Lately, I have been contacted a lot about how to get articles published in Biomass Magazine, so today I’m going to give a quick crash course on submitting contributions.

First off: We don’t sell article space. There isn’t a way to pay to get your article in. However, if you’re willing to come over and thoroughly clean my house, I may be able to pull some strings.

Kidding. While we don’t purchase articles, we have an excellent advertising and design department that can help craft the exact message you want to convey about your product or service (yeah, yeah, shameless plug). I can hook you up there.

So back to articles, you may want to start by taking a look at our media kit, which, if you scroll to page 10, lists the themes of each monthly magazine (it will also tell you a lot about our readership, if you’re interested). Not every article fits its respective issue’s theme, but sometimes it’s beneficial to both sides if it does. You may also want to pay attention to the bonus distributions, events that may be particularly applicable to your cause. And finally, decide which section of the magazine you think it would fit best in: power, pellets, thermal, biogas or advanced biofuels and chemicals. It may be applicable to one or more categories.

Once you do that, give me a call to tell me about your article premise, or shoot me an email with the proposal. It really helps if you explain the article purpose and intended audience. If you call, I’ll still ask you to email me a short abstract so I have it on hand when decisions are being made regarding the articles we will select for an issue.

If the article is already written, send it along. We strongly prefer that it has not yet been printed elsewhere. Generally, contribution articles range from 1,000 to 1,300 words, with an image/graphic or two. If it’s longer, sometimes I can make it work. Other times, I’ll trim it down a bit, but submitters will get a chance to review before anything is sent to print. We’ll make it look pretty.

And here’s one last tip: if it’s too advertorial, it’s likely we won’t go with it. It can be helpful, informative, interesting, opinionated, fact-based, research-based, tell a story, etc. But just not a blatant sales pitch.

I think that about covers it. Call or email me if you have any questions. Or, of course, an article.

Reach me at 701-738-4961 or asimet@bbiinternational.com.