Avoiding a publishing train wreck
We’re into deadline for the March/April 2008 issue. Our “send to the printer” date is January 17. As usual, missing deadline is not an option.
Deadline for writers to get their articles to us is today, Thursday, Jan. 10. If it’s not here it may very well have to be cut from the issue. With all articles and most ads in-house, it takes about a week to put together the issue.
Speaking of articles that sometimes get cut from an issue, here’s an interesting, almost tragic, story about an article I cut from last issue. It holds an important lesson for any novice and wannabe writers who might be reading this blog:
BHM has often worked with non-writers and novice writers to help them tell their story in the pages of the magazine. The effort sometimes pays off with an intimate written account of a person in the process of establishing a more self-reliant lifestyle for himself and his or her family. We put a lot of work into just such a story over the last several months. Two BHM editors had invested many hours, numerous telephone calls, and Fed-Ex expenses working with a novice writer on how he built his own home.
I had scheduled the article to appear in our Jan/Feb 2008 issue, but I pulled it at the last minute so editors could work on it some more and make it an even better article. I rescheduled it for this March/April issue. How lucky I was to have pulled it, because a competing magazine printed the article we helped the novice writer develop in THEIR Jan/Feb issue. Our version was more in-depth, with more photos, as the other magazine had made their own editorial changes to the manuscript and shortened it.
A quick telephone call to that magazine’s editor revealed that he too had worked with the novice writer in question for the last several months, investing a lot of time and effort. In fact, the novice writer had previously tried to interest a third magazine in the article. None of the magazines or their editorial staffs were aware that the novice writer was working with any other publication.
I have now killed the article and torn up the “first rights” contract the novice writer had signed with us. There are no “first rights” to be bought. We will not deal with this novice writer again. I’m not mad at the other magazine either; they had been taken for a ride just like us.
But this is a lesson would-be writers need to understand. (Professional writers already do.) Do not submit articles simultaneously to various publications unless you inform the publications of what you are doing. And for heaven’s sake, do not take advantage of editors who work hard on your article to make you look like a competent writer when your article appears in print. Also, do not set up competing publications for an embarrassing publishing train wreck by secretly working with more than one magazine at a time on the same article. I was lucky to have pulled the article from our Jan/Feb issue so no collision of magazines occurred this time.
Writers who do this sort of thing not only destroy their own reputations when caught, but they hurt the chances of other novice writers by making publications gun shy of unknown talent. If you want to be a writer, or just get your story published, for gosh sakes be honest with the people who are trying to help you realize your goals.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Agh. I saw that article in the “competing publication,” and frankly thought it was a little thin. Too bad your version wasn’t the one that got published! I’m a book editor, and we have the same problem with authors making multiple submissions–which, as you say, is fine as long as they’re upfront about it. Better spell this out in the submission guidelines to derail future train wrecks!
January 14th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
We also have the occasional problem of plagiarism. My editors always google various sentences from article submissions to see if they can be found online. Just a few weeks ago, we caught a plagiarized article. The internet has become a valuable tool to help us avoid problems like this.