Publishing

An interesting concept was brought up on this thread at Pages of the Heart. Are magazines really looking for pages that don't focus on children? Will submitting a layout that doesn't feature a child actually raise your chance of being 'noticed'- and therefore, published?

On that alone- probably not. Think about all the layouts that are submitted for subject specific calls ('summer', 'Christmas', 'The Day I Drank Tea'). Only a few out of the many submitted are picked up for those calls. Obviously, it probably couldn't hurt- but, and let's face it folks, if the overall design sucks, the magazine isn't going to pick up the layout. They do want to showcase only the best in their magazine (because how often would we actually purchase a magazine that featured layouts that just didn't work? Really- you can't trust articles on design in a magazine that chooses to feature layouts that are, well, not up to par).

But, let's talk about this whole child free layout thing. I don't blame magazines for wanting to publish layouts that don't include children- there is this huge demographic of childless scrapbookers out there. The paper companies realize that children aren't the only reason for scrapbooking- most of there lines would work well with layouts whether the subject is 2 or 22.

There's nothing wrong with scrapbooking your child's life, but your child is going to grow up eventually. Eventually- you will be the parent of an adult child- who doesn't have children. Will you stop scrapbooking when they are twenty? Doubtful- many of us are so far behind that we have no hope of catching up, but I think that once our children have grown up, and start lives of their own, we'll have plenty of time to get caught up on their childhoods. And once they are caught up- those who claim to really love the hobby might be looking for something else to scrap. At least until grandchildren come along.

And let's take a look at the Book of Me trend. Many are doing this so that our children know who we were. But there are also many of us who are doing this simply because it's fun to be a little egocentric for awhile (or because we love all the pink kits that are out there, but since we live in a testosterone dominated household, we can't use them on our children). When I scrap myself, I want colors that fit me NOW, not colors that fit me when I was three or four. I want to open a magazine and see layouts that will not only inspire me, design wise, but will inspire me to complete a layout for my BOM.