We get asked a lot for our writer’s guidelines, and we put together a few articles from the magazine, as well as some tips from our staff that should answer your questions. If you have any more questions, or need clarification on something, please contact us through the contact page.
The basics of submitting articles to Model Cars
Our Writer’s Guidelines are meant to serve as the basis for submitting articles to Model Cars. We are always looking for new and exciting articles and features on models, ranging from in-depth how-to’s, tips and tricks, builder profiles, features, and even tongue-in-cheek pieces that makes our readers laugh. Our philosophy is to let the writer tell the story in his or own words—we don’t like to tell you what to write, or make you redo an article over and over again because we don’t think it fits our readers. Our readers are you—otherwise you wouldn’t be reading Model Cars, right? Below are some simple guidelines to follow when submitting material to Model Cars. Remember, just because you submitted something to MCM doesn’t mean it will be published in print, or it will be in the next issue. We hope to post a lot more of the material we get online. We have also found a lot of great writers from our forum, ModelCarsMag.com/forums
Submission
Electronically typed articles are preferred, saved in Word format. We can read any format submitted, but if you can, please save your article as a Word (.doc), or a basic text (.txt) file. We do accept printed articles, such as those done on a typewriter. Hand-written articles are the worse case scenarios, and hopefully we won’t have many more of those in the future. Send your electronic files to gregg at modelcarsmag.com.
We also have an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) set up for sending in large files over the Internet. You can also use zip or compress files and email them.
Subject Matter
The subject matter is up to you. We don’t have any limitations on what you can or cannot cover. How-to’s are preferred, and are what our readers ask for the most. If you have some ideas, don’t be afraid to throw them at us first. It never hurts to ask, right? We will be working on theme issues coming up, so that may give you some something to think about as well. If you are doing a how-to or feature, please include all the source names, addresses, web sites, and phone numbers for the products that were used in the article. Don’t worry, we won’t edit out anyone or not name a manufacturer just because they don’t advertise in Model Cars. Style Articles can be written in the first person (I did this, I did that), or in a third-person voice, such as someone telling the reader about someone else’s work (Jim built this model using…).
Pay
We pay for articles after publication, and it takes a few weeks for the checks to be processed and sent out. If you have a specific question on what our pay-per-page rates are, please feel free to e-mail us.
Formatting
Here are a few simple formatting and style tips to help us out when we are working on your articles:
Spaces – Use on a single space after a period at the end of a sentence. Don’t use spaces to begin a paragraph, use the tab key.
Quotes – Don’t use quotes unless you are actually quoting someone.
Where to send files Send your electronic files to Gregg (gregg at modelcarsmag.com). Hard copies or printed articles should be sent to Model Cars Magazine, P.O. Box 89530, Honolulu, HI 96830.
Download our Writer’s Guidelines:
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