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National Parks, our award-winning quarterly magazine, is an exclusive benefit of membership in NPCA.
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Writer's Guidelines
Subject Matter: National Parks magazine publishes articles about areas in the National Park System, proposed new areas, threats to parks or park wildlife, scientific discoveries, legislative issues, and endangered species of plants or animals relevant to national parks. We do not publish articles on general environmental topics, nor do we print articles about land managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, or other federal agencies.
Articles for National Parks should be directed to a largely nonscientific but well-educated audience. News articles and smaller departments are 500-1200 words. Features run approximately 1,800-2,000 words. We generally pay 70 cents to $1.00/word—the high end being reserved for our proven contributors. Articles should have an original slant or news hook and cover a limited subject, rather than attempt to treat a broad subject superficially. Specific examples, descriptive details, and quotes are always preferred to generalized information. The writer must be able to document factual claims, and statements should be clearly substantiated with evidence within the article. National Parks does not publish fiction, poetry, or "My trip to..." stories.
Queries: Query first, enclosing three samples of your best published work. Include a brief outline of your article idea. We prefer to receive pitches via e-mail. Please review several issues of the magazine before sending a proposal. You can read most of the content from every issue on this website, and you can see PDFs of dozens of past issues here, via Google Books.
Copyright: NPCA buys First North American Serial Rights and copyrights articles as part of the collective work, National Parks. Authors must warrant their manuscripts as original and unpublished. NPCA may, at its discretion, post any article published in National Parks on the NPCA web site and in a format appropriate for digital devices. Articles published in our magazine must not be subsequently published elsewhere without our permission. (Policy on reprint permission is liberal, however, and permission may be negotiated.)
Direct queries to National Parks Magazine at npmag@npca.org.
