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Read in over 50 countries worldwide

Contributing

Sailplane & Gliding (known to glider pilots worldwide as S&G) welcomes and values your contributions. The magazine relies upon unpaid writers and photographers, from beginners to world champions.

S&G is published six times a year by the British Gliding Association, the sport’s governing body in the UK, and is read by subscribers in more than 50 countries, from America to Zimbabwe.

Advertising and editorial deadlines (which differ slightly) are listed below. We regret to say that there is rarely scope to change pages after the deadlines have passed. Please do ensure your submission is with us by the relevant deadlines if you want us to consider it for inclusion in a particular issue.

The following notes cover:

  1. Deadlines
  2. How to contact S&G
  3. How to send material to S&G
  4. Letters, Club News and Club Focus
  5. Your feature article
  6. Republishing material from S&G
  7. Photographs or other illustrations

We hope you find these notes useful but, if you can’t find the answer to your question, please do feel free to ask the editor.

1. DEADLINES

Below are the deadlines for the next few issues of S&G

December 2023-January 2024
News, feature articles, club news – 5 October
Display advertising – 20 October
Classified adverts – 7 November

February-March 2024
News, feature articles, club news – 4 December
Display advertising – 20 December
Classified adverts – 5 January

April-May 2024
News, feature articles, club news – 5 February
Display advertising – 20 February
Classified adverts – 7 March

June-July 2024
News, feature articles, club news – 5 April
Display advertising – 22 April
Classified adverts – 7 May

August-September 2024
News, feature articles, club news – 4 June
Display advertising – 21 June
Classified adverts – 8 July

October-November 2024
News, feature articles, club news – 5 August
Display advertising – 21 August
Classified adverts – 6 September

December 2024-January 2025
News, feature articles, club news – 4 October
Display advertising – 21 October
Classified adverts – 7 November

 

2.HOW TO CONTACT S&G

Please send your contribution or comments to:

editor@sailplaneandgliding.co.uk

or upload via:

http://www.sailplaneandgliding.co.uk/dropbox

Susan Newby
Editor, Sailplane & Gliding
British Gliding Association
8 Merus Court
Meridian Business Park
Leicester
LE19 1RJ
United Kingdom

Tel: 01763 246657 (from outside the UK, dial + 44 1763 …)

(To advertise, subscribe or for general queries about the magazine, please contact debbie@gliding.co.uk. You can also subscribe online or, follow this link to find out about our latest promotion and to subscribe via direct debit.

 

3. HOW TO SEND MATERIAL TO S&G

If the only way you can provide text is hand-written on the back of an envelope, we’d still like to see it! We do, however, appreciate electronic text if you can manage it. This can be sent as an email attachment.

If you can, please send text in Microsoft Word or as a Rich Text File file (the latter is a generic file exchange format that creates a document with a .RTF ending). If you can’t save in either of these formats, please cut and paste the text into the body of an email as well as sending your differently-formatted file.

While we do take care with submissions, please note that material is forwarded at the contributor’s own risk.

 

4. LETTERS, CLUB NEWS AND CLUB FOCUS

Please keep your letter concise (ideally less than 350 words) mark it “for publication” and include your name, postal address, phone number and email.

The vast majority of UK gliding clubs feature in S&G’s Club News section. There is no charge for an entry. If you’d like to know more, please read the Club News Guidelines. The Club Focus feature is very popular and there is usually a year-long waiting list for inclusion. However, not every club manages to meet its deadline, so it’s always worth getting in touch – you might be lucky and jump the queue!

S&G Club News Zoom Masterclass. Here you can find the material from the masterclass:

Briefing notes: click here

Powerpoint slides: click here

Zoom recording: click here

 

5. YOUR FEATURE ARTICLE

If you want to discuss your article before writing it, do feel free to contact the editor. This prevents the disappointing situation (for you and for us) where two articles on similar themes arrive at the same time and one cannot be used. Do consider providing photographs or other illustrations (see item 6, below) to help your article grab the attention of readers.

We enjoy reading everything you send us, and are always looking for interesting material from the UK and across the world. If you are worried that your English isn’t good enough, remember that we can help by editing your words.

It is rare for S&G to publish material that has already been seen elsewhere. If your contribution has previously been published or may be published elsewhere (in print or on the internet), please tell us this when you submit it.

 

6. REPUBLISHING MATERIAL FROM S&G

All requests to reproduce material from S&G – no matter how old the magazine in question – must be made in writing to the editor.

We try to treat one-off requests sympathetically and are flattered that so many people want to use the magazine’s content. We are increasingly finding, though, that websites as well as magazines are eager to reproduce items, sometimes on an ongoing basis. This clearly has the potential to affect the magazine’s long-term financial viability.

That is why it is a condition of acceptance that, where text is published first in S&G, contributors agree that it will not appear elsewhere for a 12-month “cooling-off” period. This applies to print and internet publication, in full or in part, unless we agree otherwise when your work is accepted for publication. S&G also keeps the option of publishing your work in other media (for example, on our website), should we judge that to be appropriate.

Contributors of photographs or other illustrations should discuss their individual circumstances with the editor.

 

7. PHOTOGRAPHS OR OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

Several professional photographers kindly supply S&G with images and many other people send us clear, sharp and interesting photographs. From time to time, painters and cartoonists also offer us free use of their work and this can add greatly to the magazine’s visual appeal.

We are always on the lookout for good photographs. A low-resolution JPEG, emailed in advance, is useful for planning page layouts, but for actual publication we do need high-resolution digital images, or original 35mm slides, or prints from film. Sadly, we do still get photos we’d love to run that, despite being crisp and clear on screen, are taken at too low a resolution to reproduce well in print. So here are some guidelines on submitting images from digital cameras; we hope they help, and we’d welcome the chance to see your work.

  1. Photos should, wherever possible, be taken at the camera’s highest quality megapixel setting. While this means taking fewer shots, it gives your image more chance of being used at a decent size on the page. A good lens makes a real difference, too. We can’t emphasise enough that your photos will always stand a much greater chance of being used by S&G if they haven’t been seen elsewhere, on the internet or in print, beforehand: and this is an absolute must for any front cover photograph.
  2. Normally, an eight megapixel camera on the highest setting will allow for a full one-page image, including a front cover.
  3. Lower megapixel cameras can successfully generate smaller images, and three megapixels is a good guide to the minimum standard for photo inclusion. We print at 300dpi. While an image may look fine “on screen,” by the time it has reached the commercial printing process, any lack of quality will show.
  4. Please send files as JPEG (.jpg) or TIFF (.tif) on email or CD. Degradation of images occurs on re-saving a JPEG (compressed) image, so we ask you to make sure that no post-processing is done. For compact camera images, the printers will adjust as required.
  5. If all this sounds too difficult, just send an example of your work at the highest resolution your camera allows to editor@sailplaneandgliding.co.uk and while we can’t make any promises we’ll gladly take a look and let you know. This is a broadband account, incidentally, so all sensible file sizes should be no problem.

Do remember to write captions for all photographs. If you didn’t take the picture yourself, please say who did, and confirm that they are happy for S&G to reproduce the image without payment. Remember to include a return address.

Thank you for considering contributing to S&G and for taking the time to read these notes. We look forward to hearing from you.

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