ART DOLL QUARTERLY COMPLIMENTARY COPY

I wasn't expecting to receive my complimentary copy of Art Doll Quarterly until after May 1st (that's when they hit newsstands, plus it's an American publication so it would take a while to get here), BUT IT ARRIVED TODAY! I'm so pleased because it means I can put it on here before the 503 submission and I'm just so proud of it. MY DOLLS PUBLISHED IN AN ACTUAL MAGAZINE.

I'm so proud and impressed and pleased and I'm positively beaming, dancing around the house with my copy. I'm going to have to visit any of the UK stockists I can find, just so I can stand next to it and cry at it being my dolls in a real magazine. I don't know for sure how many stockists they have here (I MISS BORDERS BOOKSHOP), but Art from the Heart in Harrogate definitely stock it.

It's so sweet of them to send it to me, I was worried that maybe I wouldn't get published just because they wouldn't want to send it all the way to the UK when they get plenty submissions from the US alone...  but they did still publish my work and they sent it to me free of charge. There were also submissions from Greece and Germany published.

I'm looking at the photos I submitted though, and I'm seeing so many flaws. Things I would have changed and how the photos could have been much sharper. I think this is definitely something I need to work on and it could really benefit my practice if I learned how to take super-sharp high quality photos, for both print and screen. Hopefully I can learn for next time and keep submitting to ADQ, I hope to keep this relationship going with ADQ and that this is only the first of my entries!

I don't know how they pick the doll artists to profile as the main feature each time... I don't know if people apply to be featured or whether the magazine contacts the artist they would like to feature? It would be useful to know more about their process. Each magazine retails at £14.99 so they must make quite a bit of money from it, but it's a huge magazine (144 pages). I may email them and ask some questions, not only as a contributor but as someone who would love to work in creating a publication like this (PPP research!).

How many readers do they have? (reach and audience - what is their actual audience demographic)

I'm glad I sent the editor a big long response to her questions. Some of the other features are much smaller with just a few sentences explaining their entry, but since I sent a few paragraphs, they've all been published next to the photos of my dolls. They even put in brackets (cotton candy) after I said candyfloss so that the American audience would understand. 

This is my first properly published work and I'm over the moon. I feel like a professional and this had made my decision to submit to more unusual briefs pay off. It was worth it and I know my work fits in this context. Happy Jay is happy!