Submission Guidelines

Thank you for your interest in submitting to The Naked Slushpile! We really do want you to feel like this publication is partly your own.

These days, anybody and his dog can set up a blog and self-publish. That’s all well and good, and there is quality content out there in that vein, but it’s difficult to find the new stars in all the stellar detritus. The Naked Slushpile straddles these worlds squarely between the far-too-busy-to-care-about-midlist-content print publishing editors and the the-tale-of-my-distressed-digestive-tract-will-make-good-reading low end of self-publishing.

In order to make this happen smoothly, though, and to minimize the amount of angst generated by the editorial process, here are some handy guidelines that will help navigate the technical aspects of submission.

Length

Typically successful lengths will be between 1000 and 3000 words. These are not fixed requirements; however, the shorter the piece is, the more well-written it will have to be. Longer pieces give more room for individuality, however we aren’t generally going to publish novellas. The bottom line? Use these guidelines and write, edit, write, and edit your story. When it tells the tale you believe it should, send it in. If it’s a little over or a little under, don’t be concerned. If it’s significantly over or under, ask yourself (1) is the piece really ready, and (2) is it a piece that will fit in the general themes of what we publish? If in doubt, ask.

Format Format Format

If you’ve submitted to almost any other publication, you’ve heard this before. If you don’t match the desired format, it goes into the circular file. This publication is no different. We try to keep the rules to a minimum and not be capricious about them, but be forewarned: because we consider these rules to be essential and functional, cross them and you will not be published.

File Format

REQUIRED: Text. If you don’t know what a text file is, learn. It will do nothing but help you. Notepad and Wordpad can create text files, Text Editor and Text Wrangler can create text files. If you’re a Linux user and you don’t know what a text file is, there’s no way we here will be able to help you; you’re already too far gone.

Why? The point of any serious writing endeavor is content. Tell your story in a compelling way. Font size, style, and clip art just get in the way and not only distract you from telling the best tale you can, it distracts us from getting to content that has abided by the rules.

If you must apply format hinting, and yes, there are times when it is appropriate to do so, use Markdown notation, not HTML.

http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

Don’t worry about using the code listed unless you want to test the results yourself; we want the raw Markdown text, not the resultant HTML.

Filename Format

If you want us to be able to find your file, name it the way we request:

• Use only ascii characters in filenames. No extended Latin-1 accents and such.
• Use the following format:
  • <name>_<short_title>_<version_number>.txt – where
    • <name> is your name, last-first or pseudonym
    • <short_title> is a version of your story title
    • <version_number> is an Arabic numeral: 1, 2, 3, etc. Always start with 1 as this is not *your* version, but the version The Naked Slushpile is working with.

An example filename:

Smithee-Alan_WhatAmIDoingHere_1.txt

Trust us, this isn’t that much work on your part and it will make it much easier to help you get published.

Content Format

Language

This is an English language site. Submissions in other languages are not currently accepted.

Occasional use of foreign (to English) words is acceptable.

Header Information

Every submission is required to have this header information at the top of the document:

Author pseudonym (if desired):
Author email address:
Copyright Date:
Piece Title:
Piece Subtitle (if any):
Genre (as close as you can identify):
Age appropriateness estimate: (use the US TV codes http://www.tvguidelines.org/ratings.htm )
“I agree that I am the copyright holder and am legally permitted to assign rights in this creative work.” (This is a literal statement that you must put on your material. If it’s not a true statement, don’t submit it.)
This work is: Previously Published or Unpublished (select one)

Now, if you have any desire at all to ever get paid for any of this work from The Naked Slushpile, be prepared to add the following information as well:

Author (real name):
Author telephone number:
Author full postal address:
Author Tax ID:

Providing this information up front is not required for submission, but is required for processing any payments and its absence will delay compensation.

Story Format

• Line breaks (carriage returns) between paragraphs
• No indentation of paragraphs (tabs suck)
• For section/chapter breaks use *** on a line by itself
• For section/chapter titles, start the title line with ###

Content concerns

As was noted in the header information relating to age ratings, understanding the audience of a particular piece can help guide it to success (or not). The Naked Slushpile does not have a fixed rule on out-of-bounds content. Quality is the yardstick.

That being said, this is not alt.sex.stories, so if the key theme of your story is “goats in bondage”, you might want to submit elsewhere. Of course, if those submissive goats rise up in rebellion under the aegis of a charismatic billy and change the course of human history in the process, and the bondage is an essential element of the storytelling, go ahead and give us a try.

Legalities

Rights

By submitting to The Naked Slushpile, you are asserting that you have the legal right to do so.

If the work is previously unpublished, you are assigning “first worldwide rights” to The Naked Slushpile. We love to review unpublished work, but keep first rights in mind if you’re shotgunning your story to multiple outlets. If you send it to us, you’re giving us these rights.

For all works whether published or unpublished, by submitting, you are assigning to The Naked Slushpile a non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual right to use this work in any medium for no additional consideration. Payment policies for The Naked Slushpile may change over time and will be documented elsewhere.

These rights are assigned at submission time regardless of ultimate acceptance or rejection.

Acceptance and Rejection Decisions

As might be expected: The Naked Slushpile is the sole decision maker on what is appropriate for this site, what will be accepted, and what will be published.

All decisions on all topics relating to the site and its operations are final.

Don’t like it? You don’t have to submit material to us.

The Naked Slushpile Submission Location

Send your text file as an attachment to:

hari_seldon@nakedslushpile.com