at hearst dot com. In the subject line, write PITCH: [A Possible Headline For Your Piece]. Include the projected word count and a feasible deadline. Several pitches in one email is fine as long as they each have the info above. And if you’ve already written the piece, feel free to include it.
Read more here.
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Insider and Business Insider
Insider and Business Insider are publications looking for journalistic articles with "heat."
"We at Insider want great, heat-seeking narrative journalism. Ambitious pieces with character, color, tension, and drama. Stories that trace an obsession, unlock a secret, or expose some WTF-level insight about how power works. Ripping yarns, stories of true crime, of loves lost and won. Rivalries in sports, tech, and entertainment. Chronicles of dreams realized and broken. Politics, entertainment, business, international intrigue. We're into all of it."
Payment: Who Pays Writers reports payment of between 20 and 35 cents a word.
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Longreads
"Longreads is dedicated to publishing and sharing the best longform nonfiction storytelling on the web. Personal/Critical Essays and Columns These pieces typically run between 2,000 and 6,000 words, but can be longer or broken up into a series depending on the length and subject matter. Personal essays should be submitted on spec. We look for smart, original angles and fresh, unique voices."
Payment: $500 per essay or column.
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"Lyrical essays, researched essays, creative non-fiction, analytical pieces – we publish them all. We like new and creative ideas, and we like you, the writer. Don’t be afraid to let yourself shine through in your writing. Griffith Review is not an academic journal (although academics may be able to obtain research credits for their writing), and while we often tackle complex ideas, we are committed to giving our writers space for their own voice. Give us your provocations and opinions, so long as they are considered and backed up." Pieces generally range from 2,000 to up to 5,000 words, unless previously negotiated with the editors. They publish some fiction as well.
Payment: Negotiated.
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"The Point is a magazine of philosophical writing that embodies two distinct but complementary convictions: on the one hand, that humanistic thinking has relevance for contemporary life; on the other, that our lives are full of experiences worth thinking about. We welcome submissions for our print journal, which is published three times a year, and for our website, which is updated continuously.
Each issue of the magazine has three main sections: ESSAYS, SYMPOSIUM and REVIEWS. Our essays blend memoir, criticism and journalism to examine the ideas and beliefs that shape our world. The symposium is a collection of responses to a question chosen by the editors (e.g., What is protest for? What is marriage for? What is privacy for?). Reviews can be about pretty much anything at all. Print essays run between 3,000 and 6,000 words; reviews and symposium articles are of medium length (1,500-3,000 words). We also accept ideas-driven reported pieces for our CORRESPONDENCE section (3,000-5,000 words). The website runs articles of any length but preferably of about 1,500-3,000 words."
Payment: "Contributors whose articles appear in the print journal will be compensated."
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"We are primarily interested in publishing short, left-leaning political satire, non-political comedy that speaks to the current moment, and earnest non-comedic essays from a Leftist perspective. We typically don’t publish pieces over 1,200 words unless it’s REALLY interesting. Is your piece really that interesting? If you’re wondering, it’s probably not."
Pitches only.
Payment: $50.
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"We publish first-person essays on life in the Rust Belt and northern Midwest that resonate with a regional audience. We’re looking for work that expresses what reporting can’t, that narrates an experience, event, or aspect of life in a personal way. We publish original reportage in the range of 1,200-3,000 words—though we’ll bend those numbers for the right piece. We’re partial to stories with a compelling narrative and a strong sense of voice (don’t be shy about using the first person)." Belt also publishes poetry, and photo essays.
Payment: Features $300-$1k+; Personal essays $100-$200; Poetry $25-$50; Photo Essays $250+.
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Long-form narrative nonfiction. "We want stories people want to read to the very last word, propulsive can't-put-them-down stories, stories people want to recount to their friends. We want surprises, adventure, intrigue, nuance, and above all humanity. We’re looking for stories that need to be longer than a typical magazine feature, anywhere from 8,000 to 30,000 words. Payment rates vary by project. We offer a story fee plus, if applicable, a budget for expenses.
Payment: "Our baseline story fee is $6,000. We guarantee 25 percent payment for all assigned stories, because that’s the equivalent of our kill fee."
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The Yale Review accepts pitches on a rolling basis for essays and criticism on a wide range of subjects, from literature, art, history, and politics to film, television, music, and internet subcultures. "We’re seeking diverse, sharp, intelligent voices driven by curiosity and verve—writers who take apart and reconstruct their subject in surprising ways, who unravel the inner workings of a reader’s mind, who deal with strong characters and complex questions, and who are unafraid to lean into unexpected juxtapositions and discover new connections."
Payment: Between $500 and $1,500 for print nonfiction (around 3,000–5,000 words), between $200 and $500 for online pieces (around 1,000–3,000 words), and $75 for poems online or in print.
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GraveSite
We’re seeking journalism, personal essays, and other non-fiction writing on death and all its intersections with life, especially — but not exclusively — in our five core coverage areas:
- Life: Service-focused reporting on planning and anticipating death, dying, grieving, handling the logistics of death, supporting a grieving person, and related health and wellness topics. Personal narratives from deathcare workers and everyday people — think NYT’s “Modern Love” but for death.
- Power: In-depth narrative, investigative, and data-driven reporting on death politics and policy (e.g., bereavement leave, medical assistance in dying), movement and justice work, and corporate greed and overreach in death work and adjacent fields.
- Futures: News, deep-dive analyses, explainers, and probes into research and advances in dealing with death and grief (e.g., in the death tech and longevity spaces), as well as evolution in death attitudes, practices, and roles.
- Belief: Perspectives, news, and features on religious and spiritual beliefs, philosophies, traditions, and practices surrounding death and grief. Think Aeon/Psyche’s galaxy-brain explorations but for death.
- Culture: Perspectives, analysis, reviews, and commentary on death’s interplay with film, TV, music, sports, gaming, fashion, celebrity, the internet, and pop culture. Like Vulture, but — you guessed it — for death.
Payment: For professional journalists, we pay a flat fee of $400 USD for quicker-turn news and trend pieces (fewer than 800 words; at least one original source); and $1,000 USD for more deeply reported features (about 900 to 1,300 words; 3+ sources). We pay an honorarium of $200 USD for personal essays, criticism and analysis, commentary, and related opinion-based writing (fewer than 1,000 words; interviews not required but welcomed) by writers, both emerging and established, and non-writer humans, as well as death scholars, researchers, clinicians, policymakers, lawyers, and other workers.
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"We welcome proposals for short- and long-form news articles, community op-eds, personal or creative nonfiction essays, theoretical/political analysis, calls to action, multimedia content, and hybrid concepts (documentary poetry, photo essay), and more."
Payment: Ranges from $150 for opinion columns and reviews, $250 for shorter explanatory stories, videos, or photo essays, to $0.50/word (or more) for longer-form investigative and time-intensive features.
