target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_82fbcc81-be00-5d95-986d-6cd741d97a09.png" alt=""/> The importance of timing
Rejection is a part of the freelance photographer’s life – it happens to the best of us. If you can’t handle rejection, it’s best not to send pictures to magazines in the first place. Often you won’t know why the pictures have been returned, and it’s certainly not the responsibility of the editor or picture editor to tell you why they didn’t want them. If you ask politely, they may give you some advice and tips on making a successful submission next time, but don’t count on it – they’ve got more important things to do, like producing the next issue. All you can do is look at each rejected submission carefully and try to work out what went wrong.
One possible reason for being rejected is timing. A tremendous amount of planning and preparation goes into producing a magazine. The editorial process of picture selection, captioning, layout, proofing and passing the pages does not happen overnight. This means that pictures (and articles) are required well ahead of the magazine’s publication date. The ‘lead time’, as it’s known, can be just a couple of weeks in the case of a weekly magazine, but is more often a couple of months for a monthly magazine or a quarterly.
INSIDE STORY
Many of the pictures used in magazines about homes are commissioned, but there are still opportunities for speculative freelance submissions.
Pictures of fireworks, for instance, will typically go in a November-dated issue in the UK, which will be on sale early in October – and that means it will go to the printers at the end of September. Final picture selection will typically be in the first two weeks of September, so you need to have your submission with the magazine by the middle of August at the latest, and preferably earlier. Don’t send it too early, though, because staff won’t be thinking about that feature yet. They will either return your package and ask you to submit it later or suggest putting it on file. The problem is that a couple of months down the line they may have forgotten that it’s there and choose other pictures.
Some material, however, is timeless, and you can submit it at any time for the magazine to keep on file. This suits editors, because they will have a stash of material readily available whenever they need it. This can work well for the freelance, with a cheque falling through your letterbox every now and again without you having to do much for it. However, it can also mean that images are sometimes left to gather dust, so it’s a good idea to send further submissions if nothing happens for a while.
While there are exceptions, the editors of most specialist and trade magazines, and the features/commissioning/picture editors of glossy, large-circulation titles, are approachable. They need photographers as much as photographers need them, so you shouldn’t be afraid of phoning or emailing them to check their needs. It is usually a waste of time asking if they would be interested in seeing your pictures – they don’t know until they’ve seen them. So send them in anyway.
Once you have made a few sales from speculative submissions, you can ask magazine editors for their specific picture requirements. This considerably increases your chance of making sales. However, it’s not a good idea to ask what their current ‘wants’ are before you have developed a relationship with them – you could be from a rival magazine, after all, so they will often be cagey.
Further down the line – once they are publishing your work on a regular basis – editors will start contacting you to request material. Can you supply pictures of this, that or the other for our next issue? There may also come a time when they approach you with a commission. When that happens, you really are into a different ball game. You are being asked to deliver a specified set of images by an agreed date – and you must deliver or you won’t get asked again. If the commission is to photograph something that can be re-shot if things go wrong, such as a product or a comparative set of pictures with and without polarizers for a photography magazine, there’s minimal risk. But if you are contracted to attend an event and photograph it – such as a marathon for a running magazine – you will have just one chance to get the pictures. You will need to feel totally confident in your ability.
Once you start selling your work to magazines, you soon discover that there are enormous variations in the rates paid, sometimes with no apparent logic. For example, I have been paid just £20 ($35) for half-page reproduction by one publisher and £100 ($175) for postage-stamp-size use by another.
As a guideline, repro rates are related to the size of reproduction and the prosperity of the publication. However, in a bid to maximize profits, publishing companies are rarely more generous than they need to be. Editors are often squeezed by their publishers, and have an agreed budget to spend on pictures each issue.
Some titles run on a very tight budget; the payments they can offer hardly cover the cost of postage and certainly not the time and effort involved in taking the picture. Some publications are extremely cagey about what they will pay – leading one to the conclusion that it’s probably not very much. Others are open about this despite their very low rates, although it’s a wonder they get anyone to contribute when they pay a pittance. Fees are generally higher in the more prosperous world of mass-market publications, such as the women’s weekly and monthly titles. But since a high proportion of their pictures come from libraries or commissions, this tends not to help the average freelance. Generally, with magazines, it’s a matter of having pictures published at their ‘usual rates’. It’s a buyers’ market, and you have to accept what they’re willing to pay or they won’t use your work. Expect somewhere between £10 and £50 ($17.50–$87.50) for up to half a page and you won’t be far wrong.
KNOW YOUR STUFF
When submitting pictures to specialist magazines you need to be able to supply detailed, accurate captions. With garden photography this means knowing the botanical name of a plant.
NEWSPAPERS
Newspapers offer mixed opportunities for freelance photographers. It’s not difficult to get your work published in local newspapers, but it’s not easy to get paid for it. National newspapers, on the other hand, pay extremely well, but to get published you need a subject that is particularly original or newsworthy.
ACTION STATION
Action stations Dramatic images can have a market at both local and national level, but there’s a lot of competition to get published.
It would be great to have an image published on the front page of a leading national daily newspaper, so that millions of people around the country – or even the world – could see it. Hopefully you would get a sizeable cheque, too. But unless you happen to be on the scene with your camera when a bomb goes off or someone is kidnapped, you are extremely unlikely ever to take a picture that is sufficiently newsworthy. That is what the nationals are after – dramatic images that capture the attention of a notoriously fickle readership, and persuade them to pick up their paper rather than one of their rivals’.
Images
