I’ve had my external hard drive out this week. I’m amazed at all the things I’ve kept that I thought I’d thrown away. In amongst the junk and debris, I found an article I wrote for my friend Gary at Bubblecow about 10 years back. I’m going to republish it here because I think it stands the test of time and the pointers are rock solid. See what you make of it:
Funny how you never really study how you work until somebody asks you to write about it - which admittedly is not very often.
I am the editor at Skin Deep magazine. It’s the best selling tattoo magazine in the UK, has been for some time and will hopefully continue to be so. As a niche title, we have big numbers behind us sitting at 22,000 copies a month in the UK alone and lurking at around 46,000 monthly internationally. When Gary asked me to write a guest post on what it takes to get published in the magazine, I figured it would be easy, but now I come to study it - and myself - maybe it’s not.
Let’s get the negative out of the way first. Sometimes I think I’m too hard on people but I do treat everybody the same, so it is a fair harshness. I would venture that most of this stands for other magazine editors too. I feel some bullet points coming on:
If a covering letter has spelling errors in it, it goes in the trash. Period. If you can’t be bothered to make sure your first impression the best example of how you work, that’s a mighty poor indication of what is probably to come. This is not a shotgun reaction. It’s a learned behaviour on my behalf after many years of trying to help people along and getting stung in the process.
If you’re an experienced writer, you should be able to prove it by providing me with links to your work. I don’t want to download files - neither do I want to open anything you have attached that has the file extension .doc. I want to look online - preferably at your blog or another webspace because it’s fast, immediate and safe for me to do so. This might simply be something that I’ve made up over the years as good working practice but it works for me.
Over the last two months, I have had at least one letter every single day from graduates who have completed some kind of media course. Most of them a) cannot write a decent cover letter b) expect to paid the kind of fees professional writers still dream of or c) are looking for work experience when they live 400 miles away from the office with no explanation of how they might pull this off. There is also d) which is starting the correspondence with ‘To whom it may concern’ instead of my name. This simply says to me that you are chancer and have plucked the magazine title out of thin air in the hope that I might be feeling kind that day because working for the magazine looks like a good time–which it is (but it’s not free).
A degree means nothing to me. I don’t know if any of my writers have a degree or not. I’ve never asked. What I do know is that all of my writers can write, supply clean work nearly all of the time and get on with the job in hand. I have taken them on as ‘permanent freelancers’ because they know their subjects well, write entertaining copy and give me very little grief on a day to day basis. Whenever I am asked for advice about getting ahead, my response is simple. “If you want to write, write. Nobody needs to teach you. You need to learn by writing.” In a word, to answer the age old question, my opinion is that you are born not made. Made writers are stale, dull and have formula. Born writers make it look easy and that’s what I want because a consumer magazine worth its salt needs to be entertaining in exactly that manner.
Having said that, somebody I rejected once actually wrote back to me and said he thought I was wrong in my decision. I re-read his submission, we talked, we worked it out. Ten years on, we are great friends and work often and well together which goes to illustrate exactly how much all of this can change in the blink of an eye. I am not infallible and have been known to be wrong. It happens–such is the irony of what I’m writing.Assuming you’ve managed to navigate all of the above successfully with me, the last negative point is timing. How long do you wait before you ask me again about something because I’ve not replied yet? Sadly, this is one of the dark arts. You can never win. Sometimes I will see your email come in and respond immediately, sometimes I’ll be in the middle of something and will leave it until later - this can sometimes be a week or more. If you’re looking for an honest answer, I think four to five days is a reasonable amount of time to wait. Mailing me later that same day to see if I got your earlier mail won’t help but I won’t throw all of my toys out of the pram over a little prompt.
Having written all of that - and I must point out that when I use the terms ‘me’ or ‘I’, I think I speak for a lot of editors of consumer magazines - I see that it is almost impossible to tell you exactly how to approach anybody for publication. There are no hard and fast rules but the ones I expect everybody to cover, surely stand for all magazines: being polite, respectful and knowing what you bring to the table are good ways to get the door open. Sometimes I think because we are a tattoo magazine, people pay less attention to the detail, but at its core, it’s a professional international consumer title with incredibly high production values. I would gladly accept any challenge from any consumer magazine to find higher production values than ours. It’s a hard rule that any picture that is not 300dpi will be rejected regardless of its composition. I only wish there was some hard and fast rule when it came to writing.
Maybe there is. Can I describe a 300dpi article for you?
Primarily, in a first read through, I want it to flow like it’s already been edited. Contrary to popular opinion, I am not here to correct a writers every move. I am here to direct the magazine and orchestrate it so that it hangs together as a whole and this is where I think a lot of people make mistakes in their submissions. My opinion is that, as a professional writer, you should expect very little to be changed in the final edit. That’s not to say I don’t tweak things - in fact, I watch my writers very carefully to make sure they always look good. When they look good, the magazine looks good and I look good. This last fact is obviously very important.
This may sound pretty basic and obvious but you’d be surprised. You really would. I welcome writers with open arms, a hot mug of tea, the best pay I can muster and a lifetime of loyalty if they can navigate these simple rules. If you’re really good, there are also biscuits.
We live in harsh times for writers. The old rules have changed beyond recognition. Our office is in an old school house in a tiny village in North Wales but one of my crew lives in Toronto. I enjoy reading her submissions, hardly ever have to edit bar English/American corrections, she is on time and we have fun working together. This is how it should be and this is how it can be. The point here is that I’m not confined to a 50 mile radius of the office for my staff choices–hell, even I live 300 miles away from it–your competition is now the whole planet.
This is what I look for in every single one of my team - and this is what I get. We run a four week schedule with thirteen issues a year, so there is very little time for carrying anybody and their baggage. Are you expecting to be carried? Are you expecting somebody else to do the work for you? If you even slightly suspect that you identify with this category, it’s time to change and be honest with yourself. The rules are there to make life easier for everybody. 2500 words means just that, not a variation of a theme.
To wrap up, here’s my advice to those looking to help themselves get published:
Blog like your life depends on it. The more you blog, the more fluid you will become at writing for magazines. It will hone your own editing skills, keep you writing regularly and hey, everybody enjoys a great blog don’t they? It’s also a great way to find your unique voice on your own terms.
Finally, never under-estimate who you know over what you know and vice versa. Talent will only get you so far. Knowing somebody will also only get you so far. If you can find a way to balance the two, you’re already two steps ahead of everybody else trying to fill the space.
Hey, I never said it was fair, but if you read between the lines of this, you’ll find a way through many an editorial door. Editors always need writers and there’s not one reason on earth why it shouldn’t be you. There’s an issue coming out in the next four weeks and no reason at all for you not to be part of it if you’ve got something of value to the audience.
Welcome to life in the twenty first century.