PassageMaker Magazine Writer’s Guidelines
PassageMaker Magazine is a publication covering all aspects of trawlers and ocean
motorboats, and welcomes contributions from around the world. Our lifestyle
focus addresses the realities of cruising under power and passagemaking. We
want balanced articles that are creative, constructive, and informational—with
depth. The combination of your personal experiences with technical or
informative aspects is the type of story we are interested in. We reserve the
right to edit for clarity, organization, and length, and at times may work with
an author to create a more complete submission. If you are not familiar with
the magazine, you may want to read through a few back issues to familiarize
yourself with our style and various departments.
Publication
Platforms
PMM accepts articles for publication in PassageMaker
Magazine, on passagemaker.com in our Web Exclusive section of the site, and
in our new PMM Newsletter, which is
distributed electronically and is available on passagemaker.com. We reserve the
right to determine the publication platform of submissions.
Rights &
Payment
PMM buys All Exclusive Rights. It is important that manuscripts not be
submitted to other publications at the same time. If your work has been published
before, we may still be interested—but it is important that we know the details
of its prior publication. It is your responsibility to ensure correctness of
sources and accuracy of all material.
Payment depends on
completeness of material, complexity of the article, length, how much work is
required for it to be published, photos submitted and photo quality, and the
ultimate use of the article (web, print, or both). Payment is determined
following the production process of an article and is issued upon publication. Payment
ranges from $300–$950 for magazine feature articles, which can range from
800-4000 words in length and from $150-600 for Web Exclusive articles, which
should be no longer than 1200 words.
Queries
We encourage you to contact
us with story ideas as well as complete submissions. It may often be to your
advantage to send in your story idea before going through the writing process. Queries
can be directed to managing editor, Christine
Alhambra; please see her contact information at the bottom of this page.
Submissions
Submissions can be for
either the magazine or for the Web Exclusive section on our website,
www.passagemaker.com, and can cover any aspect of the trawler lifestyle, as
long as the stories involve the reader with the joys and frustrations of your
own experience both good and bad. We encourage general, travel, how-to, and
technical articles that embrace these boats and their systems, their crew, and
the places they travel. The goal is to write an article that is both
entertaining and educational; it is often best to write in the first person
perspective. Your submission may fill one of the following categories (but if
it doesn’t, please send it anyway): The Holy Place, Trawler Talk,
Instructional, Under Way, Travel, and Living Aboard.
Please provide an electronic
version of your submission and a paper copy if you would like. Please email the
submission to christine@passagemaker.com and use the mailing address at the bottom
of the screen for hard copy materials. We prefer documents in Microsoft Word
format and we work with Microsoft Word on a PC platform and Quark XPress in a
Mac environment. If your submission is
sent in from a Mac environment, please specify that information with your
submission.
We encourage you to include
sketches, charts/maps, and photographs to enhance and/or clarify your
submission. We can use your original art, as long as there is sufficient detail
for an artist to develop the artwork accurately.
Additional
Material
Please include a short
biography of the author(s), as well as a photograph for our contributor’s page.
Also, be sure to include contact information for the author including a
permanent address, phone number, and an email address if available. Please
include a word count with your document.
Response
Time
You can expect an
acknowledgement of the receipt of your submission within two weeks of sending
it. Please allow up to 60 days for us to either accept or return your material.
Due to the fact that we are published 8 times a year and have ongoing web
publication and are always receiving new material, we cannot guarantee
publication until we have reviewed a complete submission.
Upon acceptance of
your submission, you will receive from PassageMaker
our All Exclusive Rights contract, which you will be obligated to sign and
return in order to proceed with the publication of your article. Please allow at least a year for publication
and keep in mind that publication dates are never set in stone. While we have every intention of
publishing an accepted submission, our editorial needs may require us to
postpone publication or not to publish the article at all.
If your submission does not
meet our editorial needs, we will inform you of this decision, but due to the
volume of submissions we receive it is not possible to critique unaccepted articles.
Return
Of Your Materials
Following publication of an
article, we send back all materials unless otherwise negotiated. If you would
like us to return your material, should your submission not be accepted for
publication, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope with your
submission. Either way, keep a copy of your submission and a list of submitted
material for yourself. We cannot take responsibility for the return of
unsolicited material.
Photography
Guidelines
PMM prides itself on the high quality photography that is part of each
issue. Having quality pictures to complement an article is an important part of
the submission process. We understand
that not everyone has photography experience, but we have provided the
following guidelines to help you along.
Feel free to contact us if you have additional questions or concerns
regarding photography.
Whether you are writing a travel or project
oriented article, try to take pictures at every stage. It is great to have
detailed pictures, scenic photos, people pictures, and most importantly, send
us a picture of your boat and yourself!
Film
If you are shooting
with film, we prefer color slide transparencies, but can handle high quality
prints. All photographs must be sharp and properly balanced. If your camera has
a date stamp feature, please turn it off! Please identify each slide or print
on a caption sheet which should include complete captions for each slide as well as photo credits.
Digital
With the popularity and
quality of digital photography, we are fully equipped to work with digital
photo submissions. The publishing world dictates what we can and cannot use
with regard to digital images. For a complete review of digital photography,
you can read Bill Parlatore’s article, Going
Digital, in the May/June 2003 issue of PMM.
Although different cameras will have different options for settings, when you
are taking digital pictures for print, set
the pixel size, resolution, and any other setting on your camera to the
highest, largest option. Pictures for print need to be a minimum of 5inx4in at 300ppi. We can
open a variety of file types, but jpeg and tiff files are best. Again, please
identify and include complete captions and credits for each image on a caption sheet.
Please do not use captions as the
file name for your digital photos.
We are happy to consider
your photography even if you are not submitting an article, as high quality
photography and artwork is an integral part of our magazine.
Send all submissions and
queries to:
Christine Alhambra
Managing Editor
PassageMaker Magazine
105 Eastern
Avenue, Suite 203
Annapolis, MD 21403 USA
410.990.9086 ext. 38
christine@passagemaker.com