Cohousing-L Mailing List: call for articles for Communities magazine

[Communities Magazine (communities.editor]

Hello,

Communities Magazine is now seeking articles for our Summer 2008 issue, “Green 
Building in Community.” The issue will be out in June 2008.

Please send me your article idea by ***Friday, December 14***.

Your final article must reach me by ***Friday, January 18***.

1. Theme articles: “Green Building in Community”:

What is green building and what is natural building? How do they fit with 
building community? How does natural building involve and empower people of 
different ages, genders, and abilities? Does your community encourage natural 
building, passive solar design, energy conserving construction techniques, or 
other aspects of green building? How has this focus benefited your community and 
its members? What challenges have you faced and how did you overcome them? Has 
the question of green building been controversial in your community? If you or 
your community lead workshops on green building or host interns, what difference 
have those programs made? We want to publish your story!

[Please forward this email to anyone you think has a good story on this theme 
for Communities magazine.]

2. We are also seeking articles about:
- Creating community in your neighborhood;
- Starting a new community;
- Process & communication issues in community; and
- Seeking community to join.

Word length is from 900 to 2500 words. We’re seeking articles written in a 
reader-friendly popular-magazine style, rather than in academic style.

If you’d like to submit an article let us know and we’ll send you Writers’ 
Guidelines. Contact Alyson Ewald at editor [at] ic.org or 660-883-5330.

If you don’t want to write an article but want to submit photos let us know and 
we’ll send you Photo Guidelines. Contact Ann-Marie Stillion at annmarie [at] ic.org.

I. WHAT "SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE" MEANS. We will promise to read your article, but 
we may respectfully decline it and not publish it, or save it and publish it in 
a future issue. We also reserve the right to edit, shorten, or revise your 
article. Most of the time we contact authors about this ahead of time and get 
their comments, corrections, etc.

II. GETTING PERMISSION AHEAD OF TIME. Please send the article only when you have 
permission from anyone you need it from, such as fellow community members. It’s 
difficult for us to get all set to run an article only to find that the author’s 
fellow community members say No at the last minute.

III. PUBLICATION RIGHTS. Once your article appears in Communities magazine, we 
own first North American Publishing Rights. This means your article appears in 
Communities magazine the first time it appears in North America. After that, you 
own it again. If you’d like to use it elsewhere, you can, and we would 
appreciate your using an attribution line saying, “This article first appeared 
in Communities magazine, (date); for further information on Communities 
magazine: www.ic.org.”

IV. PHOTOS.

If we publish your article, we want to accompany it with compelling images that 
illustrate your subject. You know your subject best, so we are appealing to you 
for images. If you submit an article idea, our Photo Editor, Ann-Marie Stillion, 
will send you our photo guidelines, including how to send us your photos. In the 
meantime, we hope this guide will help you. If the task seems overwhelming, see 
if someone else in your community likes taking pictures. They might already have 
great images to go with your article.

If you would like to submit an article but cannot supply photos, that’s fine; 
however, you must give us plenty of advance notice so that if we use your 
article we can get an illustrator.

No matter how you send us your photos, please remember to include information 
for the caption, as well as the full name of whomever we should credit for the 
photo.

Content of the submitted images:

If the story is focused on a certain person or group, include a photograph of 
them. Always get as close to your subject as possible. Photographs of your 
subjects engaged in their work or in their environment make for interesting 
photos. We will assume that any people in your photos have already given you 
permission to appear in Communities magazine. If you think this will be a 
problem, please take care of it before sending us photos.

You may also include additional, ambient photographs of a home, a table setting, 
food, art, or landscape, along with your people shots. We are a magazine about 
people and communities but every picture does not need to have people in it. 
Maybe the image is a row of colorful shoes next to a playground that suggests 
children, for example.

Modern digital cameras put the power of making beautiful images in all our 
hands. Use the power and have fun!

Color cover photos:

We pay $150 for the images we use on the cover. If you are interested in 
submitting images for the cover, please study the call for articles posted for 
that issue. The best way to achieve a winning cover is to study the magazine of 
course. Be aware that your image must work behind the masthead, cover titles, 
etc.—normally the top of the image should not be vital to the image meaning, for 
example. We are seeking thought-provoking approaches to visually communicating 
community—images which speak in new and interesting ways. Surprise us. Think 
about what you would want to see/say on a newsstand. Feel free to contact the 
photo editor with images or suggestions. You will need at least a 6 MB camera at 
the highest resolution of capture for cover photos.

--
Alyson Ewald
Interim Editor
Communities magazine
http://communities.ic.org