Hi
I'm the features editor for Two Wheels Only magazine. We have a great travel section in the magazine called 'Passport and Panniers'. In the past I've written about bike journeys through Libya, Bosnia and all over Europe. Each member of the editorial team has been on a bike based journey somewhere cool and we pride ourselves on the fantastic stories we bring home. We're looking for more adventures to use in the pages of TWO. If you have a tale to tell (and hi res images to back it up), we want to hear from you. We'll pay £150 if your story is published. If you're interested please email a brief (150 word) outline of your journey and attach some lo res images to Hogan@two.tv
Thanks very much
John

Hi, I just have to say that a short trip that I did lately cost more than that for fuel. I hope no-one takes this up as it is way too little. Infact this is a golden opportunity for HUBBers to negotiate a reasonable rate. How come I was offered £1,000 for an article 18 months ago? I was too slow to get on the road. Now I'm expected to contribute £500 to £800 for TWO to get an article. Linzi.

Depends how you look at it, if it's just a bit of exposure an first experience of writing why not? Or if you got some freebies out of people then again, why not it means they get a bit more exposure.

See if they'd commision me in advance, then I'd be up for doing it for that amount just cos I could tell potential sponsors and leverage more out of them.

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Rates vary widely from publication to publication. I might actually give this a go. £150 would pay half the cost of my MOT!

Roughly how many words are you looking at for the completed article John?

Matt

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http://adventure-writing.blogspot.com

http://scotlandnepal.blogspot.com/

*Disclaimer* - I am not saying my bike is better than your bike. I am not saying my way is better than your way. I am not mocking your religion/politics/other belief system. When reading my post imagine me sitting behind a frothing pint of ale, smiling and offering you a bag of peanuts. This is the sentiment in which my post is made. Please accept it as such!

This one may run and run.................

I briefly freelanced as a writer for various EMAP motorcycle publications in the early 1990s (15 years ago) and have here on my desk an invoice to EMAP (which has been paid !) for £1400 for a 1200 word story (and I didn't even do the photos !)

A professional writer and or photographer would piss themselves laughing at rates like this.

If I want to read amateurs stories of traveling round the world I would go on the Hubb/Advrider and enjoy the experience very much, and I do just that.

If I want awesome, inspiring photography, and mind bending words, I am happy to pay a premium, maybe for National Geographic or some of the European travel mags. Magazines should be investing in professionals and excellence, otherwise they become no different to the Internet. In fact, a great story with great pictures displayed here and on Advrider will get thousands and thousands of readers

In the UK, newspapers (and the BBC in particular) are going crazy for citizen journalism and photography. Tell us your story blah blah blah, send us your photos blah blah blah, we can't be bothered to commission professionals and pay proper rates

Publishers have for a long time made absolutely no investments in editorial work, regional newspapers have been the very worst example and their demise has been spectacular.

I can of course,see the attraction of having your story printed in a national magazine but selling it for £150 so that the publisher can make money from it is absolutely nuts, completely nuts.

And be very careful to check any issues with regard to syndication, copyright and so on. I have no experience of TWO and make absolutely no comment on them, but a great many publishers who seeks contributions from citizen journalists then go on to syndicate the work to other publishers and make substantial profits from it. Check the terms and conditions very carefully.

These are not the ramblings of an embittered freelance, I'm a staff photographer earning a decent living shooting international, top spec sports
Equally, I'm not saying that there aren't some very very talented writers and snappers out there who don't normally make their living from words and pics. But if your stuff is good enough to be published in a profitable, national magazine that takes big adverts and wants to position itself as a brand leader, please please please don't give it away for an utterly dismal 150 quid.

Don't devalue yourselves ; don't devalue the intelligence, creativity, effort, perspiration and the ambitious, open mind that got you into (and out of) the situation that makes your story an asset to a profit making company.

£750 should be the absolute minimum, especially for words AND pictures.

You put that very well. You are absolutely correct to separate magazine articles from online accounts. The trouble is the editors seem to want to dumb down their editions, saving money in the short term. I think Bike magazine will already be seeing sales drop after their change of direction and loss of their then excellent editor. (Who's now at MCN!) I shall endeavour to get top notch material and offer it to a few, selected editors at top rates or they can't have it. Thanks for showing me that the original amount I was offered was realistic. The offer was for "excellent words and pics". 'nuff said. Linzi.

Yep - just like the obsession with reality television eh? - get the gormons to entertain us, rather than proper actors (and script writers)...

To be fair to TWO - they haven't said how many words they want - is the feature a bit of fluff (like BIKE used to do over a page or two, a few hundred words and picture heavy), or are they looking for 2000+ish words over say 4-5 pages...?

If so, you are completely correct that 150GBP is insulting, even an amateur - after all, if it's good enough to put on their page, its good enough to pay a fair rate...

Perhaps 750GBP is a touch high? but for a full feature I would expect the minimum of 100GBP per A4 page...

xxx

Assuming one is not a professional writer, I think it's a good opportunity... for the aspiring writer (often more well known publications require past publishing experience) or the "it'd be cool to have my story published" folks. Especially considering most of us may be used to having to pay others to listen to our tales.

, you and every other bike mag journo as manufacturers don't do "pre-biking season" press launches for the latest 600cc sportsbike in the UK. An all expenses paid weekend riding the latest ZXCBXR600 in South Africa is about as convincing as another MCN exclusive.

Read it as: Bike based* Journey** Somewhere *** Cool****

* The bike manufacturer had a bar at the press launch

** We had to walk from the taxi to get there

*** We can't remember where it was exactly

**** There was ice in the drinks

Sorry, shouldn't take the whatsit

What I want to know is, if the mags find every bike so wonderful how come I can find the duffers and I'm not a professional in the field?

Andy

Bike mags are really scared of upsetting the big advertisers and thus all bikes are good just that some are 'marginally' better than others.

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http://www.itchystravels.co.uk/Bigone2009.html

That's why Honda win every group test the mags do. If it isn't the best bike, they'll dream up some contrived excuse as to why it's the bike you should buy.

Video: Yamaha R1 v Honda Fireblade v Suzuki GSX-R1000 v Ducati 1198 v Kawasaki ZX-10R - Motorcycle News,

Listen to the excuses from about 3:30 onwards in the video. I reckon the overall result that they'll print in the mag is that you should buy the 'blade because it's the best on real roads and the R1 too track focused, due to lack of engine braking. At the very worst, the Fireblade will come 2nd overall even though it was 2nd last (out of 5) on this test.

Also, has anyone else noticed that both the big glossy bike mags and MCN are using the same "hired guns" to track test bikes? (I bet they get more than £150.) Now they want HU members to write articles for them! Do these guys actually do anything themselves that's worth paying for?

Strikes me as a sort of lottery. You do the ride and write up as you'd do anyway and post to TWO. If they use it you win £150, the Hamster or whoever has to rethink his latest 600cc group test/fawning appreciation of plastic missile that'll rust in a fortnight and the mag's publishers might get the idea that they should be thinking about facts not advertising. I dare TWO to publish the first report they recieve where the bike throws it's toys out of the pram just past Calais

I was bored last week, stuck on a motorway services due to a cancelled meeting. I spent £1.90 on MCN. I went cover to cover in under 20 minutes. The only articles of interest were the new Norton and a bit about two-stoke technology. Both were so shallow and lacking in detail you have to wonder what was going on. OK, Norton can't tell you how much the new bike will cost, but they should be pressed far enough to say if Joe public should wait or buy a Triumph now, especially when you put pictures and little comments about three other bikes. Finding ways to sneak in Norton advertising with lines like "Whose brake levers will you be using", "Oh, we only buy high quality from...." was just feeble. If Norton won't talk boys, they get two column inches on page 5 saying there'll be info in a few week. If Honda exclude you from the next press launch for not been nice, that's the story you publish, they've obviously got something to hide. "New MCN" is just Old MCN with fewer references to getting your knee down.

Andy

Some interesting replies.
The offer of £150 for a story is an amount I have been given to offer, not what I would view as enough to cover anyones expenses but that wasn't the point. If you think you're story is worth more than that, and it probably is, then good for you and best of luck trying to get it published.
One thing I don't understand is everyones assumption that we (bike journo's) don't travel as well as anyone else. Before I worked at TWO I was in the army for ten years. Travel and adventure is something that appealed to me, as was writing, so I took a gamble and pushed to get into the industry. Now that I'm in it I find that I have to suffer the wrath of people that assume, because I'm fortunate enough (through luck and hard work) to wear fancy kit and ride shiny bikes that I'm incapable of having a 'real adventure', what a crock of shit. If you don't like the idea of being published because the offer of money isn't high enough, fine, thanks for taking a look. But don't assume all mags and all journo's are the same, I posted on here thinking I would get some educated responses and because I thought this could be a good chance to get some great stories in TWO. Thanks to those that have responded already.

Fair play to you if you can earn a good living from something you enjoy doing. I'd be interested if you did some write ups on your own bike travels. I think it was Superbike that used to have section of the mag devoted to the staff's own bikes which was more interesting than it sounds and good to see you lot having the same real world problems with bikes as the rest of us. I'd like to see the mags returning to running features like the YouTube link below but the way they seem to be under the thumb of their advertisers, that's not going to happen.

YouTube - MCN: Can a £1500 sportsbike beat a GSX-R1000 K6?

I'd buy a copy, maybe even subscribe. I bet Suzuki's PR staff were seriously p***ed off at the time.

Main problem with the mags is that they seem to have turned into little more than a marketing tool for manufacturers and there's nothing that any one of them does that makes it stand out from the others. New bike launched = all the mags run more or less the same feature. Is it any wonder that they're losing out to the internet?

I haven't bought a mag for months now but I did buy BIKE last week, to take to a mate in hospital. Unfortunately, his Dad had already bought him the same mag and all he said was, "There's not much in it really". To fill 160+ pages with "not much" takes some doing, especially if you're selling it for £3.99! Most interesting article in there was the trip to Italy in winter on a Ducati Monster. The pseudo-tech article on the cross-plane crank R1 was disappointing.