Genius in a Bottle, Submission Inquiries

How to get the most out of your GiaB submission.

You’re here for a reason. I hope it’s because something about Genius in a Bottle (GiaB) resonated with you and that you either have something now that you’d like to see published with us, or you’d like to be added as a writer for GiaB with the plan of writing something later. Or publishing your original artwork here. We’d love to decorate our walls with your art.

Whatever your reason, you’re in the right place. As with all publications, we have our guidelines and the chances of your submission being accepted here increase to the degree that you read and thoroughly understand them.

But before you read them, please follow our publication, if you haven’t already, and request to be added as a writer for GiaB. By getting that out of the way, we can be doing our work in the background, so that when you are ready to publish, everything will go smoothly.

Requesting to become a writer for GiaB

We make the process as easy as possible for you:

1. First, and foremost, makes sure you are following GiaB. You’ll find the follow button in the margin. Also, at the bottom of this guideline, please subscribe to our free “Bottled GiaB” Newsletter. It’s so important because it’s the only way we can inform our writers of announcements and changes to Genius in a Bottle. So follow and subscribe first.
2. Email your request to me at [email protected].
3. In the subject box type in “Add Me as a Writer”
4. Please include the link to your Medium profile.
5. Include your email address.

What GiaB is hungering for

What really fires our sparkplugs are stories, articles, poetry, and artwork that are edgy, even uncomfortable to read, but that stimulate the heart, mind, and occasionally the colon.

To illustrate that, here’s a story by Starkey called Rarest Earth. It is published elsewhere, but you can look for others of his stories on GiaB. Two other stories on GiaB (my own, but what the hell!) traipse close to the farther edge of acceptability. They are Bent I and Bent II.

I want you to know, though, that we are suckers for a tender romance as well. We only ask that it is engaging to the senses, that the characters are authentic and grapple with real problems, and that the story entertains us.

We like to be scared out of our buckskin and dainties, as well. So, I guess what I’m saying is everything is on the table — everything except gratuitous sex and porno. If you’re gonna write about sex, you’d better offer something beyond grunts and squirms.

Articles can be about anything from Philosophy to Music; from bitcoin to biscuits. But if it’s the latter there’d better be lots of pictures and a gripping plot. When we finish we’d better sense something of grandma’s flour on the page and a promise of the best damned biscuits you’ll ever eat.

Check us out with your poetry. Great poetry can’t be faked. It’s authentic, molten, bubbled up from the volcano’s depths. An intimate touchstone should be connecting the poet and reader. If it’s not there we won’t take it.

With any and all of these, thrill us, surprise us, leave us shaking our heads in disbelief.

An important addendum to “what we are hungering for,” — dated 7/30/20

Some may be surprised to learn that GiaB is only two months old. It’s as though I, as the owner, along with my highly qualified and indispensable editors, have been on a small ship tossed about on the surface of a gigantic sea. While we we’ve been busy keeping our sea legs beneath us from June 5th till now, we have been admittedly relaxed in our editorial standards.

Now, in an attempt to bring our submissions from our talented writers in better alignment with GiaB’s vision for excellence we will be tightening up on our requirements for publication. We will have greater expectations going forward.

But we pledge to stay true to the writer whose submission we are not accepting.

We will always explain, either by private note or email, why the submission did not reach up to the bar. If its subject matter does not fit our needs, we’ll try to offer suggestions about where you might consider sending it. If we feel you’ve wandered away from the main point or rambled overly, we’ll tell you that, too. If we feel your grammar or syntax make your submission difficult to read, we may suggest outside sources.

Rejecting a piece is never easy for an editor. However, we at GiaB take pride in being a step or twenty above the rejection you may experience from editors representing a number of the larger publications. Perhaps because we still have memories of how their rejection feels.

Our personal standards as editors are, and will always be, to be dead-level honest with the writer, but empathic and humane; to treat the writer with the dignity he/she deserves.

What GiaB doesn’t want

Please do not insult GiaB or embarrass yourself by submitting something that has been simply thrown together.

You know what I’m talking about:

1. It has not been edited. It is first-draft material.
2. It was not written with spell-checker, Grammarly, or the like engaged and looking over your shoulder.
3. It is poorly formatted. You can’t go wrong by poring over Medium’s Curation Guidelines and additional hints they offer. If you do everything needed to qualify your piece for curation, you’ll have already mastered all you need to know to make your piece the best it can be. It still doesn’t guarantee it will be curated. It doesn’t mean it will even be picked up by a publisher. But that said, it will be the prettiest daggone corpse in the graveyard. Just kidding. Just kidding!
4. You don’t care if you subject you or GiaB to possible legal problems by using images that are not of the public domain. That is serious, and it is unnecessary. There are a handful of sites that offer free photos and artwork, among them Unsplash and Pixabay (two I frequently use). Always link the provider (i.e., Unsplash or Pixabay) under the picture, along with the artist’s name. The editor should be able to click on the link under the picture and be satisfied that it is legit!
5. Your story has been published elsewhere on Medium. We only accept original drafts.
6. You are submitting multiple posts to GiaB on the same day. We can only publish one post per person per day.
7. You are self-promoting by trolling for followers for your newsletter or you are hawking a book or a course. We reserve the right to pull such advertisements before publishing.

Parting words

I hope you are as pleased to be here as we are to host you. Before you go, please don’t forget to follow us and request to be added as a Writer (which includes artist) for Genius in a Bottle.

Also, you notice at the bottom of this page is an invitation to receive the GiaB newsletter. We would like to have all our followers subscribe to the newsletter because it is our method of getting important news out to our subscribers. Plus … it will include links to the most recent posts on GiaB. So please sign up for the newsletter, below.

When you’re out and about, tell your writer friends about us. Spread the magic.

Jay Squires, Publisher, Editor.