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Writing articles for Free Software Magazine

Free Software Magazine welcomes articles. If you would like to write for us, please make sure you read this page before handing in your proposal.

Proposals

Please send your editorial proposals to . Make sure that the subject of your email is PROPOSAL: article on [...] and the body of your email has the following structure:

Target:

Write your article’s target here. Think about the person who is reading it: what do they know? How well do they know it? What are they curious about?

Aim:

Write your article’s aim here. What is it going to tell the reader? How? Why will the reader know more about the subject after reading this article?

Abstract:

Write your article’s abstract here. It should be a summary of the whole article, in just 10-15 lines.

Outline:

-First heading

-Second heading

-Third heading

-Fourth heading

For each heading, please provide 3 to 6 lines that explain what that section of the article will contain.

Although we are willing and ready to accept any articles about free software, we suggest you have a look at the article topics we are most interested in!

Preparing the article

If the proposal is accepted, you will be given a deadline for handing in the complete article.

There are three different XML templates available:

Please keep in mind that you won’t be able to hand in your article if it’s not valid and well formatted. Please check that your article follows the template closely, that you close any open tag, and so on.

WE NO LONGER ACCEPT RTF, DOC OR ODT FILES

You must use a spell checker to check typos and errors in your article before handing it in. We advise authors to use OpenOffice or ispell.

You must read the author’s style guide while writing the article.

Finally, you should read Writing articles for Free Software Magazine written by Clare James and Tony Mobily before submitting your outline—especially if you haven’t written before.

While writing the article, you should stick with the outline you agreed to with the technical editor. However, you can make changes if you think they’re appropriate.

Sending the article

You will receive detailed instructions on how to hand in your article once it’s assigned to you.

Figures

You must include figures with your article.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT ARTICLES WITHOUT FIGURES

If you are desperate for figures, you can use stock images from these URLs:

Contact the image’s author if you are not sure about copyright issues.

Please remember that the figures should be at least 300 DPI and should be 7.1cm wide, and between 5cm and 10cm high. (In pixels, that is 800 x [591 - 1181].)

Outcome

We cannot guarantee that we will accept every submitted article. There are three possibile responses:

  • The article is accepted after minor or no editing by our editors.
  • The article is accepted, but major editing is necessary.
  • The article is refused.

There are several reasons why an article might be rejected. We will always try to tell you why an article has been rejected.

Publication and copyright

If your article is published in FSM, you will retain the copyright. We do ask our authors to submit original material, and release the article under a free license.

All of articles are released under a free licence as soon as they are published on our web site and on our magazine.

Which free license will my article be published under?

It’s up to you! the only requirement is that the article is released under a free license. This is what we prefer:

You will be able to pick your article's license when you submit the article.

Payment

We do pay for articles.

We pay $35 per thousands words for every article successfully published, with a "cap" of $90 per article and a free complementary book from one of our sponsoring publishers (see below). We also reserve the right to add or subtract 20% of the agreed payment based on the quality of the article - no hard feelings. The payment will be sent immediately, on the day the magazine is published.

You might not be able to get rich by writing articles for us, but remember that our authors will actually be paid for articles that are edited professionally and then released under a free license.

Five major publishers (Apress, Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall, O’Reilly, No Starch and Packt) have agreed to sponsor us with books. This means that for every article over 1000 words that you write (apart from book reviews), you will have the option of receiving one book from ANY of their catalogues. You are not required to review this book! (Although, reviewing the book will be most welcome.) There is an upper limit of $100 on the price of the book.

Also, if you have your own web site or online business and would like to exchange a banner ad (or a PDF ad) with an article, please let us know—we will probably be more than willing to do an exchange.

Please keep in mind that:

  • We will edit your article professionally for free
  • We will give your article great exposure on our web site
  • You might gain renown, as the magazine is downloaded by tens of thousands people worldwide
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