Guidelines for paid contributions for publication in The Coastal Passage: By providing contribution you agree to the following; 1. You agree that the material is your original work. Never ever plagerise. This includes photos. If you have a question about this, please contact for advise on copyright. 2. Advise TCP if your material has been published elsewhere or is being considered for publication elsewhere. Don't send a copy to every mag you know. Paid published material must be unique to our market area, full stop. 3. The Coastal Passage will retain the right of use of your material after original print for publication of compilation editions (“Best of” for example), archive and for use on the TCP web site. You retain your copyright. 4. Your work may be edited, though not usually. TCP respects your work, your intent and perspective. To avoid unnecessary work and disappointment and to maximise payment for contributions, intending paid contributors should read and follow the guidelines below. It isn’t a bad idea to email TCP for questions regarding this information or to see if the subject matter qualifies for consideration. What defines paid material? An article that has taken time and effort to prepare and organise. There will always be space in TCP for the most amateur contributions or issues oriented forum subjects and articles that may promote community supported events etc. That’s what creates the connection to community that makes TCP what it is but those are the things we all volunteer our effort for, and what TCP is willing to sponsor page space to support. Don't expect to be paid to promote your clubs activities!  What sort of material does TCP want? 1. The material must be of relevance and interest to TCP’s readers. Feel free to inquire if in doubt. A study of recent issues of TCP is helpful to determine the type of material sought and the way it should be presented but… TCP accepts and in fact seeks a different approach on occasion.  2. Please do not mess with the photos!!! Don't crop or adjust colour.  3. Make it easy for the Editor, Organise it! If it takes additional time to process the text to check spelling of proper names especially, or photos require special attention, the value of the contribution is reduced.  4. Take your time. TCP’s editor typically rewrites material several times over several days before committing to a page . Test the results on friends. Check and recheck your facts.  5. TCP encourages contributions from the young folk and special care and consideration is given.  6. Material that promotes a religion will be either edited or refused. TCP must not seem to endorse or favour any particular belief system over another.  Advise from the editor: Avoid pretence... write like you speak. Practical considerations: Written material should be in word doc or open office or just emailed to bob@thecoatalpassage.com Text and photos mailed on CD are great. There is no stupid word count at TCP. Creativity doesn’t come in tidy packages all the time. A very long article though, is harder to work with and difficult to place but merit is determined by the read, not the count. Sometimes a 500 word little nugget can be the best article in the paper. Be imaginative, but also ensure that your information is accurate. All facts, especially ones that could be contentious, should be thoroughly researched before writing and reference for facts along with the article are helpful. Personal notes about you in the form of a small autobiographical sketch are good, a photo all the better but not a big deal. Photographs: Again, Don’t mess with them! Please don't crop, adjust or embed them into Word docs or anything else. Best thing to do is to save your jpg photos in a ‘documents’ folder in your computer and then transfer to disc from there or email as attachments. Please do not send us links to some "cloud" platform. We won't go there. It is OK to send reduced file sizes to select from if you have quite a few. The GST and payments Most of you are under the term "hobbiest"thus GST does not apply. If your professional status requires GST be addressed TCP will need an invoice to that end. Payments TCP will pay about $100 per page (exclude ads) for text and photos used, more for really outstanding technical articles or exceptional story telling. Less if much work has to be done to prepare the article by TCP. All fees are tempered by the amount of advertising revenue generated by the issue involved. TCP will pay via bank transfer or by mailed cheque. If some other form is required let us know and we will try to work with you. OR... You can choose to have your fee donated to a nominated charity.