Submission Guidelines
TL;DR Press has multiple calls for submissions every year for collections that benefit charity. We have general submissions guidelines that apply to every submission process. There may also be additional guidelines for the particular collection that you submit to, so check both this page and the call for submissions before submitting to avoid confusion or delays in reviewing your submission.
TL;DR Press only accepts submissions through the Google Form for each collection. Submissions must be in .doc or .docx format to be considered.
Our Guidelines
The Google Form will ask you for:
– Your name (pen names are acceptable)
– The title of your submission
– Your Twitter handle (optional to include)
– The word count of your submission
– A short synopsis of your submission for marketing purposes, should it be accepted (not taken into account during scoring, optional to include)
– A .docx or .doc attachment of your author bio
– Confirmation that you own the rights to your submission
– Confirmation whether or not your submission has been previously published and details of any previous publication
– Whether you would like editorial feedback before a final scoring of your submission
– A .docx or .doc attachment of your submission
Please format your submission in our house style. This includes double spacing, indentation of paragraphs (with the exception of the opening line), and size 12 font in Calibri or Arial*. We currently only accept submissions in English. We welcome experimental styles and acknowledge that some work, especially poetry, will have formatting outside of our house style.
*Please note that all work submitted in Comic Sans will have edits returned in Wingdings.
TL;DR Press does not accept submissions that depict scenes of graphic sexual violence, assault, rape, incest, or any kind of child pornography. We also do not accept submissions that are in support of discrimination/bigotry based on sexuality, race, gender, religion, culture, disability, or age. If you have questions about what we will accept for consideration, please email info@tldrpress.org.
TL;DR Press accepts both simultaneous and multiple submissions (unless specifically stated otherwise in the call for submissions of a given collection). If your submission is accepted elsewhere, we ask that you please inform us immediately.
Our Process
You will receive confirmation of receipt from TL;DR Press within 48 hours of submission to one of our collections. If you have requested editor feedback via the Google Form, the receipt will include the name of the editor you will be working with.. This editor will be in touch via email to introduce themselves, and will later present feedback and suggested edits.
The average turnaround time for feedback at this stage of the process is two weeks, but may take up to 30 days depending on editor workload. You can always reach out to your assigned editor or info@tldrpress.com for more information.
Once you’ve received feedback if you have requested it, you will then have the opportunity to apply any edits or suggestions before re-submitting the finalized submission. You will receive confirmation of acceptance or rejection when all submissions are scored by both your editor and an independent scorer. The scoring process usually takes between two and four weeks. Your submission will receive an acceptance or rejection via email after all submissions have been scored and the collection curators have made their final decisions.
Compensation
TL;DR Press is a non-profit publisher for charity. Proceeds from all TL;DR Press publications go to a registered charity chosen by the curators and approved by the board members. All curators and editors work on a volunteer basis with no compensation. As such, we are unable to offer payment to authors.
We are proud to offer feedback and editing suggestions on every submission whose author requests it (before selecting accepted submissions), and we offer a free copy of the eBook version of the final collection to all accepted writers.
Writers’ Rights
See our Writers’ Rights page for the full explanation.
TL;DR: For all our collections, we use a non-exclusive anthology release agreement between the Press and its contributors.
Privacy
No personal information (name, email, etc.) of any authors will be shared with anyone outside of our editors and curators, unless we are compelled by law or for safety reasons to do so, before a release agreement has been signed by the accepted authors for any collection.
Authors who ask for feedback on their submissions will be contacted by the editor mentioned in the confirmation of receipt, and authors may be contacted by a curator for clarification of their submission if they have not completed all parts of their submission via Google Forms.