Submission Guidelines
We are closed for submissions at the moment due to family health issues. This page will be updated when we are open to them again. Please do not submit requests at this time. Thank you.
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The Cuckleburr Times is putting out a call for submissions of original articles, poetry, reviews and writings to publish here online.
Mike and I are happy to showcase your writing and books free because we enjoy writing too and have for years. We wanted to give something back in appreciation of all those that published our own submissions online over the years.
How to submit a piece of writing
Please click here to Email Your Submission. Plain text please, pasted into the body of the article – no article attachments, no formatting. Article attachments won’t be opened.
Please read the rest of these guidelines below before doing so. We’ll know if you didn’t. 
I ask that you don’t flood my inbox with hundreds at once! If you have a lot, please be sensible and send me a few at a time over a number of days/weeks/months. A couple every few days is no problem.
Simultaneous submissions are fine as are previously published items. I would far prefer unique ones of course or at least the chance to publish it first. Those kinds of submissions will take priority over republished ones and you need to mention that in your submission so I know. You of course retain all rights to your work.
I have seen a million “how to avoid writer’s block” articles and really don’t want to read any more unless it’s a very very special take on it. They are too general. What I need are articles that answer a more specific need containing advice/wisdom that writers who have been writing for a while will actually be able to use. Share your own experiences on your writing journey, an excerpt from your book, how you found a publisher, some resource that you had trouble finding and where you found it etc, a book review or writing tip. Something along those lines would be great.
Among our readership we have authors, poets and writers of all experience levels from the beginner to the seasoned professional. Some are published, some not. Some write for the fun of it and others want to improve their writing. Some want to find out more about selling, marketing and promoting their books (self-published or not). Some want a website for their book and don’t know what to include and what not to. Therefore topics revolving around writing, books, authors, poetry and poets, editing, agents, publishing, book marketing, book trends, ebooks, raising your author profile and book promotion online etc. are top of our wishlist.
What do I get?
We’ll give you a resource box for your bio at the end of the article (we’d appreciate it if you keep it around six lines or so max) and two or three links back – one each to your website/blog, Facebook and Twitter account within that as a thank you for allowing us to use it. NO affiliate links are allowed in the resource box or anywhere else in your post. Self-serving links in the main body of the articles aren’t allowed. Resource boxes should be personalized with the article writer’s name and details, not just a company name.
Remember to also give us a book cover shot if you have one please (a smallish one).
We can place your photo in the article. Just keep it small please and resize it before you send it to us! 100×100 is ideal. 150x 150 is about the biggest we’d want.
Add your bio information and a pic to your first submission and we’ll do the rest. You won’t need to supply bio info again after the first time for any subsequent submissions. We’ll simply use what we had before.
Keep it simple
Please supply submissions in plain text- PLEASE! Yes I know this is the second time it’s been mentioned but that’s how important it is. It makes life far, far easier for us.
Why? Because it takes forever to undo all the formatting we have to remove in order to make it work with our site’s setup. Please, give us your articles or poetry the way we ask for them. You can trust us to make them look as good as possible on your behalf. If you can’t, we have no choice but to reject it. Try see it from our side: it’s not very fair to ask us to publish your writing and then not take the time to fulfill our requirements.
Word Count
I’m flexible on word count and prefer around 500 words or more, although I’m not averse to shorter pieces at all (as long as they are concise, not insubstantial.) Poetry can obviously be much shorter. I’m more interested in reading an article that holds my attention than laying down the law about word count. The maximum I would like would be 1000. Book excerpts can be up to 1500 words.
What kind of article topics can I submit?
We do give priority to anything to do with writers, writing, editing and publishing and books as I mentioned. Excerpts from your book are fine as are book reviews, author interviews, writing tips, publishing and editing help, promotion & marketing of books etc. We love things that are different and quirky too plus memoirs, slice of life tales, and family and relationship stories. We do not publish anything that’s unsuitable for a family friendly site like ours. (eg adult content or articles related to anything illegal.) Read some of what we already have here to get an idea of what we like. If it’s PG rated, it will be fine.
What we look for in all articles is interesting, informative or entertaining high quality material. Any article that’s merely a thinly veiled infomercial, a fluff piece, a rehash of an article or has typos won’t make the cut. We take great pride in our site and keep the quality high. Plagiarism will be reported to the original author of the piece.
We don’t have time to polish your work so please send us your best pieces first time around. Please state in your email if your article is unique or a reprint. We do accept both, for the time being anyway. Original, unique articles will always take priority.
We don’t like rejecting articles but it happens. Your best guide to whether you’ll be accepted is to read some of the articles already here at The Cuckleburr Times to get a feel for what we like.
Holy Social Networking!
We expect article writers to do at least one of the following to help promote their article: please Tweet, Stumble, Digg or add your article to Facebook. You could also share it on a forum or mention it on your blog. Let us know if you do please by adding a comment to the article and linking to what you did (gets you an additional link!). We work very hard on The Cuckleburr Times and appreciate it when you take the time to give back a little. All the articles have Share icons at the bottom to make it very easy.
Articles are Tweeted by us too. You can follow us on Twitter at @CuckleburrTimes
Don’t see a category your article would fit?
Don’t worry. We’ll be adding more categories as we go along if needed. Please don’t hesitate to Contact Us at the tab above with any questions, feedback, suggestions etc. We’d much rather you asked than were unsure.
Beginner or expert, you’re very welcome here!
We really want The Cuckleburr Times to be not just an online magazine for writers, but a community where writers, authors, poets and others can gather and feel comfortable, no matter their level of writing expertise. Whether you’re here to learn, share your knowledge or just relax with a coffee and enjoy our site, we’re glad to have you.
Thanks for your interest. Mike and I hope to see your submission(s) soon! And last but not least, please put the word Submission in your subject title. We reserve the right to change any of this without notice and make exceptions at our discretion.
Best,
Kay Elizabeth
Editor & Co-Owner, The Cuckleburr Times.
