E2K Submission Guide

General Guidelines

Submitting to Net Author's E2K
submissions@netauthor.org

All submissions of stories and essays must be queried before submission.

All non-poetry submissions must be made in plain text, in the body of an e-mail, and genre must be clearly indicated (e.g., fiction, creative nonfiction, writing-related article) in the subject line.

Poetry may be submitted without query, but must be submitted via the Poetry Submission form.

No HTML submissions.

All submissions must include your biography (third person, complete sentences, less than 150 words).

Net Author is currently not accepting submissions. Please watch our main pages ( http://www.netauthor.org and http://www.netauthor.org/e2k/) for future announcements.

E2K publishes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, but is also interested in informative and instructional nonfiction articles dealing with the craft and business of writing. NetAuthor.org accepts articles dealing with the art, craft, philosophy, or business of writing, especially for the electronic market. We will, of course, consider other works. Be advised that we do not generally accept editorials.

We accept published, as well as unpublished submissions. Please respect your contractual agreements with your previous publisher. We do not knowingly accept works in violation of your contractual agreements. Previously published works must include the previous publication information (publisher, date of publication, what rights were sold to the publication) in the submission.

In all cases, query us before you submit. Net Author does not consider unsolicited works. Be sure you specify length, subject, or theme. Regardless of subject, we want clear, well thought-out essays, and will consider virtually any approach: humorous; philosophical; instructional; or analytical. Your query should include a summary of the work, a word count, a clear statement indicating the writing's genre (fiction, creative nonfiction, writing-related article, poetry, etc.), and a short biography (less than 150 words). The biography must be in third person and written in complete sentences.

Once your query has been accepted, include your submission as plain text within the body of your e-mail. For security purposes, we do not accept attachments. Be certain you proof and spell check your work. While we're an electronic journal, that does not mean our standards are lower than our print cousins; we expect your best work and our editorial staff will accept no less.

Be aware that all submissions are subject to editing in order to meet those standards. Generally speaking, we will not make those changes for you--we'll return the work with comments and suggestions and leave it to you to make any necessary changes.

Responses

When we receive your work, we farm it out to our editorial staff (and a secondary professional readership as necessary) in a blind format for feedback. Once that review is complete, a response is formulated and sent to the writer. Barring the unexpected, we try to return a response to submissions within roughly 14 working days, but do be aware that sometimes we can't meet that goal. Our staff is volunteer, which means that now and again the chaos of life intervenes--particularly during the middle and end of the academic semester, holidays, and staff vacations or illnesses.

Payment

Net Author pays $25usd per article, essay, or story, and $10usd per poem upon publication. We offer payment via PayPal, Amazon gift certificate or, especially for writers within the United States, a standard check. (Overseas writers for whom these payment methods are problematic may suggest an alternative which would work better with their host country's financial system and individual preferences.)

Copyrights

We purchase the rights to publish your poem, article essay or story one time in electronic format, and to make your work available in our archives until we are notified to remove the work.

You may republish your work at any time, with no notice to us. We will remove your work from our archives upon request.

Submitting fiction

The length of the submission should be appropriate to the piece. Longer works may be divided over more than one issue. We accept most genres, with the exceptions of explicit erotica and "fanfic," but keep in mind that our focus is on literary fiction. Most of the guidelines for poetry also apply to fiction.

Submitting creative nonfiction, nonfiction, and writing-related nonfiction

As with all other works, query us. Be sure you specify length, subject, or theme. Keep in mind that we have a strong interest in articles dealing with writing both as a craft and as a business, especially for the electronic market, but that we rarely accept essays that are editorial in nature. Regardless of subject, we want clear, well thought-out essays, and will consider virtually any approach: humorous; philosophical; instructional; or analytical.

Submitting poetry

We've been fortunate enough to receive a wealth of poetry submissions, and currently have a backlog. Rather than compound the problem, we're imposing a six-month moratorium on poetry submissions. We'll re-activate the poetry submissions form and post a notice on this page as soon as we begin accepting poetry submissions again.

Note: While we accept previously published manuscripts, we respect publishing contracts and copyrights. Please indicate in your submission whether the work is unpublished, or has been previously published. If it has been published prior to this submission, please include the name and date of the publishing journal or company, and what copyrights you released at that time.

Submissions are limited to three poems per month.

Your submission should include a third-person biography of less than 150 words.

Please spell check your text before submitting it.

Poetry line length is 60 characters for our pages. If your lines are longer, please reset your margins to accommodate the shorter length so that your poem's lines will wrap properly.

We're looking for poems of a variety of styles; formal, free verse, and prose poetry will all be considered. Haiku and haibun, and other Zen-style poetry, are also welcome. There are no strict limitations on subject matter, length or style; we'll consider everything, but we'll only be buying one to three poems per month.

That said, there are some things we prefer NOT to see, and why:

Teenage Angst. We've all had it, even written about it--and outgrown it. Unless you've got a fresh take on the issue, something that shows growth and maturity, please remember what that great poet, Anonymous, once said: "Those who write my memorabilia should disregard my juvenilia!"

Greeting-card verse. Send it to Hallmark, or Blue Mountain Arts. They'll appreciate it more. They probably also pay better.

Long, windy epics. They're a real chore to read, especially on a glaring screen. They make people's eyes go buggy. Be kind to your readers. Concise verse takes as much craft as long poetry, if not more.

Gratuitous anything--sex, violence, even sentimental references to your dear grandma Jane or your dead dog Rover. We have nothing against sensuality, conflict, or dead relatives or pets, but if it's just being thrown in there to spice up a dull poem, take it out.

Pointless maundering. A good poem always has a point--and doesn't waste time getting there. Have something of interest to say, rather than a pretty way of saying nothing.

Excessive obfuscation. If your reader can't understand it, why write it? Brilliance is great, but without clarity it's nothing. Poetry is communication, not just an academic exercise.

Hate and bigotry. Remember, this site can be accessed from anywhere in the world where there's a computer. And Those People may very well be reading what we publish.

Preachiness. Found Jesus? Great. But this is not a pulpit. Spiritual poetry is fine, but please consider the difference between spirituality and religion.

Political propaganda--of any kind. While a poem can bear witness to all kinds of events, it should be able to do so without an obvious partisan slant. Focus on the event, rather than on your election platform.

Weird stuff for no reason. Experimental poetry is great, but the experiment must be conducted with structure and for a purpose, not just to see what happens when you throw words against a wall.

Anything too abstract. Poetry should engage the senses, not divorce us from them. Use imagery; pay attention to the way words sound. And don't forget the senses of smell, taste, touch--and intuition. Lots of people write good visual and auditory stuff, but those who can appeal to all the senses (not necessarily all at once, mind you) are rare.

And finally, anything that's not original--or worse, plagiarized. Don't crib ideas, images, phrases, etc., from top-ten songs, movies of the week, or pulp bestsellers. Good poets grow their own. And besides, we can't afford the legal expenses that stolen work creates.

Net Author retains the right to select placement and length of display for any and all works we accept for publication.

A Word to Writers

As much as possible given the limitations of time and personnel resources, we'll provide a critical response to your work (primarily fiction, creative nonfiction, and writing-related nonfiction), regardless of whether it's accepted or not.

As part of our educational mission, it's important to us that you understand why we're either accepting or rejecting a text. Note that we don't necessarily expect you to agree with us, particularly on rejected work. We're simply telling you why the text won't work for this particular publication at this particular point in time.

If you find you disagree with the feedback you've received, we expect that you'll turn around and submit the work to a more likely market as quickly as possible, NOT write us to tell us how imperceptive or misguided you think we are.

If you happen to be one of the very rare writers who would prefer to NOT receive feedback on your writing and are happiest when you receive a simple form letter (for either rejection or acceptance), please indicate that preference in your submission--we'll be happy to oblige.

EDITOR'S NOTE FOR AOL USERS: If you submit to us and don't receive a response after an extended period of time, please try contacting us from a non-AOL address. While AOL is convenient in many ways (primarily for users who are new to the Internet and the online environment), it continues to be problematic in others. One of the problems we've noticed is that, at regular intervals, it refuses to accept any incoming mail from non-AOL addresses; that mail is bounced back to the sender (i.e., us). In those cases, we have no way to contact you. Over time, we've had several submissions we'd have loved to accept but were never able to get a message through to the writer. Please don't be one of them; it's just as discouraging for us to be unable to tell a writer we'd like to print his or her work as it is for you as a writer to have no response from a publisher.