Nonfiction Guidelines

What We Want: length, serialized, reprints, multiple subs, simultaneous subs, payment, rights, eSub, formats, postal
Will NOT Accept

Abandoned Towers Nonfiction Guidelines

Please read the guidelines in their entirety before submitting.

Abandoned Towers consists of two distinct pieces:

We used to claim that none of the content accepted for print ever appears on the website, and that none of the online content ever appears in print. We’ve decided this is too restrictive. Submissions accepted for print are unlikely to appear on the website (although they may, especially in the case of serialized stories or articles). Conversely, we may run a contest to determine the most popular stories in the online content and include the top selections as part of a print edition in the future. Bottom line, we’re now reserving the right to cross publish.

There is only one submission process which is for both print and online. We reserve the right to offer acceptance for a different format than you originally requested.

We plan to have our next print issue out by Summer 2012, but it might be earlier depending on submissions. We will publish on our website on an ongoing basis (once we officially relaunch in early 2012).

What We Want:

We are looking for well written nonfiction with good ideas and that is interesting. Our goal is to provide access to quality nonfiction that will appeal to a wide audience.  We accept articles, essays, editorials (from our editors), opinion pieces, reviews, biographies and autobiographies. Here’s the quick summary of what’s acceptable, and please see the individual sections below for more information.

Language: English (we don’t have the capacity to accept non-English submissions, although if you’re interested in being an Editor for non-English submissions, let us know!)
Length: up to 5,000 words (soft limit)
Serialized: we do accept serialized articles which are longer than the 5,000 word limit, but we only accept completed works, not works in progress. This is one of those cases where a query is appropriate.
Reprints: yes. We accept previously published work as long as you have appropriate rights and include the previous publication history.
Multiple Submissions: yes.
Simultaneous Submissions: no.
Payment: $0.00 (online) – $10.00 & eCopy (print).
Rights: non-exclusive World Rights and non-exclusive World Anthology rights in print and electronic. Full details will be in the contract we send you during the acceptance phase.
eSub: submissions@abandonedtowers.com (soon to be eSub System)
Format: .txt, .doc, .docx and .rtf (also know as Text, Word Documents, Rich Text Documents)
Postal Submissions: not accepted

Length and Word Count:

We accept works up to 5,000 words (soft limit), so if it’s much over 5,000 words please query first. We are primarily a market for fiction and poetry, but we’re well rounded and want to provide nonfiction options to our readers as well.

Serialized Articles

We are open to serialized articles both for online or print, and this may be an appropriate option for a piece which is significantly longer than our normal 5,000 word limit, however we do not accept works in progress. The work must be completed before we’ll consider it. If in doubt query.

Reprints

We do accept reprints, but make sure that you know the publication history and have appropriate rights to allow us to reprint it before sending it in. Also we prefer new works over reprints, but our primary consideration is the quality of the story itself.

We define previously published as any work presented to the public by a professional entity in any format. Professional entities are: eZines, podcast sites, print publications and other venues like these, regardless of whether such organizations pay for the work they publish or not. We do not consider work posted to a crit group, in a personal blog, an online forum, or other places where the intention is not to publish professionally to be previously published (although we may request that the work be removed from such a location on acceptance).

Multiple Submissions

We accept multiple submissions, so you can send us a few pieces at once if you like. That said, please keep the number you’re sending reasonable, both in total quantity and total word count. We have limited resources, so you’ll likely receive less feedback the more pieces you submit (especially if they exhibit the same flaws). Also it is unlikely that we’ll accept all 10 of your submissions for the print editions at the same time, so there’s a benefit to spacing them out.

Simultaneous Submissions

We do not accept simultaneous submissions. We like to know that we’re your first choice (of the moment) and that we’re not wasting our time reading something that we won’t be allowed to publish. If you have sent your work out to another publisher and can no longer wait for their decision, contact them and withdraw your work before sending it to us.

Payment

We currently are unable to pay for content accepted only for AbandonedTowers.com (e.g. online content). We do, however, offer you the opportunity to include an Author Bio with your work, which may contain links to your website, blog, self-published works, existing published works or other self promotional items.

For content accepted for the “print” editions we pay: $10.00 plus an electronic copy. Additionally you may have an Author Bio included on AbandonedTowers.com.

All payments are made through our PayPal account. If you are unable to accept PayPal, we may be able to mail a cheque, however cheques will be in Canadian funds drawn from a Canadian Bank and it is the responsibility of the author to ensure that they will be able to deposit/cash the cheque.

Rights

After a work is accepted, we will be in touch with you offering to accept it either for online publication or for inclusion in a print edition. If you accept our acceptance, we will follow-up with a contract which will contain all of the appropriate details with respect to the rights requested and our respective obligations. Essentially we request: non-exclusive World Rights and non-exclusive World Anthology Rights in both print and electronic forms.

eSub

At present, we only accept electronic submissions via email at submissions@abandonedtowers.com. Please include the submissions as attachments to the email. Refer to the Submission Process for full details on how to properly submit.

We intend to have an actual eSub system in place soon, but until it is in place we will continue to accept email submissions.

Formats

We accept .txt, .doc, .docx and .rtf (also know as Text, Word Documents, Rich Text Documents). Please use standard manuscript format-for example: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mslee/format.html.

Postal Submissions

We’re sorry but we are not able to accept physical manuscripts.

Will NOT Accept

Rather than give you a long list of what we want, we’ll provide you with a short list of what we do not want. If you’re not sure whether your submission fits our not-wanted list, send it over and we’ll let you know.

What we will not accept under any circumstances :