RomerReview Writer's Guidelines

The Romer Review is currently being published quarterly and each issue includes feature articles, book reviews, interviews, and literary commentary. All submissions must be sent by e-mail only. Currently, there is no payment, but writers are given a by-line and/or a tagline. Any writers who are interested in submitting to the Romer Review should visit the site periodically and check out our “Call For Writers” posting to see exactly what our needs are for the upcoming issues.

ARTICLES

Any articles submitted should be related to writing technique and the writing craft for “The Write Thing” section and introspective first person narrative/commentary for “The Muse Online” section. However, before submitting for these two sections, please log onto the website at http://www.theromerreview.com and read the previously written and posted articles for context and style. Articles must be between 500-1000 words. Please include accurate, direct quotes obtained by interviewing appropriate sources relevant to the topics and subjects of the articles as well as accurate, current statistics-- if necessary. All articles submitted must be substantive, as well as informative.

BOOK REVIEWS

In general, book reviews should be written in the present tense and should be between 400-600 words. They should give a general overview of the book without telling too much of the plot or trashing the book if it is poorly written or crafted and/or you do not enjoy it. Book reviews should not be written like a “book report,” but in an easy-to-read literary style that flows well and will be palatable to bibliophiles. Specifically, please click on the Book Review Guidelines link for more detailed information.

INTERVIEWS

If there are particular author or literary industry personnel such as editors, agents, book packagers, publishers, or distributors whom you’d like to interview, please submit their names to us for approval as well as a list of tentative questions you’d like to ask them. Once the person, company, or entity and the questions are approved, you will be given a strict deadline date for submissions. If you enjoy writing Q&A (Question & Answer) interviews but don’t have a person, company, or entity in mind, please contact us and we will assign you to interview someone. All interviews must be done in a Q&A style with a strong lead paragraph to tie the interview together in a clear, concise manner.

SUBMISSION FORMAT

• All manuscripts (MSS) must be submitted in proper manuscript style and double-spaced.
  
  
• Please number your pages consecutively in the upper right hand corner of each page.
  
  
• All MSS must have a header in the upper left hand corner of the page in the following format: your last name/any one or two words that would clearly identify your submission. (e.g. Romer/Writer’sBlock). From that header, we’d know the author of the article and that it is about Writer’s Block. Stylistically, no space is needed between words if you’re writing two.
  
  
• Please send a brief query outlining exactly what you’d like to write about and the section it is for if you have an idea, but the piece is unwritten. That will help us to help you to shape the work to the site’s specifications.
  
  
• If the piece is completed, please send it to us. All articles must be sent to the two e-mail addresses as follows: Alvin C. Romer and Nathasha Brooks-Harris.
  
  
• Please proofread your submissions and check your spelling in a dictionary before submitting them to us. Please do not rely on spell check because it does not catch all errors.
  
  
• In terms of any style questions or issues that may arise while writing anything for submission to The Romer Review, please consult The Chicago Manual of Style as that is the industry standard and is what we use on this site.
  
  
• If you need to interview an expert for direct quotes to lend credibility and professionalism to your articles, please go to www.profnet.com and sign up as a Freelance Journalist for The Romer Review. Just fill out the online application and spell out exactly what kind of expert you are looking for and what you need to find out and want to ask that person. Please, please be sure to say that the person will be directly quoted in the article with his/her name and affiliation listed as well. Also let that site know that The Romer Review is a briskly-visited site and you may want to write in the exact numbers of hits it has received thus far. In order to do that, please check the site for that exact number in order to be accurate. This is a great resource used by working and freelance journalists all over the world.
  
  
• Please double-check all quotes, facts, figures and statistics for accuracy before submitting your articles to The Romer Review.
  
  
• Once your article is submitted, please be patient about hearing from us about its use. It may take up to six (6) months before we contact you. However, we will contact you by e-mail to let you know its status and when it will be run.
  
  
• Please include a working e-mail address so that we may contact you.
  
  
• Please submit any work as an MS Word attachment as opposed to cutting and pasting it into the body of an e-mail.
  
  
• Please save your work as an RTF document (Rich Text Format) in order to preserve any formatting in your manuscript. However, do not overdo formatting. Please use it sparingly and only if it is absolutely necessary and stylistically correct ( e.g. book titles are underlined, short story titles are placed in quotation marks).
  
  
• Please scan all submissions for viruses before uploading them to The Romer Review.
  
  
• Photos to accompany articles, or interviews should be submitted in a JPG, GIF or TIFF format. All photos should be color. If you do not have an electronic photograph to send, please send a color slide or good quality photograph by scanning it in and sending it in to The Romer Review. If there is a picture of you via your website, please indicate thereof. If you have a color slide or print, take it to your neighborhood chain drugstore or photograph and request it to be put onto a CD. Once the image is on CD, please upload it to TRR.

RIGHTS

Please do not send anything that has been published in another publication (print or online) for which you have sold your rights. We will have first electronic rights/exclusive electronic rights for the first six months for original articles used on The Romer Review website. We also request archival rights for all published materials in perpetuity for the lifetime of the site. However, authors of such materials may request in writing that their articles be removed from The Romer Review archives.

THE ROMER REVIEW (TRR) DISCLAIMER

The author retains the copyright to his/her work. TRR will only retain the right to all works as stated above for the specified period. After such time, those rights revert to the authors. Any writing published by The Romer Review website may not be reproduced in print or electronically in whole or in part without the expressed written consent from the moderator/owner of this site. Opinions expressed by the writers do not necessarily reflect those of The Romer Review. TRR reserves the right to edit and revise any work published on the site.