At least some of them have time periods you can work with (“If you don’t hear from me in six weeks…”)

But hey, I’ve got a product I’m selling, and they’re the customers, so I work with it. For the same reason, I format my stuff to whatever they want. I do need the money.

I’m afraid many magazines are becoming latticeworks of content around structures of advertising. Sheer economic necessity. They’re pushing hard copy through the mail while others are shoving data through wires.

There are still publications with a decent balance. National Geographic. Smithsonian. I don’t read many magazines, so I expect people out there can think of a lot more examples.

Maybe you and your writer friends should consider online publishing. I’m sure you’re aware of Kindle book publishing, but they’re also dabbling with short subjects.

I’m still pursuing the standard “agent/publisher” route for my second book, but am seriously considering electronic publishing for my old one.

With some exceptions, the magazines I’ve written to so far don’t work with proofs or galleys. They just print what I email them. I send .rtf files and .jpg illos so there rarely is a formatting problem. The ones that insist I send them text in THEIR editor format, or insist I follow a set of complex style guidelines, I don’t bother with. I figure I’m doing them a favor, not the other way round.

They are usually printed just as I sent them, unless they edit it for length, or remove a line they think might offend someone. Then, sometimes, they might email me back a proof to make sure I approve. I guess their legal staff makes them do that. I’ve even seen them print some of my obvious typos, unedited.

My two favorite venues were Good Old Boat and Florida Wildlife. The former is a mom-and-pop business. The latter was published by the State of Florida Wildlife. Commission and is now defunct. I’ve publihed several dozen pieces with those two over the last 10 or so years. GOB is thriving, they put out a very high-quality product, both in content and production, but it is becoming more specialized for the do-it-your-selfer. (“How to Install a Marine Head”, “Controlling Algae in your Water Tanks”, that sort of thing.)

I had very cordial relationships with the editors on both of those.
The former has now mainly limited their content to “fix-it” type articles, so they don’t print much wind and wave stuff any more, and celestial navigation (my only technical specialty) is rapidly becoming so obsolete no one is interested. I gave “Blue Water Sailing” a try with this one because they claim to cater to the rugged offshore cruiser dude who might want to add this technique to his arsenal.. AArgh, me hearties.

Many of the big-name magazines in this genre, and I suspect a lot of these types of narrow audience rags, are evolving into catalogs for gear salesman and service providers. The main content is advertising. The articles are just eye candy to attract eyeballs to the ads. The real customers that have to be pleased are the advertisers, not the readers.

In these specialized genres, magazines were often published by celebrities in the sport or activity, or individuals that just loved the field, like GOB. I guess today they would be called fanzines. But many are now becoming corporatized, taken over by management specialists that may know nothing about the field, whether it be sailing, rock and roll, art, or whatever. The absentee ownership only sees the magazine as a means to sell advertising, and the decisions on how its managed are made by people who have no knowledge or interest in the field the magazine covers, or any respect for its audience.

Instead of useful articles on how to learn or fix things, or philosophical and poetic musings on the Zen of the sport, they are filling up with fluff pieces like “Things to do in Ibiza”, or “Cruising the Jersey Shore”.

I belong to a boating writers association, (mostly power boat trade types, but some ragmen)and their newsletters are filled with horror stories about how freelancers are getting exploited by publishers. As usual, it’s all about the economy. Magazines often have very abusive practices, like they threaten to refuse your work if they learn you submit to more than one of them at a time. They don’t want the competition, and they know you can’t sell your piece to anyone else while they have it gathering dust, unread, in their office, sometimes for months before they decide to reject it.

Unless you are a well known and popular writer and can negotiate a good contract, magazines are starting to force writers to give up all rights in perpetuity to their work, so you can’t potentially resubmit it later somewhere else, or anthologize it, or sell it to another medium. Its getting harder for pros to make a living in the field, so free lancers like myself are taking over.

Like you say, you can’t get away from the politics. You can only pick sides. Its a jungle out there.

Make sure they don’t screw up your terms in the proofs. Way too common.

Have they accepted this already, or did you submit it as a proposal?