[uday]

The Jan 2007 issue has a short article by Phil Clayton; is that you, pclayton ?

If so, would you talk to us about how the article submission/publication process works?

[keylime]

Uday,

If memory serves, Winston Mann (winstonm) also posted to the Bridge World this year, with an article about LTC.

The address tho for Phil looks awfully similar.

[pclayton]

Yeah its me

I turned in an article featuring two play themes in December, 2004. Jeff Rubens emailed me back (within a couple of days actually) after bouncing the idea off of John Swanson. Some of you might remember the 1st hand; I had a thread about it in the fall of '04, but I think I posted it as a defensive problem.

While the play themes were the same as what I submitted, the article (including the title) was changed around a lot. Jujitsu was the final result.

I signed their standard contract and received some minimal consideration for the piece, so the Bridge World owns it now.

I had know idea when it would be published, if at all. Frankly, after a year, I stopped looking. I have no idea if this is a typical lag for an article; I know that tournament reports lag about 4 months, and MSC lags about 8 months.

When we moved to Orange County (CA) in August, my September and October issues were forwarded but my November and December isues are DOA . So it was a neat surprise yesterday when a stranger in the MBC congratulated me on the article, but the mag made it to our POB yesterday.

By the way, I should mention Richard Willey (Hrothgar) has also had at least one article published in the Bridge World too.

[uday]

Very cool.

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I should mention Richard Willey (Hrothgar) has also had at least one article published

I have many back issues ( Fred has them all) - when was it printed, do you know ?

[hrothgar]

uday, on Dec 21 2006, 09:19 PM, said:

Very cool.

Quote

I should mention Richard Willey (Hrothgar) has also had at least one article published

I have many back issues ( Fred has them all) - when was it printed, do you know ?

I had a couple pieces published 6-8 years back. Can't recall the actual dates.

If you're actually interested in Bridge related content don't bother trying to track them down. The pieces were prognostications about the way that Online Bridge would evolve over time.

The first argued that vertically integrated online sites like OKBridge and E-Bridge were making a significant mistake in business strategy. (When I talk use the expression "vertically integrated" I was refering to the fact that E-Bridge and OKBridge were trying to do everything alone. The wrote the client, the wrote the server, the ran their own tournaments, the issues masterpoints, yada, yada, yada). I felt that it made more sense for difficult organizational structures to focus on their own core competencies. Computer programs should focus on developing infrastructure (Clients, servers, and the like) but shouldn't necessarily be establishing their own masterpoint systems or regulatory structures. Organizations like the ACBL whose primary competency deals with social organization structures should run events and create convention charts, but they shouldn't be trying to develop their own infrastructure.

The second piece focused on my never ending hope that the Bermuda Bowl will be run on a Local Area Network and broadcast live over the Internet.

If you've bothered to read my posting on the forums you've seen it all before.

Sadly, I couldn't get them to take my piece on mixed strategies. Jeff liked it, but couldn't figure out how to publish it. Making the piece intelligible for most of the readers would require a lot of detailed examples dealing with restricted choice and the like. Sadly, he didn't think that the basic argument that i was making warranted that much page space.

[mike777]

If you remember post the dates so I can look in my backlog...

[Gerben42]

Congrats Phil!

I guess I will have to be patient about my article that I sent in this summer.

[FrancesHinden]

uday, on Dec 21 2006, 04:20 PM, said:

If so, would you talk to us about how the article submission/publication process works?

Write something interesting, reasonably grammatical in good English and with accurate bridge and send it to the bridge world (their website has a style guide to help).

I am editor of our county newsletter (36 pages twice a year) and occasional proof-reader of one of the English national magazines and I can assure you that the above combination is so rare in submissions it pretty much guarantees publication.

(Phil, don't read this wrong: it's a compliment to you)

[pclayton]

The BW (for me anyway) style guide is difficult to follow. I tried to format per their guide and gave up after a few hours. The article I ended up submitting was just a basic Word document.

I suppose if you are in the publishing biz, or regularly submit articles the guide isnt that big of a deal, but it was for me.

When Rubens responded he fixed the formatting and sent me a pdf of the proof. He made many changes to the substance but not many to the grammar, or the theme. He didnt seem too upset it wasnt submitted per the guide.

Im sure the BW is a lot more interested in the content it receives than whether or not its formatted correctly.

Frances - I have a question for you. Do you have any idea why European events dont get a lot of coverage in the BW?

[mike777]

Phil it seems that there is coverage of oversees events in the BW. Perhaps the format of just one major bridge event being covered per issue limits others. The 4 major USA events can take up 8 out of 12 issues. Throw in the World event and that takes up at least 2 more issues per year.

[Gerben42]

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Frances - I have a question for you. Do you have any idea why European events dont get a lot of coverage in the BW?

It's an American magazine so I don't think this is very surprising. Although many of the readers will know about most top American players, they won't know many top European players. If you ask the readers who do you think they will know more? For example if you ask about these two world class players:

* Eric Greco
* Bauke Muller

Guess the answer to the question is easy, so now you know why they write more about American tournaments.

[barmar]

Perhaps Mike assumed from the name "Bridge World" that it's targeted towards a more international audience than most regional bridge magazines.

[hrothgar]

pclayton, on Dec 28 2006, 10:23 PM, said:

Frances - I have a question for you. Do you have any idea why European events dont get a lot of coverage in the BW?

My friend Tim Goodwin dropped a line to Jeff Rubens on this topic a couple years back.

Tim was a little frustrated that the Bridge World seems to be getting more parochial. There wasn't much coverage of events where American's weren't in contention. The discussions about bidding seemed to be focusing on standard North American methods.

Rubens replied that the vast majority of BW readers were from North America and that they weren't much interested in things foreign. As I recall, Tim end up not renewing his subscription.

I'm not sure whether we can really distinquish chicken from egg, however, the BW seems to be more a North American publication these days.

[FrancesHinden]

pclayton, on Dec 28 2006, 08:23 PM, said:

Frances - I have a question for you. Do you have any idea why European events dont get a lot of coverage in the BW?

I am no more an authority on BW content than anyone else here (quite possibly less so), but have others have said, in spite of the name it is an American magazine so it's probably not so unusual it should mainly cover American events. And indeed, by the time you have covered the major American competitions plus the odd world championship there isn't a lot of space left for other tournament reports.

It has a more international readership than most bridge magazines because it is - so far I as I know - still by far the best English language bridge publication for serious tournament players. Anyway, of the English magazines, tournament reports are mainly cribbed from the daily bulletins so you can just read them instead.

I also find it getting more parochial, but without wishing to start being rude about individual authors there is one writer in particular whom I personally find very chauvanistic who has been writing more articles in the last few years, and this changes the tone of the magazine as a whole slightly.

[geller]

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Perhaps Mike assumed from the name "Bridge World" that it's targeted towards a more international audience than most regional bridge magazines.

As an American who's lived in Japan for 22 years I can see both sides of this. You should know that the champions of North American baseball are the winners of the "World Series" (even though only North American teams enter, no teams from Cuba, Japan or other baseball hotbeds) and similarly the winners of the gridiron football SuperBowl are called the "world champions." (In the latter case not even Canadian teams compete).

The "Bridge World" name was chosen in 1929 by Ely Culbertson, an immigrant to America, who knew what would sell there.....

-Bob