writing for flying magazines

[Lyman]

If one is not writing for the love of it, looking to get paid for it won't make your work all that attractive.

There's always Court Reporting.

[IO540]

Based on reports I saw of my magistrates' court experiences from the 1980s, court reporting is the province of the absolute lowest of the low vermin in journalism

I have preserved a couple of the articles I "earned" from my XR3i days They bear no resemblance to the proceedings at all.

[Danscowpie]

Just a tip from the great unwashed, take a peek at past copies of Pilot magazines, particularly those when James Gilbert was at the helm.

I am not supporting any individual magazine but this is the way an aviation publication should be run, not only to to make it fair and balanced, but more importantly to make it really interesting to the readers.

There are very few contributions these days which are of any interest, most follow the same very dull format without the remotest spark of anything worthwhile.

Beat that objective and you'll have my interest and that of many others.

[Shunter]

I wrote an article a few years ago detailing how the CAA were manipulating an established medical testing procedure in contravention of the manufacturer's clinical guidance and the Disability Discrimination Act despite having zero evidence to justify so doing.

Despite trying to make it as constructive and factual as possible it was met with strong aversion from anyone capable of making use of it. My conclusion was that the rags simply dare not address such issues and as such I have long since ceased buying any of them.

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

"take a peek at past copies of Pilot magazines, particularly those when James Gilbert was at the helm.

I am not supporting any individual magazine but this is the way an aviation publication should be run, not only to to make it fair and balanced, but more importantly to make it really interesting to the readers.

There are very few contributions these days which are of any interest, most follow the same very dull format without the remotest spark of anything worthwhile.

Beat that objective and you'll have my interest and that of many others. "

Ain't that the truth. James was outspoken, non-PC, and he liked that in his contributers. If he liked your stuff, he'd print it. If not, he wasn't backward in coming forward about rejecting it; you learn from that!

It made for a great magazine!

I'm not sure the H&S PC world of 2011 would support a magazine like Gilbert's 'Pilot'. But it's undoubtedly a poorer world for that.

[P.Pilcher]

I never thought that I could write for publication, but many of my flying experiences have been published in Pilot Magazine when James Gilbert was at the helm. I started shortly after I got my PPL in about 1972 when I was encouraged to have a go and so I produced a piece on my first experiences of foreigh flying when I flew a C150 on the other side of the Atlantic. There were no computers then, so I wrote it out in double spaced longhand and, as I can never get things right when I first put things down on paper, crossed out words and changed phrases several times before I was satisfied. Then I got out the typewriter and typed it out again adding more corrections as I went. I knew that the English grammar had to be correct and the spelling faultless or I would stand no chance, so with photographs and much trepidation, I put the whole lot in the post and to my great suprise, received a cheque within a week. With boosted confidence I wrote several other articles concerning my experiences obtaining my flying instructor's rating, when I was offered the opportunity to fly in an Airship and when I obtained my CPL. A few articles were rejected for perfectly valid reasons, but the advent of computers with word processing programmes made life for me so much easier! Towards the end of James Gilbert's reign I submitted, and got published a couple of "I learned about flying from that" pieces. I did a further one for his successor, who appeared to like it, but whether he published it or not I don't know. I just know that I never got paid for it! Great guidance has been given above for aspiring authors of magazine articles and more is available in the Writers Handbook which "all good bookshops" - and the one which refers to a certain South American river invariably stock.
It is, however essential to ensure that all writing is error free as editors do not have time to correct what is written - it will mean an automatic rejection. I tended to find that by the time I had written and then read and re-read and re-read ad infinitum any article I was preparing for publication, I knew it by heart! It is also so easy to e-mail an editor nowadays setting out a brief synopsis of a proposed article to see if they are interested.

P.P.

[flybymike]

I am beginning to wonder whether anyone on the forum hasn't had anything published. Even I managed three articles in Light Aviation about twenty years ago...

[2hotwot]

Genghis summed it up pretty well. The mags are formulaic, advertiser led and every flight test seems to be of yet another wonderful flying machine.... uninspiring I find. Which is why I sometimes pick one up in WH's thumb through and put it back again because I know that I read the same article last year but with different pictures. I'm probably too old and have been reading flying mags too long (yes I remember James Gilbert's Pilot and had an article published like all the other posters) and have noticed the lack of challenging opinions. Perhaps there is a space for a 'Top Gear' type faux-anarchic flying mag format but one written by some good creative journos.
I suppose the age profile of the flying / enthusiast reader-base (we are all getting to be a high-timer demographic) would oppose the likes of Clarkson although May is a potential flying author.
There is a huge opening for good flying writing and there is a paucity of really good texts out there from writers who can really connect with a pilot's experience of flight - example: why is there only one poem on flying that comes up every time (usually at aviators' funerals) to express the joy of high flight?
Sadly the wold of words gets worse as people indisciminately tweet and the like, because if you reduce any statement to 140 letters it will be banal; then the danger is that nothing becomes worth reading.

Bout time we started a decent flying mag Eh? (44 characters)

[IO540]

Perhaps there is a space for a 'Top Gear' type faux-anarchic flying mag format but one written by some good creative journos.

TG was, in the 1980s, a fairly serious "what car" programme, but today it is a complete farce, with zero informational value.

I suppose the age profile of the flying / enthusiast reader-base (we are all getting to be a high-timer demographic) would oppose the likes of Clarkson although May is a potential flying author.

Actually I suspect a large % of the readership are spotters, and people who don't fly anymore.

The advert-funded mags cannot afford to be controversial.

I recall, from the 1970s, when Bike Magazine slagged off the then new Honda Gold Wing (rightly so) Honda pulled all their advertising for a whole year. They came back eventually but only because Bike was the biggest mag of them all.

The US "Flying" mag takes this to its ultimate conclusion, with a shoe-licking review of everything. The value for decisionmaking is essentially nil.

Sadly the wold of words gets worse as people indisciminately tweet and the like, because if you reduce any statement to 140 letters it will be banal; then the danger is that nothing becomes worth reading.

The price of the "smartphone" is that much writing has become banal. The "convergence" of communication devices, made possible by the smartphone, has resulted in a lot of people using a smartphone for all their comms, so all their comms is basically banal rubbish, except for the few who have time on their hands to type up meaningful stuff on the crappy little keyboards.

That's why I don't have a smartphone. When I need to type up something detailed, it is never urgently needed.

BTW when you wrote Tw**t, the software replaced it with pprune. No idea why PP does this.

[Capetonian]

I suppose that writing for travel magazines and newspaper travel sections is a valid analogy here, and is something I know about.

In the same way that any airline could fill every flight every night by selling the seats cheaply enough, it is easy to get published if you write for nothing. This dilutes the market for the people who make a living out of it and will ultimately lead to a lowering of quality. The content of some travel magazines is almost exclusively contributed by amateurs writing for free or next to nothing even if their contributions are of a very high standard.

People will always be pleased to get into print for the vanity of seeing themselves published. This opens up a number of ethical arguments.

[IO540]

it is easy to get published if you write for nothing.

I would be suprised by that.

If one takes the circulation of a typical news-stand flying mag and multiplies it by the issue price, and subtracts the likely cost of the print run, the cost of paying for contributions, say £100 per page, ought to be not too significant.

So I cannot see their decisionmaking being guided by whether they get content for free.

People will always be pleased to get into print for the vanity of seeing themselves published.

There may be some of those, and I suppose everybody likes seeing themselves in print, but I think a bigger motivation in this field (flying) is to help others got more out of it. That is certainly mine. Nearly everybody chucks flying in within a year or two, and one of the main reasons is a lack of knowledge on how to go somewhere.

Travel writing I know nothing about, and I suspect there is a lot of free stuff involved. I think books like the Rough Guides / Lonely Planet get most of their ongoing content for free. But there is a vast amount of free travel info on google, anyway.

I don't see any way to keep a lid on any mainstream-activity information being online for free - regardless of what journalists might think of it.

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

There's an old truism in writing - write about what you know. I did that, but then I was just an occasional contributer and had that luxury. If you have to produce 'x hundred' words every month, formulaic is your friend.

Also, the aeroplanes I wrote about (though quite a lot of my stuff wasn't type-specific) being far from the latest hot ship, were way beyond the interests of any advertiser!

[AdamFrisch]

Well, I have to say that I find both Flyer and Pilot (especially Flyer) very badly designed and laid out. Today's Pilot was very nicely printed and art directed, but of course that didn't last. In Flyer one can quite often see photos culled straight from the web or promotional material, blown up so they pixellate and then sent straight to print. You wouldn't find this in a million years in the American mag Flying - at least they have some kind of quality control. I also like the various columnists in Flying - at least have some kind of point of view, even if they're not all Gordon Baxter.