I'm really grateful to John Liddiard for his contribution to the 'Your Story' post.
John is one of the few full time diving journalists I know who is not directly employed / contracted to a magazine (by this I mean someone who has [email protected] as their e-mail address). His work is published every month in DIVER magazine and his coverage of UK diving is unsurpassed. As John says, this was the niche he found for himself. Bizarre that the one thing editors want more of is what lies on the doorstep of most UK diving magazine contributors.
If you want to compete with John for his niche in DIVER you have no chance, he's too well established and too good at what he does. But there is still room for others to squeeze in with UK based articles - if you can come up with a new angle on an old theme or a completly new angle / diving location with good pictures you are likely to get published.
As John does this for a living, he will not write for nothing. However, if I were starting off I would still consider writing for no fee for small titles as long as it gets you published.
What I would say though is mirrored in my 'Keep writing...' sign off. You should only do this until your work doesn't 'suck' anymore and until someone is willing to pay you. Don't get ripped off - if the magazine is making a profit you are entitled to some of it (I would make an exception if I were writing for a charity). Don't be afraid of asking for a pay rise - if they won't pay you're being a doormat, dump them.
So, here it is, John's story.
Keep writing...
Brendan
Your Story – John Liddiard
Underwater photography had been a fringe interest of mine ever since I learned to dive. For years I used a succession of cheap and short lived cameras in equally cheap plastic housings to take mostly awful underwater snaps. Eventually I began to take photography more seriously and, after many visits to Ocean Optics with much pawing and pondering and testing of Steve Warren's patience, I invested in a Subal housing and a Nikon 801 SLR.
A few weeks after any club trip we would have a “pics and curry evening” where those of us with cameras would show and talk about the results of our exploits. Friends began suggesting that some of my pictures were good enough to be published, but I never really believed them or got round to it.
It all changed in 1995 when a one of these friends wrote a short piece about a club trip and submitted it with some of my photographs to DIVER magazine. Looking at the printed result I thought “I could do that” and my new career was born. Rather than watching television in the evenings I began writing articles and sending them with photos to diving and travel magazines.
I had been expecting a high rate of rejections, but it didn’t happen that way. Editors seemed to like my work and if one editor turned an item down I could usually change a few words and get it accepted elsewhere.
UK diving magazines were suffering from a shortage of good UK material. As an enthusiast of UK diving, I was able to target a gap in the market. I began to get commissioned work. Editors would ring me up and say “We are doing an issue on X, can you put something together”. All this and a lack of free time to go diving gave me the insane killer idea. By multiplying what I was making by a working week, I could leave my previous job as a computer geek and become a diving photographer and journalist full time. At the start of 1998, that is what I did. Even more insane, it worked.
My tips for those wanting to have a go:
- Look for subjects similar to what a magazine already uses (i.e. the editor likes), but not repeating anything published recently.
- Look for obvious gaps in a magazine's coverage, but consider why before investing too much effort.
- Don't overdo the flowery prose and clichés.
- Your submission should be well written and free of typos.
- Make it fit the size of article the magazine uses.
- Make it easy for an editor to say yes. If they receive 2 good submissions on the same subject, they will use the one that requires least work to fit it into the magazine.
- Don't approach tour operators and dive centres pretending to represent a magazine unless the editor has agreed to you doing so. When you get found out, you will be blacklisted far and wide.
- When you get a rejection (or an acceptance) ask for feedback, but don't start an argument. Most editors are nice people who like to encourage potential when they have time.
- Don't get sucked into “vanity publishing”, accepting little or no fee just to see your name in print. It de-values the market for you and everyone else. (I am making a rare exception writing this for Brendan). If you want to be a professional, your income has to exceed your expenses.
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