Blade Magazine: Market Spotlight

For this week’s market spotlight, we look at Blade Magazine, which covers working and using collectible and popular knives.

Blade Magazine: Market Spotlight

Established in 1973, Blade is branded as "the world's #1 knife publication." This monthly magazine covers the entire knife industry, including making knives, how to use knives, collecting knives, knife rights legislation, and more.

The editors say, "Stories for Blade must not only be newsworthy, educational and informative, they must entertain."

They pay $150 for shorter pieces up to $300 for feature stories.

What They’re Looking For

Blade needs "stories that are brand new in scope and content." This can include the following:

  • knives used for unusual purposes or adventure settings
  • new knife designs, steels, and other knife materials (and how they're made)
  • knife collections of celebrities
  • stories on how to collect, what to collect, and why

The editors say, "Pick up several different issues of Blade on newsstands and study them. This should give you an idea of what we're after."

Excellent, magazine-quality pictures are a must. Length ranges from 500 to 1,700 words. The editors advise,"Use as many words as needed to write the story in a clear, concise and entertaining way, AND NOT ONE WORD MORE."

How to Submit

Potential freelancers can query editor Steve Shackleford at steve@blademag.com.

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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.