Editor Interview: Bass Angler Magazine

bass fishing

There's a bunch out there that don't care about paper quality or the stories they publish but FLW Outdoors and Bass Master Magazine are two good ones.

Rob Bryant, Dustin Catrett and Jody Only to name a few.

We publish short concise articles with a focus on how-to, without prejudice to a person, place or product.

Tell the story in as fewest words as possible and think about the point you are trying to make - read it and thing about it from an outsiders view. Also make sure you have good supporting images to submit.

The best stories are, when you read it, it creates a sense of urgency where you want to go try that technique. Ideal submissions also have great images, a lead in shot with a couple supporting images relative to the story.

I see writers loose focus, jumping back and forth where we like the story to have a beginning, middle and end - also each paragraph to have beginning, middle and end. We see stories come in that are written for a sports paper or a book where we are a fishing magazine and want the reader to sit down and learn something in a short period of time.

We are giving information to other anglers who want to learn, so the person writing must be savvy in that technique / area or be interviewing a person who is. We generally interview touring professionals or show that the writer is someone who is worthy of teaching.

I usually read the entire story before rejecting it. There are times when a story has merit (great info) but not well written whereas we may rewrite and publish the story. We reserve the right to edit any submitted story, if for some reason the writer doesn't approve of this they should not submit a story.

Usually one read through will determine if we can use it for our print publication.

When you own a small publication you wear many hats, editor, publisher, marketing, circulation etc.
My day generally starts about 5:30 with a cup of coffee plowing through emails until 7:30, then I head to the gym for an hour back home and have breakfast. At this point I work on more emails and get my to-do list sorted by urgency. Some days I'm marketing filling out questioners like this, some times putting out fires, planning for the next trade show, editing new stories, locating or taking pictures for stories and then when we get close to issue time I'm chasing my tail to insure everything is ready for our designer.
In between working on the magazine I compete in bass tournaments about a 150 days fishing a year.
Pretty much a dream job! Long hours and most weeks I'm working seven days 5:30 am to 7:00pm but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Good question, some are total rewrites and others only a little. You see we are one of the few publications who accepts stories from new writers working with those people to help them become better writers.

Well... I should but I haven't, it's one of those things that hasn't made it to my to-do list yet. Maybe in the future.