online.silverthought.com: submissions

 

ACCESS SILVERTHOUGHT SUBMISSION MANAGER:
SUBMISSIONS.SILVERTHOUGHT.COM

 

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

Since 2001, 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 submissions of short speculative fiction to our online division (ST Online). We do not publish a print magazine, no matter what you may have heard elsewhere. For novel submissions to our print division (ST Print), see the ST: Print Submissions page.

CONTACT:
To submit material to Silverthought, please upload your work to us through the Silverthought submission manager. Due to rampant spam and disregard for our submission guidelines, we have discontinued the submissions@silverthought.com email address and will no longer monitor that account. In addition, we will no longer accept printed manuscript submissions. All unsolicited submissions must be uploaded through our online submission manager. You will receive automatic confirmation from the submission manager upon successful upload of your manuscript.

The ST staff reads and assesses each submission, but due to the number of submissions we receive, we cannot send a personalized response to every writer who submits material to Silverthought. If we accept your submission, you will be notified within 30-90 days. This notification will detail any suggestions for revision and an approximate timeline for inclusion of your work in an ST Online update. Again, if you do not receive a response within 90 days, please consider your work rejected. Emails requesting updates on the status of a submission will be ignored.

COMPENSATION:
ST Online has been and will remain a free online publication. Effective 10/2010, writers whose work appears on ST Online will receive a flat fee for submissions in the following fiction categories:

• micro (up to 100 words): $2.00
• flash (100 - 1000 words): $5.00
• short (1000 - 20000 words): $20.00
• novella (20000 - 50000 words): $50.00
• serialized fiction (word count variable): $5.00/entry
  

Compensation will be redeemable via PayPal or as equivalent credit in the ST Bookstore. Compensation is disbursed mid-month and will be delivered within 30 days of publication on ST Online. Compensation is non-transferable. These compensation rates do not apply to any work that appeared on ST Online before 10/01/2010. ST Bookstore credit must be redeemed within one year of receipt.

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/Subtitle: 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 if the piece is not rejected outright. Nobody really wants to read "Teh time The Robotz Conquered It's H8." (Well played, John Birge. Well played.)
• Author name/Pseudonym: 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 us with your real name as well. Your real name will not appear in any form on Silverthought unless you want it to, but we like to know who we're dealing with.
• Synopsis: This is a short plot summary of the submission. Please note: We 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 you’re 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.
• Publication History: 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.

ACCEPTABLE FILE FORMATS:
You may upload digital manuscripts in .pdf, .doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf, .wpf, or .odt format.

LENGTH REQUIREMENTS:
There are no minimum or maximum length requirements for pieces. ST Online accepts micro, flash, and short fiction, novellas, and serialized fiction of varying length. Note: We are not currently accepting unfinished serialized fiction. If you would like to present a story in serial format on ST Online, please submit the completed work so that we may assess it as a whole.

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 words 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. MS 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.

ILLUSTRATIONS:
If you would like to include an illustration with your text, please upload it in .jpg or .gif format. Illustrations will be resized as necessary. Only illustrations for which the writer has obtained permission for use will be accepted. 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

We will never change thematic or stylistic elements of your stories. We 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, contact Paul Hughes.

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. We accept simultaneous submissions and reprints. We occasionally assemble print 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 don’t test us. Anyone caught doing this will be permanently banned from Silverthought’s 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, 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 editorial panel may very well just plain ignore you after a while.

Thank you for your interest in submitting to the online division of Silverthought Press. We know there are about a trillion other sites for writers and readers out there, and we appreciate you taking the time to consider submitting to ST. In closing, we'd like to recommend before submitting material to ST that you take a look around the site (particularly the ST Online archive) and familiarize yourself with who we are and what we do. If you don't think Silverthought is for you, it probably isn't.

      

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