How to Submit Your Manuscript:

Please place your name, mailing and/or PayPal email address in the upper left-hand corner of the first page.  This will be the name and address where we will send your payment.

Please email your manuscript to Homestead.orgEditor@gmail.com.  Send it either in Microsoft Word format or as regular text in an email.

Feel free to send it “return receipt” so you’ll know we got it.

Please use this same address if you have any general questions about submissions.

Do Not Send Links:  Your finished manuscript should contain the complete article in such a form that it can be copied to our clipboard and moved to our web pages in one piece.  That is, do not send links for us to follow to any part of your production.  If you want us to use a recipe or other non-copyrighted material from another website, write it in your manuscript.  DO NOT send us a link to the material.

How to Submit Digital Photographs:

Please send us your photos in their original, largest state, and let us reduce them to fit our needs.  Please save your illustrations in either the .gif or .jpg formats with zero compression, if possible. We need a long, skinny rectangle for the feature photo for your article (please see the two rotating articles at the top of the homepage), the center of which will become a large square at the top oif your article page.  Please try to keep this in mind when composing your photographs.

Some writers like to embed their photos into Word files in the order and location that they’d like to see them appear in the published article.  This is okay, but if you do this, or if you don’t, please send us the original photos in the same size as they come from your camera.  If you’ve sent us a manuscript with your photos embedded, we’ll place them where you’d like them (subject to the physical limitations with which we have to deal).  This allows us to produce the best-looking result.

Remember: it is your responsibility to determine that the photographs you send us are your property.  If you need to use photos or illustrations created by someone other than yourself, you must receive permission from the owner in writing (email is fine for this).  If requested, we will give an 8-point credit, which can be hyperlinked to the website, Facebook page, or email address of the owner of the pictures.

Regarding intellectual rights:

We are buying All Rights to your manuscript and illustrations.  It is our intention to place this material on our website and keep it there indefinitely.

If you would like to have your material published elsewhere, you have our permission to do so if you maintain a link to our published version as well as annotate your version is “reprinted with permission from Homestead.org.” (including the link to Homestead.org)

If you would like to repurchase the rights to your material, we will sell them back to you for what we paid you originally, and remove the material from our site.

Editing:

We will try to catch any errors in grammar or punctuation, but of course, we don’t expect there to be any.  Occasionally, we may make minor changes if we encounter a sentence that doesn’t quite work, or something of that nature.  We will contact you if we see a need for any major changes, although we don’t expect there to be any of those either.

However, there is an exception to this rule.  It is very common for us to edit a writer’s title, and/or subtitle and/or the first line or paragraph of the article, perhaps even change them completely.  The success of your article, and our website, requires titles and lead-ins that grab the reader by the lapels and drag him forward against his will.

Typically, these may be quite a bit shorter than the, perhaps more informative, title that you may have chosen.  We also have to consider the physical limitations of some of the places where we will promote your article.  If you are a stickler for using only your own writing, give us titles with punch and opening lines that compel the reader to keep reading.

If you should discover a mistake in your article after it is published—whether it be our error or yours, now or ten years in the future—please make us aware of it and we will get it changed forthwith.  We also don’t mind updating articles as time goes by and conditions change.

Technicalities:

The Oxford comma: learn it, live it, and love it.

One mark ( ‘ ) is an apostrophe.  Two marks ( “ ) is a quotation mark.  If you don’t make this distinction, someone else has to go over your entire manuscript correcting this error.

Microsoft Word has a very powerful spell-checker, unless you ignore it.  Grammarly is also a helpful grammar-checking resource.

We’d love it if you could do a little SEO research for your article and provide us with at least one long-tail and one short-tail keyword for your piece. This will help us drive traffic to your article and away the gazillion other articles on the Internet.

Payment:

Our current rate is $100 for 1,000-2,500 words or greater, with sufficient images.

We pay upon publication.

We can send PayPal or mail a check.  Please cash your check as soon as it is conveniently possible.

How to Maximize the Number of Manuscripts You Sell to Us:

Stay in touch.  If you’ll send us a short list of three to six topics you’d like to write an article around, we’ll pick those that appeal to us and probably give you the go-ahead on at least one of them.

Finally, we recommend signing up for our newsletter so you’ll be sure to see your article featured upon publication. Also, we invite you to share your article on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  After all, you’re kinda famous.