If you are producing work for the site, please read the below. We reserve the right to take down, append a correction to, or reject any work that breaches these standards.

Conflicts

You should not review a book if you are close friends with the author, or are thanked in the acknowledgements. You should not review a book if you work for the publisher, or they are currently publishing you. Let us know if you blurbed the book, or any other potential conflict. It is fine to mention a book that falls into the above categories in a broader context, or to recommend it in a list, with due disclosure as appropriate.

Diligence

If you review a book, we expect you to read it. We also expect you to familiarize yourself with the author’s biography and other works. Quotes must be double checked. We expect you to research topics that you write on, and provide sourcing information for statements of fact, or links with further detail. For profiles, we expect you to interview the subject, familiarize yourself with their work and life, and talk to at least one other individual about them.

Plagiarism

You should not plagiarize work in any form, or infringe on any other intellectual property rights. Quotations must be clearly marked and credited. The same goes for self-plagiarism. Work written for us should be original, and not have appeared elsewhere, including in a modified form that shares major similarities. Either in email correspondence or in the article, we appreciate seeing links to your and others’ previous writings on the same topic.

Contributor agreement

Contributors to the site are expected to deliver the work they have been commissioned for, in acceptable form and timely fashion, according to below understandings:

Deadlines

Work should be delivered on or by the agreed deadline, within range of the agreed word count. Extensions are generally forthcoming: just ask! But don’t let deadline day go by in silence; write in to let us know if you need more time.

House style

Don’t worry too much about this, but if you want to make our lives easier, please deliver:

• A word document, or a link to a Google document (edits will come back as a separate Google doc).
• Times New Roman, 13pt, left-justified, 1.15 spacing, “add space after paragraph” selected (not line breaks between paragraphs).
• U.S. spelling. AP style. Em dashes (with a space either side). No double spaces!
• Book titles in italics, linked to publisher page at first mention, with (Publisher, year) after.
• Block quotes are welcome. No need for page numbers or other reference footnotes, but link to and/or name the source for all external quotations or facts that might require it.
• Special Chinese words (e.g. uncommon names, terms) with 简体中文 in brackets after.

Revisions

Contributors should make themselves available for multiple rounds of revisions after submitting their work, before giving final approval for the finished form. Please note there is an editing queue, and only one core editor, so you may have to wait some weeks or months before we get to your piece, but endeavor to minimize the wait.

Withdrawals

After a piece is submitted, it should not be withdrawn. On closing edits, we will endeavor to publish it without too long a delay, and to indicate when that will be, bearing in mind that scheduling changes can happen. Once published, we can make corrections as requested but cannot take down the piece unless there is a compelling concern.

Payment

The agreed fee will be paid on publication, within 15 business days according to the limits of our payments platform (Rippling). We will provide a link to upload your bank and tax details into that platform, when edits are closed.

Kill fees

If a submitted work is commissioned but not published, we will pay a kill fee of one quarter of the agreed rate if spiked before edits, and one half if spiked after edits. If a commissioned work is not submitted, partially submitted, diverges significantly from the commission or breaches our standards as above, then there will be no kill fee.

Expenses

We do not reimburse for expenses incurred, unless otherwise agreed specifically in writing. We can however arrange for publishers to send review copies of books, digital or hard copy, or send other helpful resources.

Competition

If you are commissioned to produce a work with us, you should not offer it or a modified version of it (ie in the same format or genre) to other publications. Material from research conducted for us, such as quotes from interviews, should not be re-used elsewhere without credit to original publication.

Copyright

Contributors retain copyright for their own work, but should request permission for re-use or cross-posting (almost always forthcoming, with a credit to original publication), and wait one month after publication to do so. We will request permission for any re-publication requests beyond our website.

General notes

All contributors are independent contractors, not employees. They are not entitled to benefits, and are responsible for reporting income to applicable government agencies. We do not carry liability on behalf of contributors. ∎