I'll revive this thread rather than just send a PM since there may be others with the same question.

I've been getting the itch to get back to freelance writing, and have to make some choices. I have already visited the online version of the Writer's Market that Katlaughing recommends, but I have a couple of questions that follow the use of this online resource.

Are those of you who have been writing recently still sending all of your queries as hardcopies, with tear sheets or photocopies of your published work? Have any of the places you work with switched over to accepting email queries, and do they consider PDF files or links to published work in lieu of tear sheets?

Maybe it's just the cool weather that has finally inspired me, but I've been thinking about this for quite a while. I write for a living, but within a relatively restricted environment (a university library). I have a lot of nonfiction that is unrelated to libraries that I'm planning to work on. Last year I was pursuaded by a colleague to contribute to a textbook and spent the winter and spring writing the Chapter from Hell, and for not much pay (it was for a book in a series: my portion covered sports and recreation. Recreation I love to write about; my interest in organized sports won't fill a thimble). I'd much rather write on topics that I am fully interested in and that are much shorter than that. I gave myself the summer to recover from that last adventure, and now that the air is a little crisp I'm ready to get to work.

SRS