Monday Markets for May 25, 2009

This week’s edition of Monday Markets has a couple of examples of specific niche publications. One of them publishes articles and information for the precast concrete industry, and the other one is all about tracing and preserving family history.

Precast Inc. Magazine

From the Web Site:

PRECAST INC. is published by NPCA (the National Precast Concrete Association), which represents the precast concrete industry in North America and many locations around the world. PRECAST INC. helps precast concrete manufacturers run their operations more effectively, keeps them apprised of emerging issues in business and technology, and educates them about increasing market shares for precast concrete. It offers practical solutions to current workplace problems and discusses new approaches for efficiency and innovation in all areas of precast manufacturing and business. The mission of PRECAST INC. is to be the voice for the manufactured concrete products industry. PRECAST INC. is published bimonthly in January, March, May, July,
September and November.

Our audience

More than anything, precast concrete manufacturers are business owners. Our readers are typically small-business owners with 20 to 100 employees. Issues affecting business in general also affect them.

• The circulation of PRECAST INC. is about 8,500.
• Our primary readers are owners/principals, engineers, managers and sales staff.
• Our audience includes readers from both large and small organizations. The highest
concentration of readers is in the Midwest and Northeast United States.
• Our audience is interested in finding ways to increase sales, manage people and
resources, and manufacture quality products.

Articles we use

Article lengths vary from 1,000 to 2,500 words. PRECAST INC. publishes articles on many topics:

Features (1,500-2,500 words)
Technical Feature: A technical article pertaining specifically to the production of precast
concrete, its application or regulations affecting production appears in each issue. These articles generally require the writer to have in-depth knowledge of engineering, manufacturing, industry and precast production or its use. These articles are written predominately by staff members or industry professionals.

Product/Project Feature: These articles highlight an uncommon or novel precast product that would interest precasters. A construction project utilizing precast concrete is also featured when possible. We prefer to limit these articles to products or projects pertaining to our members, but variances may apply; a list of members is available on our Web site.

Business/Management Feature: These articles include topics of interest to small-business owners or manufacturers.

Departments (1,000-1,500 words or shorter based on need)
Operations: Generally cover topics related to solving problems in the precast production process or in managing costs.

Marketing: Marketing strategies and issues, sales techniques and issues, advertising, promotion or public relations.

Business/Management: Human resources (benefits, compensation, training, retirement plans, career development, employment and labor law, recruitment and hiring practices and other workplace issues); tax issues, ethics, teamwork, quality assurance, insurance, inventory control, increasing profits, cutting costs, leadership, technology, computers, resources and transportation.

Innovations: Usually cover innovative production processes.

Pays $250-$750 on acceptance.

Family Tree Magazine

From the Web Site:

Family Tree Magazine is a special-interest consumer magazine that helps readers discover, preserve and celebrate their family’s history. We cover genealogy, ethnic heritage, personal history, genealogy Web sites and software, scrapbooking, photography and photo preservation, and other ways that families connect with their past.

Articles are beginner-friendly, but never talk down to the audience. Readers may be experts in one area of our coverage, yet novices in another. We emphasize sidebars, tips and other reader-friendly “packaging,” and each article aims to provide the resources necessary to take the next step in the quest for one’s personal past.
Writing for Family Tree Magazine

* We accept queries by e-mail and postal mail only. When querying by mail, always include an SASE. If we’ve never worked with you before, please include writing samples (published clips preferred) with your query. Please don’t call with queries or to check on the status of your query. Allow six to eight weeks for a response.

* The ideal Family Tree Magazine writer is both a writer—able to explain complex topics in clear, friendly, easy-to-read articles and sidebars—and an expert (or interested amateur) in one of our coverage areas. Your query should indicate both why you’re right for this topic and why you’re able to write it.

* Please query with a specific story idea. In general, we’re looking for stories that are right for our magazine, not writers to assign articles to. Please do not submit finished articles (except for our Everything’s Relative section) or articles previously published in other genealogical magazines.

* Issues are planned well in advance. Though our lead time is technically about six months, we’ll have a plan for the December issue by January of that year. Better to look too far ahead than to miss the boat. And we do like to be timely—scheduling a story on wedding records in June, for example.

* Our style is bright, breezy, helpful and encouraging. We’re NOT an academic journal or a genealogy-research journal.

* Articles need to be broad in scope to appeal to a general audience, yet narrow enough to support specific, useful information. “Getting Started with the National Archives” might be a good article for us; “1840 North Carolina Census Records” is not.

* We do NOT publish personal experience stories (except in Everything’s Relative) or the histories of specific families. Nor do we publish generic family or parenting articles—keep in mind that our focus is family history.

* Query with specific suggestions on accompanying sidebars, tip boxes, resource lists and other elements, as well as ideas for content that might be appropriate for posting on our Web site.

* For writers new to Family Tree Magazine, we are most open to short submissions for Branching Out (lively, newsy upfront section) and brief writeups of new resources for family history buffs for our Toolkit section. We also invite short, amusing stories of “the lighter side of family history” for our Everything’s Relative page.

* Please read a copy of the magazine before querying.

Pays on acceptance and buys all rights.