NEW CONTACT EMAIL FOR MEW EDITOR

Hi folks,

My email for MEW has changed:

meweditor@mortons.co.uk

The old addresses will continue to work for a bit, and the details on here will be updated when I have a full set of contact details.

Anyone with my personal or business email addresses - these have not changed.

Thanks for your patience as these changes bed in.

Neil

Hi Neil,

I have missed MEW issue 313 and have not received a response to my email inquires, possibly due to the current change over. What can I do now?

Thanks, Don Hill

Toronto, Canada.

Hello Neil,

Will this change mean a change in the payment currently offered for articles published in MEW?

Regards

Brian

Don and Neil

I am also missing MEW 313 here in Comox BC. Got 314 two weeks ago and 312 about 2 months ago. Naturally the missing one is the one with my article in it!

John

Hello John,

Just to confirm, Issue MEW 313 is published and it has your article in it

Regards

Brian

Edited By Brian Wood on 11/04/2022 10:34:59

I can now answer my own question. Mortons pay £45 per article page, MTM uses to pay £50

Mum had an overseas subscription problem where all us readers missed an issue.

They ended up having to reprint the magazine,

I would make sure you have a copy before back issues sell out.

Still haven't received MEW #313 or ME #4685 25 Feb. Have received #314, #4686 and #4687 (4687 last Friday ). Any other subscribers in Canada missing those issues or is it just me? Not surprisingly inquiries to MTM have gone unanswered.

John

Posted by Brian Wood 25/04/2022 15:39:37

I can now answer my own question. Mortons pay £45 per article page, MTM uses to pay £50.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

If you look up the Guidelines for both MEW and ME they naturally have not been
updated to reflect the new ownership ,ME payments are listed as £30 To £50
per page and MEW are £40 to £ 50 per page.

I seem to remember that when David Clark took over as editor and saved this
magazine he immediately put the page rate from £35 up to £50
per page.

Looks as if it has been going backwards ever since he was replaced
as editor.
Considering it was around February 2007 when he started as editor and the page
rate looks be going down 15 years later ,who's the parent company P&O ?.

John

I forgot to mention, I was given my notice by email about December 18th about 2 or 3 days after moving into a new house.

Hi John Purdy, I'm in Toronto. Glad to hear I'm not the only one missing magazines.

Received 314 on 28 March and requested missing 313 on 02 April. Received 308?? on 12 April and requested 313 again.

Still waiting, Don Hill.

I really do feel for the editors of these magazines, it’s an unforgiving job juggling everyone’s ‘wants’ while walking the financial tightrope! I think authors that are innovative, can do their own designs and still string words together coherently are very rare. Then of course they need to have the time to do all the drawings etc. for very little money. I wonder how many pages (in a magazine) can be filled with articles from this dying breed of writers! I personally enjoy reading the ME magazine; it has a nice balance of journalistic articles and technical articles.

Posted by Luker 26/04/2022 06:54:46

I really do feel for the editors of these magazines, it’s an unforgiving job juggling
everyone’s ‘wants’ while walking the financial tightrope!

I think authors that are innovative, can do their own designs and still string words
together coherently are very rare. Then of course they need to have the time to
do all the drawings etc. for very little money. I wonder how many pages
(in a magazine) can be filled with articles from this dying breed of writers! I
personally enjoy reading the ME magazine; it has a nice balance of
journalistic articles and technical articles.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Neil became editor his 2 page future outlook for the magazine
was real killer , for your statement " I think authors that are innovative, can do
their own designs and still string words together coherently are very rare"

I scrapped a complete machine build article that i was writing to send to
MEW because of this ,many of the authors of these type of articles jumped
ship to ME they mostly seem to have vanished by now.

The shopping list approach to article submission just stifles imagination,
many of the subjects within this posting here

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=179124

would most probably exceed his own set page limits or be so short
to be of little use .

----------------------------

What happened to David Clark's posting of 25/04/2022 22:12:26:
was it taken down by Putin's press office.

-------------------------------------------------

I know how difficult it can be to write a long construction article,to get the
sequencing for machining operations do all the drawings etc ,unfortunately
magazines don't seem to be interested in publishing these any more .
ME almost seemed interested in this

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=87736

but seemed to spend a lot of time working out how publish it but not
in the magazine ,8 years later its still at the bottom of the heap,if they
haven't lost it again.

Is it any wonder that authors would not bother to write such things
and just leave it to the Drawbar and tool holder brigade.

Just as an aside getting back to when David Clark became editor
and put the page rate to £50 the cover price for the magazine
MEW Was £3.75 the last issue i had when i cancelled my subscription
at 302 was £5.75 if the page rate had changed in the same proportion
within this period it would now be £70.

John

David,

I'm sure with your past experience you will be well aware I can't leave up posts with potentially commercially sensitive information in.

I understand you have an axe to grind and that your approach to editing MEW was different to mine. Can you just accept that and move on, I'd rather not have to endure petty sniping.

Neil

Hi John,

When I came to MEW, the commonest gripe from readers was that there were two very long ongoing series occupying a significant part of each issue. Naturally, I responded by going the other way.

Since then, I have relaxed a bit, using some medium-length constructional series in three to four parts, or asking authors to split longer topics into shorter instalments. When I have exceeded the three to four instalment length, I generally receive negative comments.

As I explained, the article you submitted to me last year would have run to around 170 pages. At eight pages per issue, that would be about 21 issues.

Could I justify about 20% of the contributor content of each issue being occupied by the same author and project for nearly two years? I think the majority of readers would prefer to see greater variety.

My advice was that the article, which was very well written and presented, would best be published as a book.

Model Engineer, with its two issues a month, can split ongoing series into alternating issues and its readership seems more content with series lasting over several years.

Neil

Hi Brian,

When covid lockdown hit, my contributor budget was greatly cut to keep the magazine afloat.

To maximise the amount of content, I had to go to the bottom end of the normal rates, £40. It was not cut by Mortons.

The rate since rose to £45.

The rate has remained at that as we changed nothing material for the handover issue.

My budget has now been confirmed, and I expect to be able to restore the old page rate.

Neil

My understanding is that customer service will be brought in house by Mortons.

Until this happens, please continue to use the old contacts: THIS LINK.

If they cannot solve your problems, please email me, meweditor@mortons.co.uk, and I will do my best to help, but please be aware that this is a time of great change with subscriptions being moved between two systems. This will cause delays in responding to reports of missing issues etc. but i am sure that everything will get sorted out as soon as possible and everyone will receive their subscription entitlements in full.

Thanks for your patience,

Neil

Hi Neil

I stated some facts about the previous management, not Morton’s.

Petty sniping is not something I do.

Life is to short.

I will let current readers speak as I see fit.

I have not read Model Engineers Workshop since I stopped editing because I could not buy/ it locally. I continue to read Model Engineer

The joys of being an editor. Usually a huge workload, under massive deadline pressure, with minimal resources these days. Then every time you publish, your day's or month's work is out there for everybody in the world to leisurely inspect. And every one of them is an expert on how you could have done it better.

Correction.

As they see fit.