Wanna contribute?
Are your dreaming of having your fly pattern, your fishing pictures, your fly fishing stories, your DIY-project published on the web? Well, here's the chance. GFF is always looking for contributors. And everybody can take part.
If you're a regular on The Global FlyFisher, you may have noticed that the publishing pace on GFF goes up and down. We aim at publishing a new piece every few days, but producing good material is time consuming and requires creativity and good, original ideas. While we have lots of ideas, we lack the time and resources to write all the articles ourselves.
Write for us
That's why we appeal to you - our readers - to contribute to the site. Let us tap in on your creativity, your ideas and your time. Share with your fellow readers. Write something for The Global FlyFisher!
we love originality a lot more than professionalism
It's not that difficult. Even though we hold high standards, we love originality a lot more than professionalism, and you need not have any previous experience in writing. It's a benefit if you master written English at a reasonable level and an ability to shoot some decent photos, draw or paint isn't too bad either. That doesn't mean that pros are not welcome. On the opposite! We would love to have material from you people who write for a living, or at least earn money from it. As long as you don't expect us to pay you. We haven't paid anybody yet in the ten year history of The Global FlyFisher, and we don't intend to start now.
What we need
We need anything that's fly fishing related. If you'd like to read it, there are probably others who would too. The most popular stuff we publish is the fly patterns. They draw a lot of hits, and we always welcome good patterns, and if you have a surefire pattern to share, here's the chance.
But other types of material is very welcome too. You can see from our different main sections how we group things:
- Patterns: materials lists, tying descriptions, fishing tips for the given pattern.
- Tiebetter: things that improve the reader's fly tying
- Fishbetter: things that improve the reader's fishing skills or equipment, how to's
- Gallery: anything with images
- Reports: stories from fishing trips, where to's
- Global: where to's, International fishing, travel tips
- Rod building: anything related to building and maintaining rods
- Reviews: stuff you liked or disliked and why
We have lots of material that traverses these sections, so don't worry about it. We can easily have an article appear in more than one section.
Original and unpublished
We only want original material that you have created and have the the copyright to. And we don't want material that has already been published on the web or in print. We do make an exception for this rule when it regards translated material. If you have published something in your own non-English tongue, we would love to see it translated to English and published here.
We don't - like in NEVER - accept paid content, AKA "guest posts" or posts mainly written to place numerous affiliate links or links back to web shops.
We do welcome excerpts or chapters from new or already published books. Read more here if you're an author or a publisher.
Sound and video
If you want to record a podcast or do some video, we're game! We know that such new media stuff interests people, and we have the space and bandwidth to host even large productions. Drop us a line with your idea, and let's see if we can work out something.
If you have interesting and relevant videos on YouTube or Vimeo, you can submit them to our video channel here.
How to do it
Dot down a few words about your idea and mail them off to me (Martin - martin@globalflyfisher.com). Once we agree on publishing your article, start gathering material and writing the text. I usually recommend looking at the illustrations first, because most manuscripts we get have great text but not that great illustrations. As you know from the site, we like lots of good images and drawings, and we'd like your contribution to have lots of great illustrations. Get photos and drawings in as good a quality as you can. We can easily handle originals straight out of a camera. Please don't do too much to them before mailing them off.
Write the text in a plain word processor or text editor, and don't do too much layout! Please don't paste the images into the text or set the whole thing up in living colors, columns and fancy fonts. Plain text is what we want with bold and italics where relevant. Write links as full URL's in parentheses next to the link text. Mark the locations of the images and illustrations by writing the name of the file and a caption right where you want it to go in the text. Read this before starting,
The process
We will do all the practical editing and layout of the text and scaling of the images. The less you have done, the easier for us. Our system will provide clickable thumbprints and make sure the whole thing ends up looking nice and be as readable as possible.
You will get a link to the unpublished article and get a chance to review it before it's put online. Your name will be the byline and also in the top of the image, and the material will remain yours. We don't own it because you publish it here.
Practicalities
Please try to stick to these practical guidelines when submitting material to the Global FlyFisher. Use this sequence as a plan for you work, and we'll be happy.
- gather, draw or photograph good pictures and illustrations
- write text
- add facts, links, bio etc.
Illustrations
One of the things that set us apart from most fly fishing sites is that we use many, large and good illustrations. Your article should do the same.
A manuscript with no pictures or captions has nary a chance with us.
Make sure you have adequate pictures and/or drawings for your text. The more the better. Concentrate on the illustrations in the beginning and the rest will come by itself. Those of you who aren't used to writing will most likely find great inspiration in images, and getting the text down will be much easier once you have pictures.
We want the illustrations as JPG's as large as you can muster them, and preferably at least 1500 and up towards 3000 pixels on the long side. And we have no fear of camera originals! So if you don't want to edit and scale your own images, send us what you have, and we will see what we can do. If you can send them, we can handle them. We will scale them down and tune them to get the optimal size and quality.
We use many, large and good illustrations
Captions
Write a heading and a caption for each of your pictures or illustrations. That's two texts - a short one and a longer one for each illustration. And provide the name of the photographer or artist if it isn't yourself. We want to credit the right persons.
Sending the files
You can email the files - images and text files - as attachments to a plain email. Send it to martin@globalflyfisher.com. We have no size limit, so if you can send it, we can generally receive it.
If you have problems attaching large or many files to mails, either send more mails with a few files in each or use one of the online services such as WeTransfer.
If none of that works, let us know and we can provide an ftp-address where you can upload the files using an ftp-program.
Text
Write your text in your best English. If your English powers aren't strong, get a friend whose are to run through the text, or as a second option let us have the raw text and work on that. Make sure that you at least turn on your spelling checker if possible.
Send us the text as a plain text file - a simple office-format will do, but a completely stripped txt-file is just as fine. You can also just paste the text into a mail. We want as little formatting as possible. You can use bold, italic, chapter headings and fact boxes or side bars, but that's about it. No fancy formatting, no columns, no breaking text around images... in fact no images!
DO NOT put your images into the text! Simply indicate with the image file name where you want the image to appear, and with the caption right under it, We have no use for finished layouts, since the article will go into our publishing system in a raw and custom coded version.
Start your text with a heading, then a subheading, then the first chapter without a heading and then the remaining chapters and sidebars with each their chapter heading.
Facts
Get a hold of facts and references for your subject. Places to call, what it costs, where to buy, references to more material on the web. If any of these things are relevant for your subject, put it in your manuscript. Write a materials list and tying steps for fly patterns.
If you have tabular information, supply it as a spreadsheet or in a tab-separated text-file. We can create nice tables from that. You can use the table function of your word processor, but don't expect any fancy formatting to follow through to the publishing.
Layout
Again: DO NOT LAYOUT YOUR ARTICLE! No columns, no fancy fonts, no right- and left-adjusted pictures in the text file (no images in the file at all - see above), no effects, no colors. We will strip it out anyway, and you will be wasting both your own time and ours.
Look at existing articles, and follow the structure you see there.
DO NOT LAYOUT YOUR ARTICLE!
Author bio
If you are interested, we would also like to feature a small bio of you as the author. The bio tells about your background, where you come from, what you do, what fishing you prefer and so on. It gives the readers some information and enables them to get to know you a bit, and it gives you a small exhibition window if you want. This bio consists of a little text on yourself, some pictures of you and maybe links to your activities, contact information, company logos or whatever you find suitable and useful. You don't have to provide this information, but we like to have it and people like to read it. See a few examples here:
Robert Kolarik
Derek Grzelewski
Jesper Fohrmann
Heiko Schneider and Carolina Perez
And all our contributors info here.
Related articles
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Comments
Michael, I've bee
Michael,
I've been gone for a week (summer holiday with the family), and my mail box is flooded, and I haven't had any web access, so no new users have been added. I just confirmed your account, so you should have access now.
Martin
Hi I'm emailing
Hi
I'm emailing you here because the comment page has been disabled due to spam etc. & I tried martin@globalflyfisher but the mailbox is full!
I made a registration request a while ago and have not yet received the confirmation that lets me in. Has it gone missing somewhere?
Thanks
Michael
Eduardo, Well, yo
Eduardo,
Well, you may think that voting and competition is not a good idea, and that is your right. I recommend that you disable the voting for your own pictures and defer from voting on other's and just enjoy the great images people upload to our galleries.
I find it thrilling to follow the votes and to see which images come out as favorites.
I can see that someone has been voting your pictures very low - not deserved, they are excellent - and I have excluded those who have cast these unfair votes. I usually follow the voting and try to catch people who vote unfairly and simply disable their votes and exclude them from future voting.
You can submit artistic photos, action photos, people, fish, flies or whatever, and yes, they are all compared in the voting process, which I find absolutely fair. A good picture is a good picture not matter the subject.
Martin
Hello friends of GFF
Hello friends of GFF: write about the pictures that are published on the site. The voting system on the photos seems a wrong procedure. If they are placed only artistic photos that should be clarified. The vote may be have the average high or low in a very simple procedure, this system admits flaws. The vote also features a kind of competition among photographers that is not positive. About my photos, which obviously are not artistic, I see that there is a certain envy of the participants in time to vote for the size and quantity of fish caught in the photos sent. In short I think there should be several categories of photos or ban the vote.
Regards, Eduardo Ferraro
Bill, It sure sou
Bill,
It sure sounds like Georgia is a fisherman's heaven! And add to that what I can only consider dominantly nice weather... I'm looking out on a dark, wet November landscape and dreaming of more friendly conditions and an abundance of fish.
We're glad to have you as a part of the GFF crowd and thank you for the kind words.
And any day you want to share tips, pictures, patterns or whatnot with the rest of GFF, let us know. I can be contacted at martin@globalflyfisher.com.
Martin
To all at GFF, Firs
To all at GFF,
First I must say, this is by far the most complete and informative fishing website I've been able to find and by far the best for fly fishing. I joined over 2 years ago and still find something new and interesting every time I come online.
I have been an avid fisherman for more than 45 years. I live in an area that is beautiful filled with fish, plant life, birds and animals that many Europeans would find exotic. An added bonus is the abundance and availability of excellent freshwater fishing within 30 kilometers. Add a lightly populated area and you have a small corner of wilderness that is truly a fisherman's paradise.
I have been using light-weight spinning gear for years and started using fly gear a few years ago. I fish inshore saltwater at least twice a week catching Redfish, Speckled Trout, Flounder, Stripers, Mangrove Snapper and Black Drum. There are also Tarpon, Spanish Mackerel, Bluefish, Jack Cravelle and the occasional Pompano, depending on the season. I don't get to fly fish in saltwater as often as I like, due to the wind, but I carry my fly gear every trip, just in case I get favorable conditions.
Sincerely,
William (Bill) Voss
St. Marys, Ga, USA
blaumax@tds.net