Pitching Your Vinyl Story to IHTOV

by editor Michele Catalano

I Have That on Vinyl is no longer a paying outlet, at least not for the time being. I run this site myself and broke the bank trying to pay people but it’s just not feasible. I hope you will still think about submitting your stories and taking part in IHTOV, spreading the good word about music and vinyl.

Here are some things I’m looking for: personal narrative essays about a specific record, about collecting vinyl, about your favorite record store or why you buy variants or how you came to love a certain record. I want stories about your first purchase or your first visit to a record store. I want to hear about your passion for vinyl, for music, for collecting. I want odd stories about novelty records, and lamentations on greatest hits volumes and box sets. 

The possibilities are endless, really. No pitch is too weird or offbeat for me. I want variety on the site, not the same old records being talked over and over. I want to read about how your favorite record skipped when you were little and you still sing it that way. I want to know why you have three copies of the same Bjork album, or about that 45 you treasured when you were a kid. 

Interview your favorite record store owner. Tell me about handing down records to your kids and sharing the music with them. Tell me about making your own records, musicians. Talk to me about recording and engineering and mixing. 

The most important thing I want to stress is you do not have to be a great writer to write passionately about something you love. I don’t care about your credentials. I can work with you.

What I am not looking for: anything written with the help of AI (I run everything through a detector), AI images, or any more stories about records that skip or broken turntables.

Essays should be between 800-1200 words though I am not married to that length, depending on the subject. Pitch me at michele.catalano at gmail, with IHTOV PITCH in your header. 

If you are sending a whole essay, please use Google Docs and do not embed images in the doc. You can email the pictures separately. 

Thanks!