All members receive two copies of the Magazine per year, in Spring and Autumn. It contains up to 100 pages of information and news stories. It is printed in A5 format and sent via Royal Mail.
Members may ask the Secretary for access to a PDF version of the
Magazine instead of a paper copy. To do so, please
- e-mail secretary@fellponysociety.org.uk,
- head your e-mail with the subject "Digital Magazine",
- give your membership number and
- confirm the e-mail address where you want to receive the Magazine.
The Secretary will then e-mail you about the Magazine, once the paper
copies have been posted. The e-mail will contain a protected Dropbox link
and a password; please do not share it. Your digital copy will become
available at the same time as paper copies arrive. The Dropbox link
expires at the expected date of the next issue, after which the file is
made available on the web site, and will be listed as a back number.
Each issue of the Magazine becomes publicly available on the FPS web site when the newest edition is sent out to members ("one issue in arrears"). For example, the Autumn issue of the Magazine becomes a back number online the following Spring.
We are always pleased to receive text and photographs for the Magazine. We welcome letters to the editor; reports from Area Groups and Overseas Branches; articles relevant to Fell ponies, eg breeding, management, and approaches to equestrian disciplines such as showing, driving, TREC, dressage etc; show results from secretaries of affiliated shows; news; history; obituaries; personal accounts and achievements etc. We do not usually accept poetry.
Final dates for submitting material for forthcoming Magazines are
normally:
1st October for the Autumn issue.
1st February for the Spring issue.
These dates are not arbitrary. The Autumn edition has to fit around the FPS Sale and the registration of foals, and the Spring edition must be sent out in time for members to receive a Notice and Agenda three weeks before the FPS Annual General Meeting.
After we receive your material, the Magazine must be put together, proof-read and amended before it goes to the printers, and their turnaround time also has to be factored in, before the Secretary can envelope the Magazines and any inserts, and take them to the Post Office.
Copy that arrives late will be held over to the next issue, and if it is no longer current it will not be printed. So - please send your copy to arrive before the deadline.
We would like informative articles to be around 1500 words, digital or printed rather than hand-written. The Magazine's page count is 100 pages or less, so if your article will be very long please get in touch and discuss it before sending
Pony news pieces and obituaries should be about 400 words with one good photo.
Other items may be included at the discretion of the Editor and/or Council. Advertisements are accepted, subject to approval and to payment of a fee in proportion to the amount of space taken.
Please give your email and any attached files a relevant Subject heading to show clearly what your email contains, eg, "Southern Show Results" or "Obituary for XYZ".
We sometimes receive 20 or 30 emails and files all called "For the Magazine" - if yours is one of those, you'll have to forgive us if we lose or overlook it. If you use a reference to a pony name or owner name we're much more likely to be able to find it again, so be specific.
Please type or print-off your copy so it can be scanned into an editable file. Handwritten items have to be typed-up and they may be refused on the grounds of lack of time to do this.
There are very specific settings for the Magazine text which keep its
“look” consistent, so please don’t spend time on special layouts (your
page is likely to be A4 or Letter, whereas the Magazine is A5, so your
layout will not fit). Bold, italic, underline and special fonts are not
needed as they will all be removed when the file is processed.
We know some of you will send from your mobile but please, have pity on
the poor editor! Write in whole sentences, use whole words, put
in full stops, and don't let the phone do predictive text.
One space after a full stop, and no multiple exclamation marks, thank you.
Please double-check facts before sending, especially names.
Material submitted to the Fell Pony Society should be sent as an attachment in one of the following file types:
.TXT plain ASCII text
.RTF Rich Text, without formatting
.DOC MSWord 2003 or earlier, without formatting
.DOCX MS Word 2007 onward, without formatting
.ODT LibreOffice Writer file, without formatting
.XLS MS Excel spreadsheet (for show results)
.ODS LibreOffice spreadsheet (for show results)
We can't edit and reformat .PDF and .WPS so these formats are not accepted.
Results can cover the first six placings. Please don’t use tabs to
create tables or columns of show results. Make life easy for yourself and
the Office: simply list the items, one entry per line, in a normal page of
text.
An Excel or LibreOffice spreadsheet is equally acceptable so long as you
put each entry into ONE cell. Don’t leave gaps, empty cells, empty rows or
empty columns. Remember we only want your data, not your layout. (Columns
can be widened or text can be wrapped within the cell. Ask us how, if you
need to.)
Don’t include show entry numbers. Don't list entries that didn't turn up.
List your Show Supreme Champion and Reserve AT THE END please.
The Magazine only uses colour photographs on the covers, inside covers, or centre pages. We reduce photographs to black and white for the main pages.
We will use as many good photos as we can fit in, so long as the photographer is named so we can credit them (and if you have permission to re-use their image). Don't forget to tell professional photographers that the FPS Magazine has an ISSN (number on the cover: 2754‐9348 (Print) and 2754‐9356 (Online)) and it can be used to support second-use claims via Copyright licensing, ALCS or DACS. (If you tell a photographer and they don't know what that means, it doesn't matter, but pros who do claim will understand and may be more likely to let you send the photo without asking for a fee!)
Your digital photograph does not need to be wider than 3200 pixels, but don't allow your email program to resize your image to a very small size either as it will then be too low-resolution to work in print.
By email from a phone, please do not send more than ONE at a time. If you send us lots of images in one email it can be impossible for us to sort out the identities of people and ponies in each photo, and as a result we may have to leave them out of the Magazine. Give your email, image or diagram a meaningful name such as JOE DRIVING PRINCESS so that the editor can identify it.
Please don't send your digital images in a word-processed document or in a PowerPoint slideshow. Just send us a separate, clearly named .jpg as an attachment please.
Hard-copy prints, from 5 inches wide up to A4 size, can be posted to us for scanning. Please enclose a self-addressed envelope with adequate postage if you want them returned. If there's no postage or envelope, we won't post them back.
Old photos are very welcome additions to the FPS archives. Creased or torn images can be "repaired" digitally. If you scan old photos please use a resolution of at least 300dpi, but don't take photographs of photographs unless you can manage not to include flash reflections from glazed frames or to skew or stretch the perspective, because it takes a lot of time to correct this and it is not always successful.
Images or diagrams that need to be in specific positions in an article
should be indicated by typing the file name in CAPITAL LETTERS at the
point where the image is relevant.
If you include references, indicate them in the text by the surname of the
writer and year of publication thus (Jones, 2012) OR by a number in
brackets thus (2) with a list at the end, rather than by automatically
generated footnotes or endnotes which are liable to be lost when your file
is processed.
- accept or reject material submitted without being bound to give
reasons;
- require the writer to make changes before the material is reconsidered;
- correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in line with publication
standards;
- reformat text appearance in line with publication standards;
- copyfit material to the space available, by:
reducing the number or size of images;
cutting or moving text or headings;
removing irrelevancies, tautologies and redundancies
Material is submitted to the Fell Pony Society’s publications subject to
the understanding that it may be reproduced in any of the following ways:
- in the FPS Magazine;
- in other FPS publications and products;
- and on the FPS web site.
E-mail your copy to the Editor at
sue @dawbank.co.uk
Or post printed copy to
Daw Bank, Greenholme, Tebay, PENRITH, Cumbria CA10 3TA
These guidelines are always available from the FPS web site, as a link on the Newsletters page.
If you've read through all that - Thank you! I look forward to reading more of your offerings.
Sue Millard
Editor