Writing for technical magazines

Question

I've lately been considering writing for technical magazines to establish a name. This is very common in the non-programming fields, because it leads to speaking engagements and the like, but I'm not sure how practical it is for us.

• Has anyone in the community done this before?

• Do you usually expect payment for it?

• Did you see noticeable benefits, such as a better profile and more consulting work or such?

• Were the benefits more noticeable in the short or longer term?

• Do they expect your work to be print-ready or do they edit it? I have a friend who's written for the magazine of his profession, and they ask for print-ready submissions. Is it usually the same for us?

• Any guidelines to follow?

Answer 1

Hi - I've done this, albeit just the once thus far - I wrote an article for SQL Server Magazine. You can certainly expect payment as you're providing a service however I wouldn't expect the payment to be a great deal - I believe first-time writers tend to be paid less than established ones (the publisher is 'testing the water' I guess!).

I've not seen any benefits yet - other than having my work in print and being able to laud it over our DBA (I wrote an article off the back of a long standing debate we'd been having - I decided to look into it further and the article developed from there). They weren't after a print-ready document in my case - however, you should expect that your article is 'almost there' - typically I'd expect that formatting will be done by the editors, the vast majority of the content including spelling / grammar should have been dealt with by your good self, though.

Guidelines? I don't know if I can offer any - other than picking a topic you're really interested in and think others will be - then it's so much easier to write!

Answer 2

Maybe not an answer to your questions, but today more and more projects want contributors who can write. Whether it's an open source project or a hiring company.

The open source project I'm now contributing to is suffering not from lack of developers, but lack of people who can help with documentation and white papers. Outside the open source world, employers also want people who can write so they can blog on behalf of the company and make it look good. It shows the developer is well rounded and can communicate.