We have been putting out INTERNATIONAL TATTOO ART magazine for more than 15 years now with very little staff turnover. We know what works for us and why. We also know--pretty often--what people are going to ask us before they open their mouths.
To save you the trouble of opening your mouths, we've put together the big questions and our big answers to them. So read on, and see if we haven't answered the question you were about to ask.
Of course, if for some reason you remain puzzled about something, by all means reach out to us and we'll try to help.But first, our FAQs:

Q: Okay, I'm just one magnificently talented artist, and I'd like to get my beautiful work all over ITA.
HOW DO I GET MY WORK PUBLISHED?

A: It's unbelievably easy to get your work into ITA.
Step by step, here you go:
Gather up a nice stack of photographs of your work--or even just one photo if that's all you have that you'd like to show to the world, but really, the more the merrier. DO NOT SEND US A DISC UNLESS WE CALL AND ASK FOR ONE IN RELATION TO A FEATURE. DO NOT PRETEND WE CALLED AND ASKED FOR ONE AND FORGOT. Gather up a ballpoint pen or a sharp photomarking Sharpie.

Write your name on the back of each photo, along with your studio name, city and state. It's a big help if you can include your telephone number with the area code attached. An alternate good idea is to tape a business card on the back of each photo--but only if your biz card includes things like state name and area code. You might think it's a big world but it's not.
We researched names one time and found there were something like 17 Springfields in the US alone and maybe 23 worldwide. There was another town name--Madison, maybe--that was even more common.

All we want to do is be able to be certain, right up to the time it hits the press, that we are using the right name with the right photo. And, if we like your work and want to see more, it'd be nice if we could locate you without breaking our necks, backs, balls or any other important items.

Simple, right? Get a good clear in-focus photo, write your name on the back, send it in.

That's ALL there is to it.

How could anyone screw that up?

We're being honest--we're all friends here, right? So we can give it to you straight. If we have to hit the computer and find out which state has a town of Springfield with a 777 area code, well, that envelope of photos might end up being set aside in favor of another that's not so hard to get a return address from. Or we might call somebody who is easier to reach.

Maybe that sounds stupid or petty. It's not. When you have a couple hundred photographs that need identifying information on the back, it's a mountain of work.
And one other thing you should really take to heart--if any unmarked photo from one pile gets into any other pile of unmarked photos, we throw them all out immediately. No questions, no hesitation. If we even THINK we got one unmarked picture into another stack, every unmarked photo on the table goes into the trash. Often it's killer tattoo work and it breaks our hearts to have to toss it. But toss it we will.

There's a guarantee here--a guarantee backed by years of real-world experience. If we try to guess, or go with the odds, and use the photos, we are for sure going to pick that one wrong photo and attribute it to that other wrong tattooer.  And then we'll hear about the mistake for months, maybe years. In the end, when we try to do the right thing we make ourselves look like jackasses and pile on extra work, not to mention damaging our reputation. So, to prevent all that, we throw the beautiful tattoo work away.

Now look at how the horror spreads--all because some artist was too lazy or too cocky to write his name on the back of every photo. He thinks that the pile of photos covering years of his tattoo output are spread out in our offices, being admired by one and all. He thinks we're looking at them and considering him for an article. In fact, we were. But the unmarked pix got mixed with others, and now they are all in a landfill.

It might be years before that artist ever talks to someone who knows what happened--or lets the pressure out of his ego long enough to consider that he might have neglected to put his information on those photos.
Or sends some more.

Do Not, DO NOT EVER send us the only copies of a photo. NEVER DO THIS. There's no excuse--you can have a copy made for $.39 at any chain drugstore. If we know they're the only copies we'll shove them right into the return envelope and send them back. If you sent us your only copies anywhere of a photo and no return envelope, exactly what are you expecting to happen? If there's not a landfill in that expectation, it's incorrect.

Q: I am a great artist. I got this beautiful website.
Why don't you go there and take a look? If you like it, contact me.

A: Because we can't spend all the dingdong day surfing around listening to lousy rap songs and trying to wade through lists of who you want to meet to look at art.

See, if we liked it we'd end up all frustrated because we can't get it right then, we have to write you and tell you we liked the one with the red honeybee and the tombstone and can we get it for our back pages?
Which one? That one. The one with the Spanish moss?
The tombstone. And then you offer to send it via email and we have to explain the hi-def parameters it must conform to for us to use it, then when or if it comes it has to be carefully captured and fitted with your name and God forbid we screw that up even though the chances are real good with this much image traveling.
And basically there's so much labor invested when it could be so easy if you just sent us a package of photos. This is unnecessary sturm and drang, and we have enough of that already around here.

So the answer is no, we are not going to surf the net to look at your work. Send us a package of photos each clearly marked and NO DISCS.

Q: I have a beautiful tattoo studio with high ceilings, polished floors, big-screen TVs, video games, giant fish tanks, and six artists. I even have a fish named Wanda. How can I get my shop into ITA?

A: You can't. We feature individual artists rather than whole studios. One of our main functions at ITA is to present top-shelf artists to a quality-oriented public that loves tattooing. It's not at all unusual for an ITA reader to call an artist they see here, book an appointment, and fly to the US from Europe. Or the other way around, fly to Europe from here. They do that in the name of getting the tattooing that they want. They're willing and able to pay for it, and they connect with the talent through ITA.

In our years we have never yet heard of anyone flying in from Rome because of a shop's wallpaper and fishtanks, however lovely it all might be. And some shops are real knockouts, we know that.

That's the big reason we don't cover shops. There are others. Several times in the past when we have featured shops we found that between the interviews and press time, artists jumped ship. They knew they were leaving when we talked to them, and in fact already had new gigs lined up. They didn't say anything because they didn't want to lose their chance to be in a magazine. So, we printed the story, and they moved on, but  not far--they're right there in our mailbox writing us asking that we update the world on their new location. This is more unnecessary sturm and drang, none of it desirable from our perspective.

Because they kept their double-secret probation a triple secret, we look like idiots who can't get our facts straight with a simple list of artists. It's not professional of us to write what we'd like to, like "this choad kept his frog plans secret from us--now he's jumped and he's double-dipping at the publicity well and making us look stupid, and at the same time casting a shadow, however faint, on the shop they left behind.

Out of all this mess, the only one that wins is the artist in motion. And it's likely that they were not really a person of interest to us to begin with.

So all that grief, headache and extra work over nothing. Even worse, all of it was completely preventable. So we learned to avoid all of that completely by just not writing about the entire shop.

Q: Why won't you put our information on the photos if you see we've forgotten to do it?

A: We are not your secretary. We have other stuff to do, a lot of it.

And PLEASE, if you think you sent us tattoos in the past with no names on them and are wondering when they will be published ... most likely they met up with that landfill routine and are long gone. Send them again.

Please understand that WE WANT TO PRINT YOUR ARTWORK.
You are a great artist. All this stuff makes it difficult or impossible and it bums us out. We are trying to help you so you can help us.
 

Q: I know where you guys stop for coffee and danish before work. I'm planning to drop by there with a portfolio for you to look at. Will this be a problem?

A : Not if you like getting five across the eyes and seeing your portfolio thrown under a bus.

Seriously, we'll be happy to have you buttonhole us anytime, anywhere, and shove your portfolio under our noses, as long as you're comfortable with immediate, violent rejection.

Remember pop quizzes in high school? Remember how much you liked pop quizzes? Not so much, right? So why would you want to take your whole career, compress it into into one big pop quiz, and try to make us take it while we're trying to eat breakfast?

That's how it looks from our side, for real. It's in your own best interests not to try and tug on our coats like that about something so important. Send us pictures, and do it the right way.

Q: But mom always told me that the squeaking wheel gets the grease. And I want the grease. I wanna know where the inside track is.

A: The problem is we live in a world of squeaking wheels here. When one more shows up, we're likely to just hit it with a big hammer a few times before we rip it out and throw it away.