Submission Guidelines
Thank you for your interest in Renaissance Magazine. We accept brief queries and full submissions of nonfiction articles exploring renaissance and medieval life and culture, how-to topics, travel, and the renfaire experience.
Types of Content We Publish • Feature articles: We focus on renaissance and medieval culture and lifestyle. Time frame is roughly 600 CE to 1603 CE (the end of the Tudor period), as well as today’s renfaires and organizations such as the SCA. We do not publish articles of a purely historical nature (i.e., biographies, battles). Please do not query us with story ideas about Henry VIII and/or Anne Boleyn. No footnotes; we are a general-interest magazine. Features are no more than 1,600 words maximum length.
• “From the Shoppe,” “Castle Lore,” “Living History,” “Renaissance Rambler,” and other recurring columns are 600 words maximum. We encourage how-to articles of all types. One or two good quality photos are important (see note on images, below).
• Reviews: Book, DVD, and CD reviews are 400 words maximum. We accept unsolicited reviews, but we must give priority to material sent by the editor to a reviewer. If you send an unsolicited review, you MUST include a print-quality 300dpi scan of the book or CD cover. Authors and publishers of Renaissance and medieval-related books, games, software and music CD's may submit a copy of their product to the address below.
• A note to photographers and artists: we rarely publish freelance photos or artwork. We do not commission photos or send photographers to renfaires. The only exception is the “Ren Faire Friends” feature, where we publish photos of people who attend renfaires (not the paid performers). We welcome submissions for “Ren Faire Friends.” We do not offer payment for “Ren Faire Friends” or “The Rennie Home.”
How to Submit Please submit your query or article as a word doc or plain text attachment to editor Tom Hauck at EditorTom@RenaissanceMagazine.com. Your article must be original and pass Copyscape. Do not waste your time with elaborate formatting, because the first thing we do when opening a submission is to clear all formatting and put your article into a plain text format. For our complete style sheet, please email Tom Hauck, editor.
Editing We reserve the right to proof and copyedit all editorial copy to conform to the Renaissance Magazine style. If questions of content arise we will contact you.
“Kill fees” We do not commission articles or pay a kill fee. We cannot guarantee publication because we make changes to the magazine up until the time it is printed. We reserve the right to reject previously accepted work at any time and for any reason.
Rights We take first North American rights when we publish an article. That means that your article must not have been previously published elsewhere. We also retain the right to include your article in an archival collection or online format that is presented under the name of Renaissance Magazine. If you wish, we will include your URL online. Once we publish your article in the magazine, you have the right to publish it elsewhere.
Poetry and Fiction We publish poems regularly. Poems should be short—fifteen or twenty lines. We publish fiction very rarely and only if we receive an exceptionally well-written story of 800 words or less. We do not offer payment. Contributors of poetry and fiction receive a complimentary copy of the magazine.
Images Image ideas are welcome and we pay $7.50 for each image that you supply that we publish. Images that we purchase from you must be otherwise unavailable. We cannot pay you for commonly accessible images even if you send them. Images MUST be print-quality 300 dpi or we will not use them. If you are unsure of the resolution of your image, ask. Typically, a color image at 300dpi which measures 3 inches square will be about 3MB in size. If your file is something like 50kb, it is not usable. And please do not send us gigantic 20MB files.
Payment For editorial copy, payment of $.10 per published word is made within three weeks after publication. For author-supplied high-resolution images (photograph or illustration), Renaissance Magazine pays $7.50 per published image. Special rates apply to artwork and graphic items. These rates do not apply to poetry submissions. Poems are not subject to editing and are published without compensation to the author. In addition to authors' fees, a contributor copy will be provided to each contributor.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any additional questions or comments.
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