Thank you for your interest in writing for VERTIKAL LIFE. All articles should reflect the Vision and the Mission of VERTIKAL LIFE.
VERTIKAL LIFE is a Global Movement of Positive Energy; our Mission is to “Uplift, Educate, and Inspire Change, our Local Neighborhood for the betterment of our Global Community.” Our focus is to introduce creative and innovated individuals who are trendsetter through articles with a strong emphasis on photojournalism as well. We want our readers to feel inspired and motivated, and our articles must truly generate a truly cosmopolitan, non-gender specific, culturally and ethnically diverse feel to our readers.
All correspondence should be sent by way of email to submissions@vertikallifemagazine.com if you plan to query us with a story proposal, please include two samples of your journalistic writing. For articles submitted on spec, manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and no more than 1,000 words in length. E-mail queries must be fully developed and must include two samples of your journalistic writing. It usually takes four to six weeks for us to respond to your query or manuscript. We do not accept queries made over the phone.
PREFERRED FORMATTING
12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. At the top of the first page, include the following:
• article title
• author’s name
• address and daytime phone number
• e-mail address and/or fax number
• date
• approximate word count
Current-events articles and articles with appropriate photos or artwork get top priority in our processing procedure.
PHOTOGRAPHY SUBMISSIONS
VERTIKAL LIFE believes that each story is enhanced by photos of its subjects and characters, which help draw in the readers. Articles submitted with appropriate pictures (or for which pictures are available) receive the highest priority. We will be happy to accept photos for articles as either digital files or hard-copy originals and have prepared these guidelines to help you provide us with images of the best quality.
DIGITAL IMAGES
• Images can be sent via email (one or two at a time) or mailed to submissions@vertikallifemagazine.com
• Digital photos need to be uncompressed, high-resolution PNG files, JPEG files (.jpg) or TIFF (.tiff) files.
• The minimum file size that will be accepted is 600 x 900 pixels (two inches by three inches, at a resolution of 300 dpi [dots per inch]). We prefer images of 2240 x 1680 pixels or higher.
• Please note that images that look great on a web page won’t always work in print. For example, a 360 x 504-pixel image that appears to be 5 x 7 inches at the web resolution of 72 dpi will shrink to 1 x 1.5 inches at the print resolution of 300 dpi.
RESOURCES/SOURCES
• Specific club affiliation, except in the How I’m Doing It department.
• Although we expect you to do your own fact checking and get approvals from your quoted sources, we like to have their contact info just in case major changes occur and we need a new quote, clarification on a certain point, to get a second round of approval, etc. If they don’t have email, note that and provide a fax number instead.
• Please supply (at the bottom of your finished article) a list of all your significant references (quoted individuals as well as referenced books, Web sites, etc.), along with contact info and/or bibliographic info as appropriate. The more specific you can be the better. For example, when citing a study, provide as a backup the exact URL where you found it.
• If you quote a book or magazine, we need the complete title, author, publisher, and year and page number info (although we won’t actually print all that as part of the reference, it’s good to have). If you quote a person, we need name, title, organization or company, phone, email, address, etc. The more thorough and meticulous you can be about all this, the better. Seems like a minor detail, but it takes ages to track down if we have to do it later.
DEADLINES
We take them seriously. We are working on very tight editorial turnarounds, and if you are late getting us your copy, our job very quickly becomes a real problem. Deadline for submissions is between the 15th and 20th of every month. We will respond in 72-hours regarding if your submission has been accepted.
CHANGES
Depending on how things look, we may do one or two rounds of changes with you (meaning we may ask you to make changes or fill in holes and resubmit) and/or we may do additional copy changes on this end. If we’ve asked you to make substantive changes and don’t see them adequately handled in your rewrite (and particularly if we don’t have time to send the piece back to you again) we may “have at.” Whenever possible, we strive to retain your original structure, content, and tone. We do, however, reserve the right to make sweeping changes if we see them as necessary. And sometimes we do. Please don’t make changes personally. We frequently add and delete whole sidebars, chunks, subheads, blurbs, captions, etc. We may rework quotes. We may cut or add copy. In other words, we may edit.
REVIEW
You will generally have an opportunity to review an article at least once (and occasionally twice) before it goes to print. During this review, we ask that you do your final round of fact checking, confirm quotes (particularly tweaked quotes
), triple-check name and company spellings, book titles, Web addresses, etc. We also want to make sure you are happy with the piece overall. If you aren’t, please let us know so we can work it out.
BYLINES AND BIOS
All feature articles get bylined. Some (but not all) departments get bylined, too. It just depends on room, content, etc. If you feel strongly about being bylined (or not being bylined) for a particular piece, particularly one that has been heavily edited, please let us know.
LAST THOUGHTS
When in doubt about anything, ask. Always, always feel free to call or email with questions or if we can be of help in any way. Okay. That is about it. Thanks for taking the time to read this. We’re delighted to be working with you. Happy writing!
EMAIL: Submissions@vertikallifemagazine.com
PHONE: 1.202.642.9377
