We welcome articles covering all aspects of woodturning: its history, tools and materials, techniques, projects, local chapter news, profiles, galleries and exhibits, and design and criticism.

We require that your material be original and that you have the right to publish it. We occasionally reprint pieces that have appeared elsewhere, but that’s rare. If you submit something to us for publication, do not send it for consideration elsewhere unless it has been rejected by American Woodturner. We require authors to sign a copyright contract for articles published in AW.

You don’t have to be a polished writer, but enthusiasm and knowledge about your topic is essential. The editor can take what you write and turn it into the type of article appropriate for our readers. One of the jobs of an editor is to make authors look really good in print!

How to Begin:

Send the editor a brief abstract describing your article (editorscarpino@gmail.com). A few sentences or a short outline will suffice.

After initial contact by the editor, proceed with the writing. Submit the article, in electronic form, along with photos and photo captions, by the date requested. Articles must be submitted with the text only in a separate file from any images. Do not send PDFs or documents with images, drawings, or graphs embedded in them. The text must be in a separate file with no added embellishments. Articles not submitted this way may be returned with the request to resubmit according to these guidelines. Send photos separately (see details below). Captions should be in a separate Word file with reference numbers that connect each caption to each image.

Be sure to include a short bio to accompany your article. Readers like to know about you. If you want to include contact information or your website, that’s great–we’ll include it!

Photography:

Good photos make for excellent articles! Electronic photos must be high resolution images in .jpg (preferred) or .tiff format. Up to about 6MB is large enough. If your images are below 1MB, the resolution is not high enough and the images will not reprint well. Do not manipulate your photos in any photo program. We do the manipulating and color balancing.

Slides are acceptable. We have the capacity to convert the slides to digital, but we prefer to begin with a digital image.

Do not use a sheet as a background. Sheets detract from the object being photographed. Gray background paper is best for images of your turned items.

For images of techniques or processes, avoid including background clutter and focus on the action being highlighted. Take several images of each step that you want to show. It’s easy to delete images that don’t work but not so easy to set up steps and procedures again if you have to redo pictures.

Use good lighting. If you don’t know what this means, do a bit of research or experiment with various lights and flashes. Look at images in other publications and determine “good” from “bad” photos.

If you have more than a couple of high resolution images to accompany your article, send the images on a CD or upload them to a FTP site. Please don’t send masses of high resolution images through email. You will incur the wrath of the editor.

Click on this link for detailed information, advice and guidance on preparation of your AW article photos.

Woodturning Photography How-To's:

Examples of good photography techniques and process can be found in these two AW articles.

Editorial Procedures:

At present, the journal is published every two months - six time a year, which means that articles could be in our queue for up to one year before being published. The editor will attempt to keep each author informed as to the status of his or her article. If you do not hear from the editor after a couple of months, please send an inquiry.

We pay authors for feature articles and for some news items. Experienced authors are paid more than authors who are just beginning. Contributors receive one complimentary copy of American Woodturner. Additional copies of the journal, in which your article appears, may be purchased. Contact inquiries@woodturner.org to order additional copies.

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Contact the Editor:

Betty Scarpino
Editor
EditorScarpino@gmail.com