WRITERS’ BLOKKE PUBLICATION

Writers’ Blokke Submission Guidelines — October 2021 Update

Things will be that little bit stricter from now on

When I started Writers’ Blokke (WB) back in September 2019, it was mainly for writers who couldn’t get into bigger publications but still wanted a publication to house their articles. It was so that writers would not have to self-publish, especially new writers with little to no following.

The rules were simple. You can submit anything you want, as long as it falls within Medium’s guidelines and that of WB’s as well.

For the first few months, the publication had very little traction. Very few people wanted to be part of it, very few writers submitted anything, and followers were well below a hundred.

However, fast forward 2 years later and WB is now just a thousand followers to hit 10k! Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for it to get this big — but it did.

Last year, I was asked by a few writers/members if there will be a directional change for WB due to its increase in size and submissions, and although at that time, I mentioned it will be status quo, I feel that perhaps the time for a little bit of change is needed right now.

Editors

When WB first started out, anyone who wanted to join would automatically be added as an editor with strict instructions that you only edit and publish your own work and not that of others.

Due to some editors not following those instructions, I had to stop adding editors and only allowed new writers to be added.

Right now, the people who are editors have been playing by the rules and I want to change those rules a little. If you are an editor on WB, you are now given permission to edit and publish submissions by other writers (except fellow editors) whenever you can. Below are the names of the current editors of WB.

Agnes Laurens, Edison Besty, Chris Tavner, Don Simkovich, MA, EP McKnight, MEd, Erica Martin, Gill McCulloch, Jeremy Divinity, Kylie Craft, LiWithoutE 🍫, Lorie Kleiner Eckert, Louise Foerster, Matthew Laint, M. R. Clark, Melih Gungor, Rita Duponty, Rebecca Kojetin, Shafiqah Othman

Yes, this is a call for assistance from me. While I will still be doing the bulk of editing and publishing, current editors are given permission to do the same as well from now on.

As Medium only allows up to 30 editors per publication, I may be adding more editors in the future as I have a few names in mind — writers who have been following the guidelines and have continously supported me and WB. When the time comes, I will reach out to you.

Guidelines

And speaking of guidelines, all of it have been made very clear in the post below which I would think everyone who wants to write here have read through and understand.

However, over the last couple of months, I’ve been seeing submissions that have clearly not followed the guidelines of either WB or Medium and it can get very frustrating.

So here, I would like to make clear again some guidelines which I would like to ask all writers (and editors included) to please adhere to if you want to publish with WB.

Plagiarism

Medium has made it very clear that it doesn’t tolerate plagiarism. The majority (if not all) of publications are also against it — as is WB. However, there have been PLENTY of submissions which were a carbon copy, word for word, of articles/blog posts that were published elsewhere AND by other authors/writers.

If you’re submitting/publishing an article on Medium, an article which you may have published elsewhere, you will just need to put a disclaimer at the bottom of your article to point it out — that is allowed. However, the writer/author has to be you.

You can’t copy and paste the work of another writer/author word for word and expect it to be fine just because you put a disclaimer that it was originally published somewhere else.

For example, I wrote and published an article on my own website. You then copy and paste word for word and submit it to WB with a disclaimer that the article was originally published on another website. That’s wrong. You’re not the original author and you do not have permission to do that. It’s like taking credit for something you did not do.

This has been made very clear and unfortunately, this really can’t be tolerated any longer.

Seeing as to how WB receives between 40 to 70 submissions on a daily basis, there are bound to be a few of these plagiarized articles that will be overlooked. It’s happened many times but some of my other editor friends on the platform who edits for other publications have always informed me of them if they find any.

Should you be found to submit a plagiarised article, not only will the article be removed from the publication but you will also be removed from being a writer. There will no longer be any warnings as writers should know better than to do that. This can be considered as a final warning.

Credit

Speaking of plagiarism, another thing that many writers have done is submitting articles with images that have not been properly credited to its rightful owner — another rule by Medium.

Please ensure that all images used in your articles are credited to its rightful owner, even if the owner is you.

Moving forward, any submissions without properly credited images will be rejected until it is rectified.

It may seem like a small detail but I can honestly tell you, over 20% of WB submissions have this issue. So please, ensure you credit the rightful owner of any images that you use as to avoid copyright issues.

Etiquette

I’ve said this before and I will say it again, please be nice and please play nice. Your articles should also be nice and although I understand that sometimes you need to rant, submitting articles where you complain about a fellow writer or a publication isn’t really nice.

You can do so but at WB, we probably won’t accept it.

While I’ve given permission to existing editors to edit and publish submissions, they are not obligated to do so, thus the bulk of it will still be done by me. And due to the number of submissions that WB gets daily and my own personal and work commitments, it may take a while before your submission is accepted/rejected.

Although I will still try to do so within 48 hours, sometimes it may take longer. Therefore, it is much appreciated if you would not comment on some of my other articles which has no relation to WB and ask for your submissions to be accepted and published ASAP. Not only is it rude, it just puts a bad light on you as a writer.

Please, have patience.

Affiliate links

Most of you have already done this — as have I — where you insert a link at the end of your article, asking non-members to join as a member. This is known as an affiliate link and Medium has clear guidelines on that.

Should you have this link in your articles, you need to specify what it is and how it will affect the person who uses it. Most of the time, affiliate links mean the author will get a portion of what the user has to fork out. This has to be clearly mentioned when you put your affiliated links.

It is not enough to just give a link for non-members and tell them to sign up using the link without mentioning that you will get a portion of the monthly fee that they pay — at no extra cost to them aside from the standard rate of $5 (per month) / $50 (per year).

Again, if this is not properly followed, the submission will be rejected.

Topics

And finally, topics. While WB accepts mostly any topic as long as it's within Medium’s guidelines, there are some topics that are just a bit too serious or sensitive.

Therefore, again, I would like to stress the topics below will most probably not get accepted on WB:

• Religion
• Sex
• Politics

On special occasions where the context of these topics are written in a manner where it is educational WITHOUT being insensitive to others, then it may be accepted but for most parts, they won’t.

So, before you submit to WB, make sure the topics you write about are not any of the above.

As many of you already know, publications are slowly dying on the platform. We’ve seen big ones like P.S.ILY, The Post Grad, and The Ascent (to name a few) that are no longer around because funding was cut or the editorial team just couldn’t handle them any longer.

Honestly, there are times where I feel like I may not be able to keep up with managing and maintaining WB because of how big is has gotten. I’ve mentioned before how at times, it takes up a couple of hours of my time to keep this pub going.

But because I still want to keep going the reason it was created in the first place — which is to help writers out — I still try my best.

And as I’ve written before in the article above, please help me to help you.

This community has grown to something that I’d never imagined it could and I want to still try my best to keep it going for all of you because I know just how much it has helped and is still helping some of you on the platform.

So please, help me to help you.

If you like this article and want to read more such articles without any restrictions, why not consider becoming a Medium member (if you are not one already) by using my referral link below?

I get a portion from your monthly fee at no extra cost to you and it will go a long way in supporting me as a writer.

You can also buy me a ‘coffee’ if you’d like.