Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ethics of magazine publisher's?

Ken, I truly hope you didn't think the pay "when you get around to it" was directed at you. It wasn't. It seems to me that you did a lot for your writers and many could learn from your management skills.

Personally, I do not know whether to laugh or cry at this whole thread. I have received checks from magazines for poems published 18 months prior that I had completely given up on to stories held for too long (BGA) I never got paid for, to about every other dimension of the equation.

You big boys get more attention than little guys in the literary/monetary sense, and I do not begrudge you that. My words do not go to paying rent or filling a feedbag.

But what I really want to know is where Big Sky gets off thinking that deer is special. A taxidermist here in Anchorage can do that caliber of work any day... and does! Matter of fact he has a mule-oryx hybrid mounted in the local Sportsman's Whorehouse! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

But when it comes to being paid for words I like Guy Clark's sentiment;
Ain't no money in poetry,
that's what sets the poet free...
Well, I've had all the freedom I can stand!
art

Sitka--

Almost all full-time writers got jerked around in the same way when we started. In the beginning you write for whoever will publish your stuff! At one point I thought every magazine publisher in the world was a sleaze. About then is when I formulated my policy of only tolerating ONE late check from anybody.

By the way, I published quite a bit of poetry over the years, and even got paid fair money for some--but never enough to make a living, of course. That's why most "full time" poets teach!

JB

The writer who I'm about to tell you about is well known to everyone here today, I'm sure -- but he was a complete unknown when I bought one of his first articles. I think he'd sold one piece long before, but of six or so that he'd sent out since, five had come back to him.

He had sent those six out with the determination that if one of them sold, he'd keep trying -- but if they all came back, he'd give-up the hope of success as a writer. The one that I bought and eventually published wasn't good enough in its first form, but it showed both skill and promise that I deemed worth encouraging. I returned it to him, told him what I'd like to see him do to it, and "ran interference" for him with manufacturers so he'd get the cooperation that he needed.

He sent back a superb piece of work, and others more as time went on, and they were all good. A bit later, though he still wasn't quite "tall enough" but was growing impressively fast, I added him to my staff and paid him the higher staff-writer rates.

Since then, he has gone on to write -- often by invitation -- for all the bigger gun publications. He has been on the staffs of several. He's a big name in his specialty.

Having lunch with him several years ago -- many years after his tentative first six trial articles -- I asked what had happened to the five that I hadn't seen. He grinned and said that once he'd "become a name" on a magazine masthead, other editors had bought all the other five articles too.

The best editors look for dependability as much as for skill.

Still, unfortunately, many "editors" justify one writer's comment that "An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to." Some have miraculously become "editors" simply by having the title Editor tacked onto their names. One of my writer friends --staff writer for several magazines -- got a call from one of his "editors" with two questions about an article or column that he'd just submitted:
"What do you mean by 'keyholing?'"
"What is a 'flash hole?'"

Speak of the devil - BGA just paid me. I thought it would only be fair to post it since I complained before. Unfortunately, I know several people who submitted stuff to them long before me who never did.

This might be a good day for you to go buy a lottery ticket.

No kidding.

German publishing (like most European) writers are 99% getting payed on publication, not on delivery, because most of the pieces -at least the topics - are preplanned or scheduled, together with the magazine staff.
As a "contributing editor" for one specific German magazine, I never had a problem with payment. Normally monies are on my account not later than one week after publication.
Just my two (Euro)Cents
Roe Deer
By the way, about one century ago I did some pieces for Handloader and Rifle Magazines, I think one was on the 5,6x57 RWS. I still remember the layout of the check paper - snow capped mountains in the background, signed by Dave Wolfe.

Ha! You wouldn't happen to be Oberforster Werner Reb would you, "Roe Deer?" Seems to me that I published a couple of fine articles under that name, about the middle of the Pleistocene -- one on the 5.6x57mm and one on the effects of bullets on bipartite anatomy.

(If so, there's still a smidgen of hope for my rickety memory.)

Rickety memory, Ken? No!
You are totally right: *I* forgot the topic of the piece on effects of bullets on bipartite anatomy ("paariger Schockreflex" in German).
Roe Deer

Herr Doktor Reb, you can not imagine how delighted I am to hear from you again! I just wish that we could sit down together somewhere and chat for hours.

All the best to you and yours, now and ever!

Thanks for the warm welcome, Doc!
In fact it would be nice chatting with you, the Big Sky stars overhead, with a campfire and a toddy warming the kidneys from the out- and inside.

We had an outfit in Sheridan/WY and still have friends there. It�s not too far to MT.

Regards
Werner