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[grendel]

Well my other hobby is astronomy - what relevance has that I hear you cry - well I could say exactly what you are saying here about astronomy magazines, all pushing equipment costed in the £1000's all crying the same about the quality of the articles and lack of youngsters coming into the hobby.
For my sins I edit and publish our club magazine, costings are expensive - we were quoted £600 to produce 100 copies of our magazine - in the end it was cheaper to buy our own printer and pay for the inks, half the published price and we have the printer for the next issue too. prior to that I would do the printing at work for free (with an acknowledgement).
 The big problem is getting articles for magazines, people nowadays go on forums like this and document their progress online, then dont feel the need to get it together to put in print, we used to manage 4 issues a year, now we are down to 1, 50% of the issue is now sent electronically (reducing costs considerably).
I agree with a lot of the comments here, provision has to be made to make it easy for youngsters to get into hobbies (any hobby) articles are needed to help newcomers get going (especially the ones that recieved a new boat / kit for christmas).
Grendel

[irishcarguy]

Thank you Scoop, it sounds like you have a very good feel for what is needed. I will be looking forward to the next issue. It is hard to get people to write anything these days but it is still the best way to get to a wider public. Grendel you made a smart move to cut costs but don't be tempted to drop your print copy. It would surprise you how many people read it. Mick B.

[Colin Bishop]

As stated above, writing for a commercial magazine is very different from doing a forum build blog. With the blog you can proceed at your own pace as you go along and if you decide to do something else for a week or two then you can. The whole thing is open ended. Photos don’t have to be wonderful as long as they show the point you are trying to make.

With a magazine, things are a lot different. It has to stand on the shelves next to all the other magazines and look equally professional even if it is being produced on a fraction of their budgets. Contributors need to carefully structure their material, usually working to a specified word count and number of illustrations. Text needs to be properly spelt and grammatically correct (Editors don’t have a lot of time for re writing). Photos need to be of excellent quality, not only in terms of being in focus but also composed to give visual impact. They must also be capable of being cropped without undue loss of quality if the designer needs to save a bit of space on the layout. Obviously you will need to have all your material available before you start (series articles as used to appear many years ago are not popular these days) and if you are doing a two parter then the Editor will still want all the material up front for space planning purposes and to be sure that he/she isn’t left standing at the altar with part one only!

Above all, you are writing for a much bigger audience. Items on forums like Mayhem will typically be read by a few hundred people at most, both the main model boating magazines have a circulation of thousands – ten times as many.

Another point is that if you have written a detailed build blog, don’t assume you can rework it into an article for publication. Editors are not usually interested in publishing material which is already in the public domain, they like exclusives!

Don’t be put off writing for the magazines, but do recognise that you do need to be a bit more organised than when doing a blog. Both the main boating magazines are happy to offer guidance and help to prospective contributors but they won’t do your job for you.

Colin

[grendel]

we wont be dropping the paper copy - we did a poll and 50% wanted electronic, but 60% still wanted paper (ie 10% wanted both) we changed the membership forms so you had to opt in to a paper copy, plus have said that you may be charged a contribution toward postage (another huge part of the cost). When you look at the costings its a surprise the magazines on the shelves can be put out at such a cheap price (I know volume sales help bring costs down - but still..)
Grendel

[irishcarguy]

Hi Grendel & also Colin, if this kind of work was easy everyone would be doing it. What we do see today is some very bad writing in articles & such. It has a lot to do with how simple some seem to think it is. One must give credit to some of the excellent work we still see in the magazines we buy on a regular basis. Mick B.

[bj]

As stated above, writing for a commercial magazine

Colin

Note the larger font in Colin's text

[LarryW]

 HI,
      Large or small font, as long its about model boats,  and is in moden world, and is aimed at the scratch builders.....
       and the young ones ,   i think there is room for more improvment in both mags ,   nice to see Colin fighting is corner.
         i think he could edit a new mag....... better still if took on board BLUE BIRD........    winge over ....
        i will stick with on line sites........more info there and dont have to fork out wasted monnies....Larry...

[Colin Bishop]

Note the larger font in Colin's text

That's simply because I composed the answer in MS Word to avoid the risk of it disappearing when I pressed send! When you paste from another program you can't always be sure how it will come out. Just be glad it wasn't a combination of flashing and fluorescent!
 
Colin 

[Howard]

Well to get back to the tread I got my March Issue this morning and was very disappointed will be thinking of canceling my subcribion as contents is very poor again but this is only my view.  Am getting fed up of flicking though it in a few seconds instead of a hour or so good read.
                               Regards Howard.

[Colin Bishop]

Larry,
 
I was not fighting my corner, just pointing out the difference between a professionally produced magazine format and the blogs and other posts that appear on forums. If you went in to W.H. Smith and bought a magazine which was full of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and unstructured text with dodgy photos you would quite rightly complain. Yet that is something which is commonly accepted on forums. Also, the information you get in a magazine will have been edited and subjected to checks for correctness by the Editor but on a Forum anyone can post what they like whether it is right or not and mistakes are often not picked up and where they are there can frequently be an argument between people who are sometimes not well informed. In short, the internet is a free for all and you venture in at your peril. That is not to say it isn't useful but you do need to take what you read with a pinch of salt and cross check it wherever possible.
 
Colin

[Howard]

Would be nice to be able to go into a W H Smiths Colin and buy a copy of Model Boats Magazine as where I live I can never get a special issue as there say Scunthorpe is not big enough so have to make a 65 mile round trip to Doncaster To get each year so pleased I subscribe and get my monthly one in the post.
                    Regards Howard.

[Colin Bishop]

You could always order one, probably cost less than the fuel for the round trip.
 
We have some very good content coming together for this year's Special issue. It will be advertised in the May issue of the regular magazine.
 
Colin

[irishcarguy]

Hi Colin, I just got my March issue & it is as usual good reading. I will have to place a special order for the special edition. I have personally always found it is well worth the price, keep up the good work. Mick B.

[Howard]

Model Boat magazine is normally good thought it was Marine Modelling International we was finding poor lately I know i have and thats the one I was on about.
              Regards Howard.

[irishcarguy]

Howard I can't comment on Marine Modelling as I have never read it. I am thinking of getting a subscription to it though. Any mag that expands our scope & boat building skills can't be all bad. If like you say the content is not up to par it will pay the price in lost sales. Mick B.