Interested in guest blogging? Want to share your expertise or passion with more readers? Read on for some guidelines on what and how to submit your content to kimberlycreates.
What I’m Looking For
Focus: The focus of this blog is writing, editing, and fostering creativity. Feel free to share tips you’ve learned, reviews of books or tools that you’ve found helpful as a writer or editor, or your own personal experiences in any of these areas. Topics may include grammar, style, plotting, characterization, critiquing, self-editing, common mistakes, etc.
Passion: I’m particularly passionate about cultivating creativity and getting past creative blocks. If you want to share your personal experiences or your own passion in this area, I’d love to hear from you.
Fiction: My other passion is encouraging new writers and authors. In this vein, I will consider guest posts with your own original short fiction, or blog tours promoting your new book. Please read on for more information about this type of content.
If you have an idea for a guest post, but you’re not sure if it’s what I’m looking for, feel free to contact me.
Fiction
If you are interested in submitting a piece of short fiction as a guest post, please keep these four things in mind:
- I am not a paying market. You will not receive compensation for submitting your fiction to my blog.
- This is a public blog. Most editors will consider your fiction published if it appears anywhere publicly accessible on the internet. Some editors will refuse to purchase first rights to your fiction if you submit it to them after it has appeared anywhere else on-line.
- Rock my socks. Even though I am not a paying market, I still have my own editorial tastes. If you do decide to submit short fiction for guest blogging, I reserve the right to decline to publish it if it doesn’t rock my socks.
- Too good to be free. I also reserve the right to refuse to publish your fiction on my blog if it rocks my socks so much that I think you should try to sell it to a paying market.
Blog Tours
If you are interested in promoting your book through a blog tour, please keep these four things in mind:
- Do I know you? If I don’t personally know you or your work, I will consider your blog tour article to be purely self-promotional and a violation of my guidelines. (See “What I Don’t Want” below.)
- Advanced reader copies. If you wish to send me an advanced reader copy or review copy of your book so that I can get to know your work better before your blog tour, you may mail it to Kimberly Creative Services, PO Box 81, Deerfield, WI 53531.
- Rock my socks. I won’t review or promote a book that I don’t love, no matter how well-written it may be.
- This is a family friendly blog. No matter how well-written your book is, if I don’t feel your book is family friendly, I won’t be comfortable promoting it on my blog.
Article Guidelines
- Article should be 500 – 1,000 words long.
- Images must be either original or credited and linked to the source if licensed for free use under Creative Commons.
- Include at least one image in your article. Feel free to use Zemanta to find images that are free to use.
- Keep your images moderately sized to make page-loading faster.
- Format your post for ease of reading. Break content up into easily digestible paragraphs. Use H3 headings.
- No more than two links back to your own site(s) in your article.
- No more than seven links total in your article.
- Complete your Bio information as you would like your byline to appear.
- No more than two links in your Bio.
- Please do not re-blog or re-purpose your content anywhere else until 30 days after publication here.
- If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
What I Don’t Want
- Not following article guidelines
- Content previously published in any form on any other site
- Copyrighted content
- Promotional articles for your product or service (see “Blog Tours” above)
- Low quality images
- Offensive or inappropriate language
- Defamatory content
- Links to adult sites
- NSFW links or images
How to Contribute
Submit your article through WordPress. This will give you access to WordPress’s editing features so that you can format your article and preview it before submitting it for review.
- Register for an account at kimberlycreates and fill out your Bio information as you would like it to appear in your byline.
- Contact me with your username.
- I’ll upgrade your account to a contributor so that you can submit your article.
- Log in, write and format your post, then click the “submit for review” button.
Editing
Let’s face it: I’m an editor; I’m probably going to edit your post. Please don’t take it personally. My general editorial philosophy applies to your guest blog posts as well: I edit with a light hand, I respect the author’s voice, and I won’t rewrite your article. However, I may make grammatical changes, title changes, photo changes, and other minor edits as I see fit. If your post needs more improvement than a light edit, I will return it to you with suggestions. If I feel your post simply doesn’t make a good fit on my blog, I will let you know.
Publishing and Promotion
I try to publish at least 1-2 posts per week to my blog. Depending on what I have queued up already, your post may not appear immediately. When I accept your article for publication, I will let you know when it is slated to go live.
I will promote your guest post, but you should do your own promotion as well. Post a link to the article from your own blog to let your readers know that you are guest blogging. Promote the article through social media as well. Respond to any comments that readers leave on your post.
My Blog, My Rules
I hope I never have to exercise any of these rights, and I wish I didn’t have to spell them out, but the internet being what it is, I know that I have to. So, here they are:
- If you submit content that violates any of the above guidelines, I reserve the right to revoke your contributor status.
- If you submit content that otherwise offends my tastes and/or ethics in a way that I have not already explicitly stated, I still reserve that right.
- If I decline to publish your content and you choose to behave offensively, abusively, or otherwise unprofessionally, I reserve the right to revoke your contributor status and to publicly expose your offensive, abusive, or otherwise unprofessional behavior.
Click Here to Get Started!
Or contact me if you have any questions.
