For those of you who are new to the grind, don’t skim past this. Take your medicine.

If you are an experienced submitter of written work, our sincerest apologies. This passage may sound pedantic, though you might still find something useful.

The following are general guidelines for when you are submitting a piece of work to any publisher, let alone Exploitation Media. We here at EM may not reject your piece for breaking one or even three of these general rules. We are an indie publishing house looking for hidden gold. However, many literary agents, lit mags, and traditionally published anthologies will drop your submission like the forbidden unclean for murdering even a single one of these sacred cows. They often have thousands of submissions to read and need a rubric to make that task feasible. Publishers have their reasons for enforcing strict standards, and it communicates to them that you are ready to play ball when you demonstrate your ability to follow them.

Here are the basics:

1. Shunn Format. Unless otherwise stated by the publisher, all submissions to publications should generally adhere to the Shunn Format. Learn this format and generally work with it when drafting for submission. Again, unless otherwise specified, this is the format most editors and agents want to see. Go to this link. Learn it.
   Some bullet points: 

   • 12 pt Font, Times New Roman, double spaced

   • 1 inch margins

   • No tabs to start paragraphs. Instead use the paragraph settings to set the first line indent to 0.5”

   • Name and contact info on the top left of the first page, word count on the top right of the first page.

   • Title of the story should be centered horizontally and roughly a third of the way down the first page. The following line is your author byline (i.e. the name you publish under) also centered.

   • At least one blank line between the byline and the first line of the piece.

   • (Last Name) / (Title) / (Page Number) in the top right-hand header of every page following the first.

2. Your submission should be finished. This means polished. Relatively free of typos and grammatical errors. Though Exploitation Media will not reject an otherwise good story over a few small typos or missing commas, many other publishers, especially the ones paying a professional rate, will. We understand errors occur, however, if an editor comes across five mistakes in the first couple of paragraphs, they may lose faith that the story is competently written and quit before they have a chance to experience your work.

3. Your submission should be your own. No AI or plagiarism.

4. Always read the submission guidelines for any publication you want to be a part of. Follow those guidelines. Web, audio, and other formats have other systems. Sometimes they want you to lose the contact info or the header. Perhaps they want you to start your paragraphs with tabs. Again, whatever it is, do that. Make a copy of the piece and format it as they wish. This signals you understand how to work collaboratively.

5. Most editors perfer Word documents (.docx). Exploitation Media is willing to work with a google doc, though it is not ideal. Never send a PDF as a submission to a publisher.

Again, we would like to stress that though we won’t necessarily reject your work on the grounds of one of these guidelines alone (plagiarism/AI stories being the exception), you would be doing yourself and every publisher you submit to a favor by familiarizing yourself enough with them for your work to at least be acceptable at a glance.