Paid articles

The long version

So you’re interested in writing? Great! We’d love to have you. Browse through the site to get a feel for topics and writing styles, or see the “About” page for topic ideas. Then continue reading here for submission details.

Before writing and submitting anything to DB Skeptic, please make sure you understand the following conditions. Lawyer talk is kept to a minimum, but for our protection and yours we need to make these points clear.

Payment

Authors are paid $20 USD for each article published. Your article must be approved in order to be published (see below). Payment method will vary based on the requirements of the author, and will be determined after the article is published. Supported payment methods include PayPal and money orders. PayPal is strongly preferred. Payment is sent after your article is published on the DB Skeptic website.

The Legal Stuff

Whatever you send to us can still be used by you. Legally, we’re purchasing “worldwide exclusive rights”, which means that we get to publish your writing before anyone else. It also means we are allowed to resell your work, display it in other forms, and to post your article indefinitely on the Digital Bits Skeptic website. However, with this strict-sounding provision, we support a open, information-sharing society: you are free to do anything you want with your article after we’ve posted it. This allows you to resell your work, publish it somewhere else, post it anywhere you want, or give it away. After publication on DBS, the article is yours to do with as you wish, including profiting from it in other forums. These terms  supercede the DBS legal policy, but only apply to the original article’s author.

Whatever you submit to us can’t already be available somewhere else on the Internet. Pre-publication searches will be performed to ensure compliance. Your article can’t already exist on the Internet, including in a forum or a blog post. If you’ve already written an article, say for a class, group or presentation, that’s fine. But if it can already be found anywhere on the Internet, we can’t use it.

For reasons of archiving, taxes and legal protection, the email address and conversations you use to communicate with us will be saved. Your email address will only be used when contacting you about your article – no other reason. If you’re uncomfortable with this aspect, remember that many free and anonymous email accounts are available from many providers.

Your article may be edited for content, grammar, spelling, ease of reading and related issues.

Article Submission Instructions

BEFORE WRITING – Contact DB Skeptic with a proposal for your idea. Nothing fancy, just let us know what it is you’d like to write about, and the basic structure of your article. If it’s something we’re interested in we’ll let you know. If it’s something we’re not interested in, we’ll let you know that too. This is your chance to make a good first impression. If this email has bad spelling and grammar, that’s a good indicator of what your final article will be like. And this editor, contrary to what the name implies, does not like to edit. Take the time to email quality work, showing off your writing skill, or you increase your chance of rejection.

CONTENT - Spend a few minutes looking around this site to get a feel for the style and flavor of articles we want. No profanity. While DBS doesn’t always deal with family-friendly topics, the words you use must be. The writing should be written for the layman; if you use technical terms or complex ideas, take the time to explain them so a general audience can understand. Also know that what you write will be recorded for the podcast, so try to keep a conversational (and less academic) tone.

SUBMISSION - Assuming we’ve approved your article idea (see above), start writing. When your article is complete, email it to DB Skeptic. If there are pictures, mark where each picture should be in the article (like “PICTURE ABC.JPG GOES HERE“), and attach the pictures to the email. As for length, make the article as long as it needs to be, with a minimum of 500 words. Others can run into thousands of words. This is the Internet, not a newspaper, so say as much as you want and don’t worry about a maximum length.

You will get a response to indicate we’ve received your submission. If you don’t hear anything back within a week, we may have lost your submission in our spam filters. Contact us (via plain text email) and explain, and we’ll straighten things out.

Waiting time for your article to be posted depends on the complexity of what you’ve written, any required editing changes, other articles in the publication queue, and the personal life of the DBS editors. Articles are published approximately once per week. You can see where your article is on the queue (see the “Upcoming” list on the right-side menu) and estimate the publication date from there. To coordinate payment, you will be notified by email when your article is published. Or watch for your article by subscribing to new article email notifications.