Concealed Carry Magazine
Editorial Guidelines
Concealed Carry Magazine is published by the United States Concealed Carry Association and has an ongoing need for practical, informative articles on all subjects related to concealed carry by ordinary citizens.
If you are interested in writing for Concealed Carry Magazine, please send an email to editor@USConcealedCarry.com.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Send Queries
Prior to submitting a complete manuscript, please submit an article query that includes a short writer resume or biography, an estimated length of the story, a working title and a brief description of your idea. Part of the purpose of this query is to convince the editor that your work will be of professional quality, so use complete sentences and good grammar.
Plan Ahead
We schedule content six months to a year or more in advance of publication, so please take that into consideration, especially if the time of year is important to the relevance of the article.
On Speculation
With writers we haven’t worked with before, we typically accept queries on speculation. This means we’re interested in reviewing your completed manuscript but reserve the right to accept or deny the submission until after our review. We do this to ensure every article we publish in CCM is well-written and useful to our readers.
Be Patient
We try to respond to all queries, but please understand it might take several weeks or more. Also keep in mind we have to turn down far more articles than we accept. There are limited openings in the magazine and we work with a collection of some of the most respected writers in the industry. We do not have time to explain in detail to each writer why his or her submission was not accepted.
Original Content
If we accept your story for publication, CCM is purchasing the right to be the first place it is published. If your article has been or will be published anywhere else, whether on the web or off it, please tell us when submitting the article so that we can make the appropriate editorial decisions about it. Don’t risk your reputation by giving us an unpleasant surprise.
Length
CCM feature stories, including legal pieces, how-to stories, first-hand self-defense accounts, training class reviews, gun reviews and more, generally run between 1,500 and 2,000 words, with 1,750 words being a nice sweet spot. Gear reviews usually run around 1,000 words.
Document Formatting
Use Microsoft Word .doc or .docx formats when possible. If a submission in .doc or .docx format is not possible for you for technical reasons, send an email to editor@USConcealedCarry.com and ask for guidance on how to proceed. Please include suggested headlines and subheads. The CCM editorial staff reserves the right to change the suggested headlines and subheads. Please also include paragraph subheads to break apart related sections within the stories.
For the sake of the editors’ weary eyeballs, your article should be presented in a standard font, such as Times New Roman. Font size should be at least 12 points.
Do not embed photos in the text of the document. Ever.
Photos
If you wish to include photos with your submission, we accept high-resolution JPG or TIFF images for consideration. Please do not send prints, negatives or slides. At the end of your article, add a list of your photos (filename.jpg) and their intended captions. To avoid confusion and missing photos, this information should be attached to your article on submission. If we don’t like your images, don’t be offended. We will re-shoot.
The editor might request that you mail in items that you reviewed or mentioned in your article so CCM photographers can take professional photos. In these cases, CCM will cover all shipping costs and return the items to you as soon as possible.
Contact Info
Include a header on your document that lists your name, email address and phone number. This way we will always have your contact info attached directly to your story.
Getting It There
Email is the preferred method for query and article submissions at CCM. Send your query or article, along with any photos and other attachments, to editor@USConcealedCarry.com.
Professionalism
Please respect all deadlines and space constraints. If you do not feel you can keep the article within the agreed upon word count, notify the editor as soon as possible. We have options that can be worked out on a case-by-case basis.
Payment
If your article is accepted, we will provide a deadline date and make a payment offer. Pay structure depends upon the type of article, its quality, its length and the expertise of the writer. Checks are issued on publication.
WRITING REQUIREMENTS
Check Your Facts
Errors reduce the credibility of CCM and hurt your relationship with us. Please double-check spelling, dates, proper names, etc.
Be Clear
Speak directly to the readers using plain language. Avoid wordy circumlocutions.
Do: Get your gun.
Don’t: One should obtain one’s personal firearm.
Be Focused
Choose one main theme for your article and stick with that theme. Use supporting details to support the need to learn the skill your article teaches or to provide a word picture of how to do it. Avoid the temptation to wander off into other subjects even if they are tangentially related.
Do Not Use Jargon
OODA loop. Combatives. Condition Yellow. Double taps. FOF. Watch your six. And on, and on and on. Even readers who understand the meanings will often skip over these worn-out phrases and the paragraphs that surround them. Use fresh language!
Write What You Know
More to the point, don’t write what you don’t know. You definitely do not have to be a military hero or a law enforcement officer in order to know a thing or two about civilian concealed carry. But if you want to write about choosing firearms, you should have extensive experience shooting different types of guns, preferably at a high level of proficiency. If you want to write about how to conceal under regular office clothing, you should regularly conceal a firearm under office clothing. If you want to write about techniques for shooting after dark, you should regularly practice shooting in low-light conditions and you should have a professional level of training in that area. Whatever the subject, your writing will definitely work better if you know what you’re talking about.
Do Not Boast
While it is important to establish that you, as the writer, know what you are talking about, you should be able to do this in a single sentence (Examples: “As a firearms instructor who trains more than XX number of people a year, I see ...” or, “After carrying a firearm for more than XX years, I have found ...”). Your clear writing and common-sense advice are your real authority. You need not appeal to any other.
Where Did You Get That?
If a product is mentioned within your article, include contact information for the company that made it and price details at the end of your article. Similarly, if you quote a firearms instructor or a company spokesman, provide contact details for that person or company. If you learned a technique from a particular school or a specific instructor, please give credit where credit is due. Similar techniques might be taught in a lot of different places, but acknowledging where you learned the technique is honest and courteous.
Who Said That?
All assertions of facts, such as statistical data or historical quotations, should be referenced to the original source. It is not sufficient to quote a book that is quoting another book. Instead, track the data back to the original source and cite that original source. If you cannot source hard data back to its original creator, please do not include it in your article. If your article includes more than three sourced quotations, please put the source in endnotes to avoid breaking up the flow of your writing.
Transparency
In the interest of integrity, please disclose it in the article if you received a product in exchange for a review or if you received a deep discount on a firearm or other gear because you were writing it up for the magazine. You don’t have to give details, but you do need to let the readers know that you received a discount or a freebie.
Live With It
When reviewing gear, please live with the gear for long enough to find the product’s flaws. Give it a good workout so that your writing does not mislead the readers. As an example, that generally means a test flashlight will get used enough that the batteries run down a few times. Take it with you on a camping trip. Throw it in your glove box and let it rattle around. Use it before you write about it.
If you are reviewing a holster, you are strongly urged to live with the holster as your primary carry method for at least two weeks before writing your review. If you need to make any adjustments to the holster whatsoever during that time, please note what you changed, why and how you changed it, and whether the change improved matters.
It’s Not an Ad
Include negative information as well as positive. Include positive as well as negative. Your job as a reviewer is not to sell the product, even if you think it’s wonderful. Your job is not to chase people away from the product, even if you think it’s horrible. Your job is simply to provide a straightforward assessment of the product, including positive and negative information in an easy-to-read, enjoyable format.
IN REVIEW
1. Send queries to editor@USConcealedCarry.com.
2. Be patient.
3. If we accept your story on speculation, send the full manuscript to editor@USConcealedCarry.com.
4. You will be paid the agreed upon price after the story appears in the magazine.