This page was updated on June 21st, 2007.
 A lot has changed. All authors should read it!

If you've written a story, and would like to have it posted on this site, please read the following, very carefully.

Here are the basic requirements:

New Authors : You must be registered before a story submission form will be accepted by the system. The one-time registration process takes just a few minutes, and requires just several pieces of information. If you're not registered, completing the submission form is a waste of time because the system won't accept it. Link to: Author Registration.

The information about your story that appears on the 'index card' area on your Author page, is the data ACTUALLY entered by YOU on the submission form. If YOU make a mistake, that's the way the information appears. Misspell something and it goes up misspelled. Don't blame me if you were careless and come off looking like a complete fool. I'm not an editor. Some information, such as the synopsis can be changed later, and some, such as the title,  can't be changed, EVER.

A word on Plagiarism: The members of our community have excellent and lengthy memories. If you attempt to pass someone else's work off as your own, you will be detected. Even if you find the story in a thirty-year-old magazine, or copied it from a BBS a decade ago, it will be identified by somebody. There is a system established for submitting such stories as 'Orphans'. You should not try to claim credit for it's creation. If you are the original author, and have previously posted it under a different name, or sold it to a magazine and rights have now reverted to you, please include a message to that effect, or I promise you that fans will be crying 'Foul'.

There is only one hard and fast rule for a submission. The title entered on the submission form must conform to the established format. Read this part very carefully, and abide by the rules for title or your story WILL NOT appear on StorySite.

The Title :

Virtually EVERYTHING about your story, that goes into the StorySite database system, uses the title YOU enter on the form. The story template, story counter, review system, descriptor files, etc., etc., etc., all use the title that YOU enter here. If you misspell the title, that's the way it STAYS once it's posted because I have neither the time or inclination to change a dozen different files for an author who couldn't be bothered taking an extra few seconds to make sure they had spelled it correctly and entered it properly.

If your story is a single part manuscript, and will NEVER have additional parts, you can call it anything you want. If you decide later on that you want to add to it, you'd better adhere to the following rule for multipart stories or additional parts cannot be appended.

If your submission is part of a multipart story, DO NOT put the part number in the title. If you do, it goes into the circular trash when I reach it in the queue. That means that you might have waited for months to see it posted, only to see it trashed instead.

If a multipart story, all parts MUST have the SAME TITLE or the system won't make the connection with the previously posted parts.

That's it for the "required" rules. The rest are suggestions. Anything else can be altered later on. The title is like the foundation of a building. You CANNOT change it once you start building on it.

IF YOU HAVE IGNORED THE ABOVE RULES, YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME BY FILLING OUT THE SUBMISSION FORM. YOUR STORY WILL NOT BE POSTED!

Help me out : Be sure to include the story's title and your author name at the top of every submitted story or part. If it's not there, I have to go hunt up the submission form and that takes time. Why should you care if it takes me extra time? Every author wants their story posted as quickly as possible, but if I'm wasting time doing things that the author could more easily have done, less stories get posted. Multiply those wasted minutes by the dozens of stories that come in each month without an author name and/or title, and you might get an idea how much time I waste because authors can't be bothered giving me a helping hand. Perhaps I should have titled this: 'Help yourself out.'

Formatting: The number one complaint of authors is that the story appears different than when it was submitted. This is mainly due to formatting modifications. All stories on Storysite are posted as New Times Roman - 12 point in black type, left alignment. This is the web default format. The title is always in 18 point type (Non-Bold and Non-Underlined), and author notes and comments are in 10 point type. If you use fancy fonts, colors, and line justification, expect to see them altered to the site standard during posting. Since books are always published using line justification, new authors tend to think that their work should be presented that way, but justified text is much more difficult to read on a computer monitor, so all stories are presented in left justified format.

New authors tend to use a carriage return at the end of every line, as if they were typing on a typewriter. This is WRONG. If Carriage Returns are used this way, then EVERY line is treated as a separate paragraph by HTML, which means that it inserts a blank line between all lines of text when it's posted. Sometimes my software can remove the end-of-paragraph tags that are found at the end of every line, but sometimes it can't and you look like a fool when your story is posted because everyone knows what you did. It's your choice. If using a modern word processor, the software will word-wrap the sentences automatically. This method allows computers to fill the page when different display formats and fonts sizes are used by readers.

Some story archive sites do not covert the submitted text to HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) so authors must insert an extra end-of-paragraph mark to achieve separation between paragraphs. It's not necessary on StorySite, and actually causes formatting problems if your story contains the extra formatting characters. When HTML encounters an EOP format character, it skips two lines before resuming the story. So if an author has used an extra EOP, the browser interprets that as an instruct to skip three lines. That's why some stories appear so spread out. I don't have the time to strip them out manually, so I rely on special automatic procedures to do that. That's where the problem comes in. The automated procedure frequently messes up things other than spacing, meaning that the 'look' so carefully prepared by the author can be lost. I just finished formatting a story where the author used extra EOP characters at the end of every paragraph. The author also included entire paragraphs of italicized text. When the MS Format command was used to strip the extra character, it got confused and made half the story italicized. It totally ruined the effect the author was trying to achieve, but hey, it's your choice! If you want your story to look its best, delete extra EOP formatting characters before you submit to StorySite.

Synopsis: I strongly suggest that you compose the synopsis in your word processor and then paste it into the entry box. About half the forms I receive contain spelling errors in the synopsis area and I don't always catch them. Misspellings in the synopsis causes many readers to immediately bypass your story without even taking a glance at it. Besides, you really look foolish when your synopsis contains spelling errors. You only do it once, so do it right. It's your choice.

Categories and Keyword Descriptions: Read the descriptions carefully before selecting them. Selecting keywords and categories that do not apply might result in delayed postings of future stories because I'll have to double check your work (if and when I can find the time).

Comment Area: This is for comments about the story posting effort ONLY. Use it to remind me that images have been sent, that the story contains a fictional "letter" that should receive special indentation, or anything like that. DO NOT include messages to readers there. They will never see them. And please Don't include the story there. It will be ignored if you do. There's only one way to submit your story. It must be sent directly to the server using the submission upload process.

Story Form: Over the years I've learned that Rich Text Format (.rtf) is the best submission format in order to have stories appear close to the way that authors envision them. There are many compatibility issues where word processors on other platforms attempt to convert to MS Word format. If you create your story using Microsoft's Word (NOT MS Works) then it's okay to send me the .doc formatted story, but please don't send me a story that has been converted to .doc format from any other word processor. Files created using MS Works should only be converted to Rich Text Format. That's been found to be the only transmission format acceptable from that very odd program. I will also accept plain text files, indicated by the .txt file name extension.

Stories are converted to HTML by me, so I ask for your assistance in making the job easier by not submitting stories in HTML. I do have a program that strips out HTML tags, but it sometimes butchers the story. Please don't make me use it.

Images: Images MUST NOT be embedded in the text. They MUST be sent separately according to the instructions found in the Author's Corner on the page titled 'Stories with Images'. If you embed them in the text, expecting me to do all the extra work of removing them, storing them, and then replacing them in the HTML copy, you're going to be very disappointed. My software strips out everything that doesn't belong in a text file before I even see it.

Other Information: 

After the submission form data is sent, an upload screen appears that allows you to upload your story directly to the server without having to email anything. This is the point where we encounter the most submission failures. If authors don't follow the directions, the story never gets sent to StorySite. A message appears after the upload attempt to tell you if a file was received by StorySite's server, or if the upload failed. Pay attention to that message. You may think that you submitted the story, and then sit back to wait for it to be posted, when all the time you never sent anything because you didn't follow through properly. 

The upload process will accept files with .rtf, .doc, .txt, and .zip extensions. This should cover most of the major word processing formats. Apple/Mac users MUST manually add an appropriate file extension to the file on their hard drive before trying to submit a story since their operating system doesn't normally include it when the file is created, as PC's do.

I ask that you read the Authors Posting Tips page before posting your story. There is an entire section of this site dedicated solely to providing helpful information to authors, such as how to submit a story with images. It's called the Author's Corner. You should also click on the [help] hyperlinks found on the submission form to learn more about the individual requirements for each piece of data.

Authors should check the Story Queue immediately after submitting their form and story to insure that it was received by the server. There should be an 'X' at the far right of the line showing your story file submission. That means that the server acknowledges that a story file was received. If there's no 'X', no story was uploaded to the server. You can wait months for nothing. When I reach your submission in the queue, the submission form is trashed if there's no story. You have the tools available to check, so make use of them. A few minutes can save you a lot of heartache.

If your story is not posted within the time specified in the Author's Corner, check the Non-Posted Submissions List to see if a problem was encountered. If your story is listed on the the 'non-posted' list, you can re-submit, or contact me if you don't understand the problem.

My goal is to make the posting process as easy and automatic as possible, while still maintaining a measure of control. The form is easy to complete once you've done it once, but the first time requires you to concentrate. Everyone wants their story posted as quickly as possible, and completing this form correctly will speed your story through the process. 

Following your submission, a copy of the submitted data is automatically sent to your email address of record.

If you have any questions about the above, feel free to email me at here. I will assist you in any way that I can.