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Freestyle
Open Guidelines |
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"Writing
takes more than talent. It takes a kind of nerve... and a lot
of hard, hard work." Georgia 0' Keefe |
This is the original e-Marginalia travel story contest.
Back in 2003 we held a one-time competition for travelers to share
their travelogues. We hadn't anticipated the need to upgrade our email
server! We discovered that there are tons of
adventurous travelers eager to share their stories, so we repeated
the travel story contest, and then repeated it again and again...
Now, four times each year, e-Marginalia showcases the most helpful,
engaging, entertaining and unusual travel stories we can lay our hands
on. We love reading your submissions and evaluating which work will
most appeal to e-Marginalia readers. Nine finalists are selected
for publication and featured online for two months during which
readers around the world help to choose the most popular
stories. And then we announce (and reward) the winners!
What are we looking
for?
The stories we publish target the adventurous traveler. We serve
people who seek "authentic" travel experiences, voyagers rather
than tourists. Our clients and site visitors marry discerning tastes
and sincere curiosity with a willingness (indeed a need) to venture
beyond the confines of the familiar and the comfortable. Travel
beyond the margin.
Good, honest, well-crafted prose combined with accurate, well-photographed
images are the e-Margaux.com staple.
Frankly, our site visitors expect to be transported effortlessly and
immediately away from the quotidian and into the magical folds of
some far-off wonderland. The stories (and ideally the accompanying
photographs) we select for publication will meet these important criteria.
Style
With respect to style, we endeavor to cultivate a more flexible
and experimental style of travel writing than the mainstream travel
media. Stories selected for publication are essentially prose
reports, balancing journalistic conventions with the flare and readability
of creative non-fiction, and ranging from travelogues and destination
reviews to exposés and "tips & advice" testimonials.
Submission Deadlines
Please review the
2006 submission deadlines. You are invited to
submit your work at any time; if
it is not timely for one issue, it will be considered for the next.
As submissions are rolling and the backlog is unpredictable, we do
not recommend that you try to submit a story for a specific issue
unless instructed by
e-Margaux.com staff.
Fees
There are no reading fees to submit your travel stories
for consideration in the e-Marginalia Freestyle Open. That's right,
you pay zip, zero, zilch, nada, niente when you enter the most popular
e-Marginalia travel contest of all!
Rewards
e-Margaux.com is a boutique travel
community celebrating and inspiring alternative travel and travelers.
We follow a "contest model" which allows us to encourage excellent
storytelling while rewarding our most popular storytellers. The stories
selected for publication each quarter are featured (on
e-Marginalia.com and in our monthly
email newsletter) and tracked for two months before being archived.
Tracking the popularity of each story permits us to
reward the writers of the top three most popuar
stories according to the schedule below.
First Place - $.03/visit ($75.00 max.)
Second Place - $.02/visit ($50.00 max.)
Third Place - $.01/visit ($25.00 max.)
Please note that archived stories will remain accessible to site
visitors, but tracking will be discontinued upon publication of the
subsequent issue.
Rights, Requests
& Requirements
When we publish your work at e-Margaux.com
we prefer (but do not require) 30-60 day (depending on contest duration)
exclusive rights after publication, and nonexclusive electronic rights
thereafter. All submissions must be in English, and it is preferable
that they be previously unpublished and not simultaneously submitted
elsewhere. To increase your chances for publication, please follow
the submission guidelines below.
Guidelines &
Considerations
- Send us your best work.
- No submission should exceed 1500 words. (Send query with 1 sample
paragraph for travelogues exceeding 1500 words.)
- Please submit no more than 1 story at a time. You are
welcome to submit additional entries separately, but please
limit your total submissions to 5. Thank you.
- Do a spell and fact check, particularly on location/site names.
- Format: Skip a line between paragraphs. Do not use tab/indent
to indicate paragraph. Do not double-space after sentences.
- Include full contact information, submission destination/itinerary,
submission title and byline.
- You may send 3-5 representative photographs to accompany story/article.
Email JPEG image attachments to
. Ensure that images are in focus, taken on the same trip, and relevant
to your story. Please limit multiple images of the same subject
unless they vary greatly. (i.e. My old Aunt Aming may be cute but
not after 5 nearly identical shots of her.)
- Please review our Archive carefully
to see what has been published to avoid overlapping. This saves
us time and you disappointment.
Ready to Submit?
So you think you've written just what we're looking for? Great!
We look forward to reviewing your submission.
Please submit your travel story here...
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