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Submission Guidelines
The 2011 issue theme will be The Healthy Garden
GENERAL GUIDELINES
Article/Author Guidelines
Image Guidelines How to Submit Your Images/Photos
The Prairie Garden is an annual publication produced by a Winnipeg based horticultural committee. The digest-sized soft covered book has varied from 112 to 184 pages with 16 to 32 full colour pages. Each issue features a special topic as well as general gardening advice for Prairie conditions. General gardening topics include topics such as Prairie landscaping, plant propagation and care, varieties of trees, shrubs, fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, perennials and annuals. Personal gardening experience, Prairie gardens, projects and gardeners are often highlighted. Readers are primarily gardeners, both amateur and professional. |
Articles are 1,000 to 2,000 words. 100 to 400 word 'fillers' are also used.
E-mail submissions should have all attached photo files renamed, to reflect exactly what their subject is.
If sent by snail-mail: please put your name on each item sent for publication, whether article, illustration or disk. Submitted material will not be returned. If requested, slides and photos (once they are no longer needed) will be returned.
Please, include a completed The Prairie Garden - Author Notes form. The Author Notes form asks for information about you, including your name, mailing address and telephone number, as well as for some personal information, mainly about your interest in gardening. We use this information to create the small bio's that accompany each article or for photo credits.
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Article/Author Guidelines
EDITORIAL NEEDS
Style: Informative, friendly, clean, and concise. Readers are primarily gardeners, both amateur and professional. The author's gardening experience or information, presented clearly, is the objective for each article.
Subjects: General gardening topics include prairie landscaping, plant propagation and care, varieties of trees, shrubs, fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, perennials and annuals. Personal gardening experience, prairie gardens, projects and gardeners are often highlighted.
Submitted material: We appreciate receiving articles by or disk. Documents can be in either Word, WordPerfect or Rich Text Format (RTF). A digital copy is especially important if content is long or uses plant variety and scientific names (generic, specific, and infraspecific botanical names in italics, please). Where computer disks and email are not available to writers, double-spaced, typewritten or clearly handwritten copy is fine. Four to six pages of (double-spaced) copy are appropriate (1,000 to 1,500 words), but we also use short items as fillers (200 to 400 words) and include some longer studies (2,000 words or longer).
This brief "Style Guide" is meant as a loose guideline. Questions and topic proposals can be directed to . Please use Canadian spelling, punctuation and grammar. Measurements should be in Metric followed by Imperial in brackets. Generic, specific, and infraspecific botanical names in italics, please. The Little English Handbook for Canadians by James B. Bell & Edward P.J. Corbett (2nd edition), published by John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd., Toronto, ON, or a similar Canadian guidebook is suggested for questions relating to punctuation, grammar and reference lists when submitting articles. The Prairie Garden is not a scientific publication, although many of our contributors are scientists. We ask that you please limit your references to a maximum of 10. Three or four are suitable, when cited within an article to substantiate information presented or when given as suggestions for further reading. Set your dictionary to "Canadian" in your word processing program. Use of these tools will help improve consistency across articles and reduce the amount of editing required, in the end, helping us bring you a better book.
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Please send pictures and diagrams with every item when possible. Clear vibrant prints and slides in colour or black and white are suitable. Black and white photos are good within the stories. We may reproduce colour photos in either colour or black and white. If using a digital camera, please ensure that you are using a minimum of a 2 megapixel camera and each file name reflects exactly what the image is. Drawings, charts, tables, clip-art and cartoons are especially helpful to illustrate articles. Please include them if you can. See the image guidelines for more detail.
Suggested titles for articles are helpful but the committee decides on the final title. The Prairie Garden Committee welcomes articles for publication from interested prairie gardeners. We reserve the right to refuse or edit material if it is deemed inappropriate to our objectives. Material submitted becomes the property of The Prairie Garden. If you are submitting material that has been published previously in another publication, please submit the item with a letter granting permission to The Prairie Garden to re-publish the work.
For identification please put your name on each item sent for publication, whether article, illustration or disk. As noted above, all submitted material becomes the property of The Prairie Garden, however, photos or slides will be returned once they are no longer needed. A completed copy of The Prairie Garden "author notes" form, should be sent along with your materials to the attention of the Editor. The "author notes" form asks for information about you, including your name, mailing address and telephone number, as well as for some personal information, mainly about your interest in gardening. We use this information to create the small bio's that accompany each article or for photo credits. |
Deadline for Articles
Each year the deadline varies slightly depending on how quickly articles come in and the quantity received. Generally speaking, articles should be submitted before May 1 of any calendar year for consideration inclusion in the upcoming issue (e.g., May 1, 2010 for 2011). Each issue is published in November, and so May 1 allows for time to select, edit and prepare materials for publication. Often articles will be held over as more suitable for the aims of a following issue, and/or to facilitate the editing process.
We welcome submissions at any time of the year, and your questions too.
Image Guidelines
Image submissions are welcomed by The Prairie Garden Editorial Committee. Here are some suggestions when choosing images to send to us.
Digital Photography
Please ensure the file name has been changed to reflect exactly what the image is (i.e. do not leave it as IMG001.jpg). Digital photographs must be sharp, rich, and have good contrast as in conventional photography. In contrast to film-based photography, the digital photographer has new, important decisions to make to create excellent results. Using a digital camera with at least 2.0 megapixels offers the possibility of good results. Images for The Prairie Garden should be those captured at the highest quality (no compression) setting. For a shot to be considered for the cover, however, the image must be of the very highest quality, and must be taken with a 5 megapixel camera or better.
File Format
All digital files are stored in a file format such as .jpeg/.jpg, .tiff/.tif, .raw etc. Consumer priced digital cameras create files with a .jpeg/.jpg format. This is a useful format for storage purposes, but leads to poor image quality if these files are re-saved as .jpeg/.jpg files . If you must resave a file (such as after an edit in an image editor such as Photoshop) please save it as a tiff/tif or .psd to preserve the picture quality. However, sending a copy of the original jpeg file created by your camera is easiest and best, especially when sending your photo by email. We can take 10MB e-mail messages. Sometimes you will receive your photos on a disc from a photofinishing company as ".pcd" files. These are also acceptable. Images may be submitted as CMYK, RGB, or grayscale files. The default settings of your camera (usually RGB) are sufficient.
ARTWORK
Submissions of drawings or sketches are ideally created on flat, bright, white paper or card stock. If watercolour art is planned, watercolour paper should be flat for ease of copying. Art that is created using sensitive materials such as chalks, oil pastels, pencil or charcoal should be protected with a fixative spray to prevent smudging damage. If using a fixative is not possible, a protective tissue should cover delicate art accompanied by a precautionary note for the printing technician who will work with the art. Most artwork can easily be enlarged if necessary, but line drawings may be problematic. Line drawings should be drawn at a size that is fairly close to the final size that will be printed. If the art has to be significantly reduced in size, the lines in the drawing will diminish in size where they may become broken up or disappear. Artwork for The Prairie Garden should be relatively small in size. The book is 5.5 x 8.5 inches, and so artwork usually is 1/3 or less of a page. The images are used to highlight the articles, or as fillers on their own.
RESCREENS
Pictures from books and magazines are called rescreens. These printed pictures are occasionally used in new publications but good results are often difficult to achieve. Enlargements are usually unacceptable. Rescreened pictures are best used at the same size or smaller as the original image. It is best to provide author, title, etc. of the original book so it can be sourced to use for production of any rescreens. Sometimes this is the best way to illustrate a story. Only small
excerpts from other publications are suitable, and they need to be properly sourced, and acknowledged. The idea is not to steal someone's work, but to draw people's interest to it so they will go look at the original publication because now they know about it. As an educational publication, letting people know about what resources are available for prairie gardeners is part of our mandate. We require a letter of permission for anything other than a small excerpt that fits this description.
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Film-Based Photography
Photographs should be in sharp focus, with good contrast and rich tones. The subject of the picture should be clearly visible, since printed images are usually quite small (on average 60 mm x 80 mm) in size. This is especially important when a person or item is the subject. Ideally, the subject should then fill the picture. The image size must be large enough to copy well for printing. Bigger is better to create a good copy. Photo prints (colour and black and white) should be at least 100 mm x 150 mm (4x6 inches) in size or larger. Glossy surfaced prints should be used. The only limitation of photo prints is the small amount of enlargement possible if the subject has to be enlarged before printing. If you are unsure if the photo is big enough, the film negatives should also be submitted.
Positive film transparencies or slides are the most popular type of images used for printing. A good quality photograph on transparency film can be greatly enlarged, allowing excellent sharpness and colour quality. Lower speed films yield some of the finest results with minimal specks from colour grain particles. Contrary to popular belief, E6 process film, such as Ektachrome, Fujichrome or Agfachrome, is often better for printing than the popular Kodachrome film. Transparency film comes in many sizes. While 35 mm film is the smallest transparency film, it is perfectly acceptable for printing purposes. Colour negative "print film" can be submitted for publication, but good quality colour prints are preferred. All slides and photographs will be returned.
Delivering Files
You can burn your files onto a CD/DVD to deliver to us or to us, we can take an 8MB e-mail. Many files are too large to conveniently send by email, especially if sending several images. However, when sending the original jpeg files from your digital camera, the files are often small enough to email, and can be sent in three or four emails instead of all at once. Currently, the total size of all digital files attached to a single email message should be less than 10 megabytes. The email address to send your images to, is below. If you are sending more than 20 images in total, you should burn them to a CD/DVD and mail it to the address below. The Prairie Garden doesn't currently have an FTP site, but may in future. Using this technology would allow for the transfer of a large number of large image files without difficulty or the need to burn them to CD/DVD.
Digital Printouts
Paper prints of your digital photos are easy to produce at home and are often of good quality, however, they are difficult to copy by the press. When submitting digital images, please submit the original digital image file. |
How to Submit Your Images/Photos
| Images may be
. We can receive 10 MB e-mail. Please, ensure to rename image files to describe the subject of the image. All photos or slides or digital images should be sent with suggested captions and/or plant names if they are of a particular plant. Scientific names are preferred, but please include the common name too. We are always looking for artwork to illustrate articles and are often looking for specific kinds of illustrations, so if you are interested in submitting artwork but would like ideas, contact the Editor for more information. As well, we are always searching for the perfect photo for the cover and the colour section includes pictures that are not always directly related to the articles. Pictures of gardens, plants, landscapes, projects, birds and garden insects will be considered. |
For identification please put your name on each item you send in for publication, whether photo, slide, illustration, disk or article. Include your full address and contact information (phone, fax, email, and regular mail), which can be submitted on the The Prairie Garden's "author notes" form. Send the completed form along with your email or mailed CD/DVD or artwork to the attention of the Editor. The "author notes" form asks for information about you, including your name, mailing address and telephone number, as well as for some personal information, mainly about your interest in gardening. We use this information to create photo credits or for the small bio's that accompany each article and to get to know a bit about you. We do not share this information with anyone else.
All submitted material becomes the property of The Prairie Garden, however, if requested, photos or slides and original artwork will be returned once no longer needed. |
Deadline for Images
Each year the deadline varies slightly depending on how quickly images come in and the
quantity received. Generally speaking, images should be submitted prior to August 1 of any calendar year (e.g., Aug. 1, 2009 for 2010) for consideration inclusion in the upcoming issue. Each issue is published in November, and so August 1 allows for time to select and prepare materials for publication. Often images will be held over as more suitable for the aims of a following issue, or for an upcoming article.
We welcome submissions at any time of the year, and your questions too.
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| Article Deadline
May 1
Image Deadline
August 1 |
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