All published work remains copyrighted with the author. Material will be archived on the website for at least two years.

Submissions

Beside the Point has two deadlines per year: December 15 and April 15. We request an electronic copy with a cover letter.

The Cover Letter

The cover letter should be in the body of the email.  Keep it brief and include the following:

a) a two- or three-sentence biographical statement;

b) your full mailing address, e-mail address and phone number (strictly for contact reasons, your personal information will not be publicized);

c) the title(s) of the piece(s) you are submitting;

d) the genre of the piece(s) you are submitting (poetry, fiction, drama or non-fiction).

The Manuscript

Written work: Please attach your file as a .doc or .RTF document (Word format is preferred).  Do NOT paste into the body of the email, do NOT attach a pdf. Standard manuscript formatting guidelines apply for fiction and nonfiction submissions (double spaced, 12 point Times Roman or Courier font, 1" margins).

Please limit your submissions to maximum of six poems (as one electronic file) OR one story OR one nonfiction OR one dramatic entry. Writers may submit in more than one genre per issue; do NOT submit more than one genre in one email. The maximum length for fiction or drama is 5000 words and 3000 words for nonfiction, but we prefer pieces in the 3000 range for fiction and 2500 for nonfiction. We have no specific line limits for poetry, but please keep your submissions to a reasonable length, we do not publish epics. We also accept visual art pieces, including short comics or pieces of visual narrative.

Artwork

Should you wish to include artwork in your submission package, or send us artwork independently, please feel free to do so.  We accept both artwork and photography. Images MUST be sent in either .jpg, .gif, or .pdf format and should be no larger than 1 MB in size. As with written works, the artist retains copyright status over their artwork but agrees to allow Beside the Point to use their art in any way it sees fit, including but not limited to editing of said artwork for production or promotional purposes.

Please Note:

Beside the Point publishes new fiction and poetry only and does not accept previously published (or posted) material. Nor do we accept re-submissions of previously rejected manuscripts. We would prefer that returning authors submit new material as opposed to trying again with an old (or edited) manuscript.  We prefer no simultaneous submissions, though realize that with our rather long wait-time this may not be reasonable.

Successful submissions will be notified at the end of our editorial board's review period (usually 1 to 2 months after the expiration of the latest submission deadline).

Send electronic copies to: editor@besidethepoint.net .

Good Luck!