S
I L V E R T H O U G H T : S U B M I S S I O N S: O N L I
N E D I V I S I O N
G
E N E R A L S U B M I S S I O N G U I D E L I N E S
CONTACT
ST ONLINE DIVISION:
SUBMISSIONS@SILVERTHOUGHT.COM
For
seven years, Silverthought's online division has provided a venue for
writers of speculative fiction to showcase their works. Whether you
are an established writer or a first-timer, if you would like your work
to appear on ST Online, please carefully review these submission guidelines.
PLEASE
NOTE: These are guidelines for speculative fiction submissions to our
online division (ST Online).
For submissions to our print division (ST
Print), see the ST:
Print Submissions page. For literary fiction/poetry submissions,
visit our sister site Megan's
Closet.
CONTACT:
To submit material to Silverthought, email editor Paul Hughes at submissions@silverthought.com.
You will be notified of the status of your submission within 30-90 days.
This notification will detail whether your submission has been automatically
rejected, rejected with suggestions for revision, accepted with suggestions
for revision, or automatically accepted. Once accepted, you will be
informed when your submission is scheduled to appear on ST Online. If
you do not receive a response within 90 days, please contact us or resubmit
your work. Emails get lost, mistakes are made, and editors sometimes
spill beer on keyboards.
COMPENSATION:
ST Online has been and will remain a free online publication. For the
first seven years of its existence, writers who submitted work to ST
received no monetary compensation, but effective 2/29/2008, writers
whose work appears on ST Online will receive a flat fee of $10.00 (USD)
for each flash fiction, short story, or novella that is accepted. Writers
of serial fiction will receive $5.00 for each entry of the work accepted.
Compensation will be redeemable via PayPal
transfer or as credit in the ST Bookstore within 30 days of publication
on ST Online. Compensation is non-transferable. This compensation does
not apply to any work that appeared on ST Online before 2/29/2008.
TERMS:
Silverthought purchases one-time nonexclusive electronic rights for
works we accept (and nonexclusive electronic reprint rights for reprints
we accept). We accept simultaneous submissions. All work published by
ST Online remains solely the property of the original author. Writers
may withdraw submissions from the ST Archive at any time for any reason,
but please allow up to 30 days for removal of your work from Silverthought.
T
E C H N I C A L S U B M I S S I O N G U I D E L I N
E S
Please
include the following with your submission:
TITLE:
This is the name of your submission. Be creative. If your title
contains a spelling/grammar/punctuation error, unless you can provide
a very good reason for the error, expect it to be corrected. Nobody
really wants to read "Teh time The Robotz Conquered It's H8."
(Well played, John
Birge. Well played.)
AUTHOR
NAME:
This is your name. Pseudonyms are acceptable, but we encourage you
to use your real name. Few things are as satisfying as being known
for having written a good piece of fiction. If you choose to use
a pseudonym, please provide the editor with your real name as well.
Your real name will not appear in any form on Silverthought unless
you want it to, but the editor likes to know who he's dealing with.
SYNOPSIS:
This is a short plot summary of the submission. Please note: the
editor will use this synopsis to generate the submission description
that appears on the ST Online front page, in the ST newsletter,
and at the top of the individual story page. Thus, please refrain
from first-person descriptions (I wrote this piece three years
ago...") or generic, cliche descriptions that have little or
nothing to do with the plot ("Mama always told me there would
be days like this.").
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
This is a short autobiographical statement. If youre lost
here, a good place to start would be your hometown, education, non-writing
hobbies, or similar points of interest. Tell us who you are.
PREVIOUS
PUBLICATION CREDITS:
These credits may be truncated if they consist of 200 online publications,
but novel-length work or material that has seen hard-copy print
or publication by our peers in the online world are definitely of
interest.
PLEASE
NOTE: Submissions that do not include the information above will not
be considered for publication.
Include this information in the body of your submission
email or at the top of your attached document. You'd be surprised
by how many submissions come in with no synopsis or even a real author
name. We're not going to publish UNTITLED STORY by COOLKID69LOL@aol.com.
Ever. (So please stop asking, CoolKid69. Come on.)
ACCEPTABLE
FILE FORMATS:
Please submit all work as plain text in the body of an email or as
an attached .DOC, .RTF, or .TXT file. PDFs are not acceptable. Submissions
in unacceptable formats will be rejected. Please note that text is
sometimes corrupted either in transmission or in transfer from word
processing programs to web design programs. The editor will make every
attempt to present your text as it appears in the original file.
LENGTH
REQUIREMENTS:
There are no minimum or maximum length requirements for pieces. ST
Online accepts flash fiction, short stories, novellas, and serialized
fiction of varying length. Note:
If you plan to serialize a story, plan on finishing it. If we invest
the time in publishing parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of your story, make sure
you have 5, 6, and 7 ready to go. We appreciate the difficulty involved
in finishing a lengthy story, but it makes us look like a trash-bin
for hacks when serial fiction starts and then disappears when the
author runs out of ideas halfway through the storyline.
CONTENT
RESTRICTIONS:
There are no content restrictions on submissions. We believe that
censorship has absolutely no place in the art and craft of writing.
If you are easily offended by foul language, sexually charged content,
or descriptions of human beings doing horrid things, please take a
moment to remember that all those four-letter Wirty Dords eventually
spell out freedom.
SPELLING/GRAMMAR/PUNCTUATION:
We can't stress this enough: PROOFREAD YOUR SUBMISSIONS. It can be
as simple as running a spell check. Sometimes we receive submissions
where it's painfully obvious that the writer hasn't actually read
the piece even once before sending it in. That is unacceptable.
Word has those squiggly green and red lines for a reason. Submissions
with pervasive spelling/grammar/or punctuation errors will be automatically
rejected, unless you want to pay the editor $75/hour to gut your work.
The editor has also been known from time to time to publish pieces
without editing them at all, just to showcase to the world that a
particular writer apparently didn't pay attention in third grade English
class. You don't really want that, do you? PROOFREAD YOUR SUBMISSIONS.
PARAGRAPHS:
You do not have to indent paragraphs. In transferring the text from
the word processing program to the web page editor, your indentations
will be lost and replaced with non-breaking spaces. The editor will
make every attempt to preserve your paragraphing, but an easy way
to ensure that paragraphs are obviously defined is to use single spacing
within paragraphs and double spacing between.
SECTION
BREAKS:
To signify a section break, please use: * * *, centered. Ornate fleurons
or asterix variants will be replaced with * * *.
FONTS:
We accept submissions in any font you choose, but all submissions
will appear on the site in Times New Roman 12 with titles in Arial.
The editor prefers to read submissions in Times New Roman 12 or Arial
10. The editor absolutely hates Courier of any size. Don't ask. If
you just can't live without a particular font, let us know, but there
had better be a convincing reason that your submission is a stronger
piece of fiction in Cooper 72. Keep in mind that we will not embed
fonts on submission pages.
ITALICS/UNDERLINE/BOLD:
The editor will make every attempt to preserve your emphasized text
(italicized, underlined, bolded). Sometimes he will miss emphasized
text within the submission if he can't see it, so be sure to denote
emphasis consistently and obviously. If you submit via email and do
not have the option to code italics, underline, or bold, please offset
emphasized text with asterisks (*as such*). Generally, text within
submissions that is italicized, underlined, or bolded will appear
as italicized text on the site, unless the context implies that it
should remain simply underlined or bold. The editor doesn't like shouting,
so CAPITALIZED TEXT will often be replaced with italicized text, unless
the text is an acronym or the context requires capitals. Remember,
CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME. In addition, if every
other word in your submission is italicized,
the editor will most likely ignore all italics. Keep in mind that
most readers are intelligent enough to decipher the natural cadence
of speech without italics.
ILLUSTRATIONS:
Some writers choose to include illustrations with their submissions.
If you would like to include an illustration with your text, please
attach it to your submission email in .JPG or .GIF format. We can
work with almost any graphics file format, but for the sake of simplicity,
JPGs and GIFs are preferred. The editor will resize illustrations
if need be. Only illustrations for which the writer has clearance
will be accepted. In other words, if it's someone else's work and
you don't have permission to use it, don't bother sending it in. We
maintain the right to refuse the inclusion of any illustration even
if we accept the submission.
E
D I T O R I A L P O L I C Y
The
editor will never change thematic or stylistic elements of your stories.
The editor may, however, occasionally correct obvious spelling or grammatical
errors. That having been said, Silverthought is not a free editing service.
Submissions with significant grammatical or spelling errors will be
automatically rejected. Writers may re-submit such submissions after
mastering spell check. If you would like to receive a quote for professional
editing services, click
here.
Submissions
to Silverthought remain the sole property of the author, with all rights
intact, including the right to withdraw the piece for any reason with
sufficient notice to the editor. We accept simultaneous submissions
and reprints. We occasionally assemble anthologies of pieces that appear
on the site; further guidelines will be provided to writers whose work
we'd like to include in a collection.
Plagiarism
of any sort, real or questionable, will not be tolerated. Yes, we really
do mean this, and in the past we have cut authors loose who have lifted
stories from older books. Technology being what it is these days, spotting
plagiarism is almost absurdly easy, so dont test us. Anyone caught
doing this will be permanently banned from Silverthoughts forums
and website, and is a douchebag of truly epic proportions.
All
submissions to Silverthought will be reviewed by our editorial panel
before their inclusion in a site update. If the panel feels that a submission
requires revision before inclusion, the author will be notified via
email, given some suggestions for improving the piece, and invited to
re-submit the piece after revision. Reasons for rejection may include
inappropriate subject matter for the site, significant spelling/grammatical
errors, lack of originality, etc. The panel may suggest revisions; they
may not. Writers are invited to revise and resubmit a piece as often
as they would like, but keep in mind that the panel may very well invite
you not to let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Authors
whose submissions do not appear in a site update are encouraged to post
their work in The
Clinic, a section of the Silverthought forum in which writers receive
feedback or suggestions for improvement of works in progress. Please
take advantage of this valuable resource. When it comes to improving
a piece, dozens of eyes are better than two.
Final
advice and recommendations:
As
with any resource, particularly in the literary world, it is important
that you know who you are submitting to. Silverthought is a website
that was originally intended to showcase the best in new speculative
fiction. We have expanded our thematic coverage by accepting some horror,
some weird-tales, some Twilight Zone-type material, and other genres.
We also have accepted in the past stories that stray wildly from the
accepted hard-boiled sci-fi yarn.
That
having been said, there is a relatively fine line between acceptable
and unacceptable with regards to pieces like this on Silvethought. We
encourage you to submit your story ideas and not be afraid that youre
"too out there for us. On the other hand, qualitatively,
you must recognize that the further you deviate from the accepted traditional
storytelling format that sci-fi and speculative fiction uses, the less
likely it is that we will accept your work. If you want to write an
edgy, dark, speculative poem, we may very well accept it. But it had
better be the best damned edgy, dark speculative poem weve read
in a long time in order for you to have reasonable hope that well
publish it.
Also,
please evaluate carefully if your work could be considered speculative.
We receive numerous pieces that are ultimately not published, and not
because they arent good. Theyre just not for Silverthought.
We like to keep an open mind, as discussed above, but there is value
to associating a certain quality with our name. We want our readers
to have at least a vague idea of what to expect when they log on to
our free website. Imagine wanting to read a space-drama and being greeted
with a fairy story. Some things just arent for us. Fan fiction
(Star Trek stories, etc.), sword and sorcery fantasy, and rehashed imitations
of other, better stories are among these. Were not saying we dont
like that sort of story or that we havent read good fiction in
those categories, we just dont publish that here. Keep in mind
that your submission may be rejected solely because it does not fit
this single criterion.
The
editorial staff has a few more recommendations for you on how to successfully
join the Silverthought community of writers. No matter how good a writer
you think you are, you would be wise to follow the advice below.
Join
the Silverthought Forum.
Many of the best and most successful Silverthought writers post there
regularly, and a wealth of information regarding the site can be found
there. As writers, it is easy to become isolated by our own passion.
Not all of us live in big cities. Were spread out over the US,
Canada, Europe and in places all over the globe. The forums are a
well-established place to have a community of people who understand
the value of independent literature and stories not put through the
gristmill of large publishing houses. Also, readers will often log
in to tell us what they think about our work. This sort of feedback
is invaluable. After all, most of the authors are fans of sci-fi and
speculative fiction as well, and will have useful insights into your
work. If you are interested in promoting Silverthought, becoming a
regular reviewer, participating in peer-reviewing and critique, and
meeting the authors whose stories you admire, this is a terrific resource.
Read
this thread: "Suggestions
for New Submitters." Self-explanatory. Don't make the mistakes
mentioned here.
Read
this thread: Things
You Can Do to Make Your Writing Better and My Life Easier
by editor Paul Hughes. He updates it periodically with helpful hints
to avoid common submission errors in the form of grammatical or technical
mistakes. You will save yourself a lot of rejection if you know and
understand the things that he talks about here.
Read
this thread: Style
Tips That Arent Obvious. In it, a number of established
Silverthought authors talk about stylistic cues for writing that you
wont necessarily find in any Elements of Style-type
manual. Some of us have taken formal writing classes at the post-secondary
level, and some of us just have a lot of experience crafting entertaining
stories. It would behoove you to check this out and pay close attention.
Read
our Mission
Statement. This is a clear overview of what we hope to accomplish
as an online and print publishing house. If you are unsure if Silverthought
is for youor vice versathis should clear up any ambiguity.