Submission Requirements and Guidelines

The Basics

The No Stairway Anthology is open to both previously published and new Supernatural, Supernatural AU, and Supernatural RP fanfiction. Works in progress are not accepted by this publication, but a series of standalones could be - although each installment would have to go through the editorial review process on its own. We do not accept any visual art - our focus is literary, and the visual art forms already have their own promotional venues.

You can submit as much of your work as you like. However, the administrator reserves the right to queue your stories, releasing only one into the editorial review process at a time.

You can only submit your own work. We will not accept your story for consideration if someone else submits it. We want to ensure that all authors have full knowledge and control over submissions of their work.

Before You Submit

Works must be submitted as a .doc or .rtf file. (If for some reason you can't submit them in either of those formats, please contact the administrator at admin @ nostairway.org. Some exceptions will be made for .txt or .wpd files, but there will be additional formatting requirements.)
At the top of the document (not in a header/footer or superscripted) include the title, author and your email address. We prefer a secondary email address as well, especially if one of these is your LiveJournal, JournalFen, InsaneJournal, etc., email address.

My Best Story Ever
Maygra
Maygra/@/bellsouth.net, maygra/@/gmail.com

Beneath that, include information about the story usually contained in a header:

Genre: Gen, Het, Slash, RPS, RPF
Rating: Adult, PG, PG-13, etc. No rating or Unrated is acceptable, but it must be noted here.
Pairings/Characters: We require pairings to accommodate editorial reviewers who have opted out of judging certain types of stories because they do not feel they can be unbiased about them.
Alerts/Flags: For the same reason as above, please alert for things that most fans expect: incest, deathfic, rape, non-con, etc.

The administrator uses this information to ensure that the editorial reviewers who will review the story can do so objectively and fairly. This erstwhile header, as well as your name and e-mail addresses, will be stripped out of the file before it is sent to screening - the administrator is the only person who will see it.

If your story is accepted for publication, you will be contacted to determine how much of this information you would like to accompany your story.

At the end of the story, include the following text:

-end-

This is to ensure that the file the administrator is looking at is complete.

Please name the file as some version of the title and your name. My Best Story Ever by Maygra might be:
mybeststory_maygra.doc

Works must be submitted as an attachment via email to submissions @ nostairway.org.

If you would like to view a sample template, click here.

File Format Recommendations:

Text should be formatted as you would for posting, including double spaces between paragraphs.

You can use embedded fonts for italics and/or bold.

If you prefer to use markups instead of embedding, please use //text// for italics and *text* for bold.

Please turn off smart quotes and any other automatic formatting functions your word processor uses. (In MS Word, go to Tools, AutoCorrect Functions, and uncheck all options under both AutoFormat and AutoFormat as You Type).

Please clear the properties fields if you can. (In MS Word, with the file open, go to File, Properties, and clear out data in the summary tab.) The administrator will check it, but it's better if it's not there.

Please turn off tracking changes in the file if you use that feature.

Other information for authors:

Accepted works are archived as static pages (not using any of the current archiving software) at www.nostairway.org. The digest posts at the No Stairway LJ community link to each story as posted. Those authors who would prefer not to be archived may opt out of that service.

You can withdraw your work from the editorial process - before posting - at any time.

The No Stairway Anthology project is a collaborative effort. It requires a great deal of work from not only the authors, but the staff as well. In recognition of that, it is our policy that once a story has been published in an Anthology volume, it is assumed that story will stay in our archives indefinitely. The result of removal would not be unlike checking out an anthology volume at a library or bookstore and discovering that pages had been ripped out of the middle of the book.

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If accepted, the author may supply a link for comments and reader feedback. The Anthology will include this link - to the author's own LiveJournal or other story page, website or email address - at the bottom of each accepted story. (Note: the LJ Community digest posts will not accept reader feedback.)

Comments from the editorial review staff will be provided to you at the end of the process, whether your work is accepted or rejected. If you'd prefer not to receive them, you can choose to opt out of this service. The only thing you absolutely will have to know is a) that we received your submission and b) whether your work is accepted or not.

Everyone's Favorite Topic: Acceptance and Rejection

Hopefully, if you've gotten this far, you've already decided that you want to submit your work. You've read our mission statement, and you think it's a good idea. That's excellent. We're pleased to have your participation.

But first, a word of caution.

You are about to have anonymous strangers read your work and decide they want to recommend it to others. That's not quite the same as having anonymous strangers wander by your journal or your favorite community, decide they like your story, and then recommend it. This is you, giving your work to total strangers and hoping that they like it enough to say to other people, "Hey, read this! We really liked this!" That's definitely the best outcome, and the one we all hope happens most often.

While we understand that it's a great feeling to have our works showcased and recommended, that might not happen here with us. Some of us are writers, too, and we certainly know how it feels to not get recommended - it sucks.

If you feel that having your story rejected might affect how much fun you're already having in the Supernatural fandom, we urge you to take this concern seriously. Ultimately, we're all here for the joy fandom brings us, and it shouldn't be stressful.

We want to see your stories, we want you to be part of the anthology, but we can't absolutely guarantee that we will accept your story/stories. We do guarantee that every story submitted will be considered with equal weight. We emphasize this point not because we don't want to see and include your stories, but because we can't absolutely guarantee that we will. Also, if you have any reservations at all about the processes or procedures, about the objectivity of the administrator, the screeners, or the editorial reviewers, then please consider that carefully before you submit your work. Don't submit if you're in doubt. If you think you might like to see how the process works from the inside, volunteer with us. There are many ways to participate in this community. If you've got doubts, that's the best way we know to assuage them.

Hopefully we didn't just scare you all away.

If you're still in, we're very glad. It looks like a scary proposition at the outset, but let us take this opportunity to assure you that, while most publishing houses will fire off abrupt kiss-offs without a thought, we're still a fandom operation, and fandom is a labor of love. We bear that in mind when we have to inform an author their story is rejected, and try to make it an opportunity, not an ending, with an emphasis on trying again. If the first story you submit isn't accepted, maybe the next one will be.

The Anthology is not a beta process, and it isn't specifically geared toward making you a better writer, but you will get comments on your work from the editorial review team. In some cases you may want to rework the story you submitted, and the Anthology allows for resubmission of a story. If you choose not to rework the story you put forward, maybe it's worth your while to keep the editorial reviewer's comments in mind for your next story. While the Anthology itself is geared toward readers, not writers, we know it's a combination of both that keeps the fandom fresh and fun for everybody.

And when we get to accept something, we're happy as... well, editors who get to accept something. We try to find reasons why a story should be included. We want you to get comments and feedback from people who like what you write. Most of us in fandom are readers as much as we are anything else, and we're always looking for something that will make us happy, make us think, or outright wow us. We hope that No Stairway will become a favorite place for people to go to find new stories, revisit old ones, and make a few discoveries they might have missed in what is an incredibly prolific and diverse fandom of creative people. We'd like it to be a place where new fans can find a good cross-section of the incredible talent that makes up this fandom.

But we can only provide a venue, and a sampling of what's available. You and writers like you are the ones who can make No Stairway into that place.

Finally, if you've got questions, please feel free to ask them! You can email us at admin @ nostairway.org, or comment to us in one of the open posts at LiveJournal.

Submissions are currently closed.

An announcement will be made here and at our LiveJournal community nostairway.livejournal.com when they reopen.