Article Submission Guidelines

Before you invest a whole lot of time into your article, check with us first. Send a short (~200 words) summary or first paragraph to Lara at lara@blueskiesmag.com. This way we can make sure no one is doubling efforts, that it hasn’t been done before and that it would fit in with a particular issue. You can also submit anonymous tips, reader news, or a letter to the editor online here: Reader Content.

Submissions are due the 1st of the month for the following issue (Jan. 1 for the Feb. issue, for example).

One page of Blue Skies Magazine printed is 750-1,000 words. Rough guidelines: an event write-up could be 250-500 words, opinion 500-750 words, full-length feature 1,500 with pictures.

High-quality photos are everything. Include 1-2 photos per 500 words, with photographer name and photographer’s explicit permission to print. Refer to our photo guidelines for more. To include pictures with a story, be sure to reference that story when you send via dropbox, FTP, or e-mail them to us at lara@blueskiesmag.com.

If we choose to print your article, it will be included in both the print and digital versions of Blue Skies Magazine. The digital version is a watermarked, pay-to-view pdf. We may also reprint it online (as a free-to-view web post). We will include your name and bio in every instance.

Please think twice about a boogie article. This is not to say we will not publish anything to do with boogies; we actually love boogies! Rather, we love what really happens at boogies, not the glossy, thank-the-sponsors, weather-report, sunshine-and-roses versions we’ve been reading about for decades. What made this boogie different than any other? Did something happen at this boogie that was unusual or noteworthy? Come up with something creative that captures the real feeling of boogie-ing and we’ll publish it.

At this time, we are not able to pay our contributors monetarily. We’ll do everything we can to make sure you get something out of the deal – links and shout-outs to your company, publicity, whatever we can – but for now we can barely pay ourselves. If this is not acceptable to you, we completely understand and will announce here when we are able to compensate contributors. We hope you submit at that point!

Please send us your opinions! We take our role as an independent magazine seriously; with that comes a responsibility to publish as many sides of as many stories as we can find. We encourage you to sign your opinion pieces and letters with your actual name and contact information, however, we understand that aviation is a small world and some things are better left unsigned. We will leave it to your discretion whether or not to disclose your identity.

We do have some ground rules, however:

• Wild, unfounded accusations are not worth our time, ink or pixels.
• If your opinion or letter is obviously directed at a specific individual, group or company – whether explicitly stated or not – we will offer that person, group or company the chance to respond in kind.

• We reserve the right to post submitted material on our website, as well as redistribute the material in its final, laid-out form for reprint requests.
• We reserve the right to edit material to fit Blue Skies Magazine’s style, for grammar and for clarity and/or for brevity.
• Anonymous submissions are accepted only if your personal safety and/or professional integrity may be compromised otherwise.

We know there are other magazines out there who also want your great pictures and words. We understand that air sports cost a lot of money, photographing those air sports costs even more and it is nice to get paid from as many places as possible. However, we are trying to put out a cool magazine. It’s not cool to see a picture that you’ve already seen in another magazine or on another website, or to read something twice in different places.We’re asking you to be cool; don’t intentionally send us things that you have already submitted or are going to submit to someone else. Please help us produce a cool, unique magazine and a cool, unique website. Karma will reward you in the end, we promise.

Please don’t take it personally if we cannot use your article for any reason. We still love you. Keep submitting.