Exercise 22: Develop a publishing plan

Target Market and Publications

There are many local weekly and monthly publications such as:

• County magazines such as Devon Life, Dorset Life, Marshwood Vale magazine
• Weekly newspapers such as Bridport News group, View From newsgroup
• Online magazines such as:
• Regional online magazines:
  • West Country Magazine ; https://twitter.com/westcountry_mag
  • Dorset Magazine, http://www.dorsetmagazine.co.uk/home
  • Devon Life, http://www.devonlife.co.uk/home
  • Somerset Life, http://www.somerset-life.co.uk/magazines

Understanding the potential clients’ needs

Potential clients will need to see a wide range of images in .JPG format which are clear and concise.  Images need to tell a story and lead the reader through easily and clearly.

Preparing the material in an appropriate way

The usual format for submitting images to a magazine or newspaper is in JPG format.  These can easily be read and inserted into page layouts whatever the publication.  It’s important to make sure you don’t send images saved in other types of format such as TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) or PSD (Photoshop) as this can make some images unreadable.  Also, when you supply images in either in TIFF or PSD the layers are still visible and the whole image could be changed without notice.

Images should be captioned, if required by the publisher, using the principle – who, what, when, why formulation.  The publisher might well need a short 250 word synopsis to accompany the images if the article has been sent on spec in the hopes of getting it published.

If covering an event has not been commissioned then it needs to be supplied as soon after the event as possible, even if the magazine is a monthly publication.  Editors need to know what space is available as soon as is feasibly possible so they can plan for anything else that might come up.

A weekly newspaper will need a suitable number of captioned pictures and synopsis of the story as soon after the event as is feasible as last week’s news is no news unless it’s a follow up on the previous week.