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.
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, Natalie Friton; 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 natalie@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:
Natalie Friton
Managing Editor
PassageMaker Magazine
105 Eastern Avenue, Suite 203
Annapolis, MD 21403 USA
410.990.9086 ext. 30
natalie@passagemaker.com