MIDWEST PARENTING PUBLICATIONS EDITORIAL PROCESS
Because we want you, the writer, to understand the process of our editorial structure we would like to give you some insight on how our process works. First, your article is sent to our Executive Editor. Your article is then organized by article type and for the specific month it will be considered for. Next, our staff will sit down with the list of editorial that has come in for a particular month and determine what articles are to run and what will be assigned. Once these decisions have been made you will be notified that we would like to use your piece. The final process is that the article will be edited by our Copy Editor and then placed on our Web sites (Indyschild.com and CincinnatiParent.com) and in both publications, if applicable. Finally, you will be mailed payment for your article.

EDITORIAL FOCUS
Articles submitted should address current parenting issues with an Indianapolis and/or Cincinnati tie-in whenever possible as we like to place a strong emphasis on how and where to find family-oriented events, as well as goods and services for children, in Central Indiana and the Cincinnati area.

We are similarly interested in well-researched, non-fiction articles on surviving the newborn, preschool, school age and adolescent years. Our readers want practical information on places to go and things to do in the Central Indiana and Cincinnati areas. They enjoy humorous articles about the trials and tribulations of parenthood as well as how-to articles (i.e., organizing a child's room, keeping your sanity while shopping with toddlers, ideas for holidays and birthdays, etc.) Articles on making a working parent's life easier are of great interest as are articles written by fathers. We prefer a warm, conversational style of writing, however, we also prefer a well-balanced range of in-depth articles on challenging and hot topics.

CONTENT REQUIREMENTS
Most Indy's Child Parenting Magazine articles are purchased from freelance writers. Why? Because we feel this gives us a wide range of choices and writing styles. In a typical issue, readers will find approximately 15 regular columns. We also run two to three feature articles at 1500-2000 words per article and four or five shorter articles at about 800-1000 words per article.

GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, SOURCES AND INTERVIEWS
Because we take pride in the editorial that we publish for our readers, we will only continue using articles from writers who follow rules of grammar and publishing. Excessive grammar and punctuation errors will result in a disqualification from future publishing of articles as this is incredibly time consuming on our copy editor.

Fancy word-processing layouts only bog down our layout department, as your formatting has to be removed before we can place your work into our page formats so we ask that you use simple Microsoft Word documents in Times New Roman, only. Also, when you type for publication, there should only be ONE SPACE after the period at the end of a sentence. Although that violates the rule you learned in typing class, when doing page layouts via computer, that extra space causes problems and each one has to be removed. Also, you should understand the differences between dashes, en dashes and em dashes as well as to put all quotation marks on the OUTSIDE of periods and commas. Also, we omit the last comma in a string of characters. (EG: Shoes, socks, shirt and shorts rather than a comma before the and). We know this seems trivial but this saves us a great deal of time. If we get articles with these errors, our copy editor will notify you of your errors for correction in future issues.

We reserve the right to edit your work if it does not comply with company policies or in the event of grammatical errors and if excessive changes need to be made we may refrain from using the article or your work at a future date.

Your article will be scrupulously fact-checked before being published in our publications. Therefore, we require that your research be as current as possible. You should source actual published studies, not books in which the studies are quoted. The latter is called a secondary reference, and is not reliable. Your research should also be organized and readily available, so you will be able to respond to fact-checkers questions quickly and accurately. You will also be responsible for answering questions readers might have about your work so accuracy is imperative.

When contacting sources, you may state that "I'm writing an article for Midwest Parenting Publications" if the article has been specifically assigned, in writing, by the Executive Editor. You may not represent yourself as anything other than an independent contractor on assignment for Midwest Parenting Publications.

If you or a close relative or friend are related in any way (e.g., board memberships, employment, volunteer work) to a story you wish to work on, this relationship must be disclosed prior to accepting the assignment.

Under no circumstances are writers allowed to accept gifts, gratuities, free tickets or other special privileges in connection with an assignment for Indy’s Child Parenting Magazine without permission first.

AUDIENCE APPEAL
If assigned, your subject must have local scope or implications. For example, a story about how you handled a sibling rivalry in your family (aside from being first-person) might not be as appealing as a story with interviews of local therapists and parenting techniques to give readers a more in-depth answer to this issue. Reporting must be authoritative and original, based on interviews that you conduct yourself. Health articles, for example, should quote medical experts rather than simply relating a personal tale. Choose a topic that you care about deeply. If your story does not make you happy or sad, angry or elated, excited or curious, chances are that our readers won’t care that much either.

Because we must retain a high level of editorial professionalism we do not accept first person articles unless it is for humorous purposes or experiential. We also do not accept fiction, nostalgia, poetry, cartoons, history, quizzes, puzzles, quotes, trivia, etc.

EXCLUSIVITY
We will not run articles that have run in other local competing publications and for feature articles that we are purchasing first time rights for these articles may not be submitted to other local competitors.

DEADLINES
Articles must be submitted by the first business day of the month TWO MONTHS prior to the publication month unless otherwise specified. If you are assigned an article as a feature (first-rights piece) and we do not receive your article by the specified deadline your article will not be considered. This same deadline applies for reprints and columns. Writers MUST adhere to our guidelines in order to keep our process as structured as possible. We apologize if this creates any inconveniences but organization is our number one focus.

CUT OFF DATES
Deadline date: Issue date
The deadline date is always the 1st business day of the month two months prior. If this falls on a holiday it is the next business day following.
November 16 for January 2010
December 1 for February 2010
January 4 for March 2010
February 1 for April 2010
March 1 for May 2010
April 1 for June 2010
May 3 for July 2010
June 1 for August 2010
July 1 for September 2010
August 2 for October 2010
September 1 for November 2010
October 1 for December 2010

We welcome your queries but only full manuscripts will be considered. See query guidelines below.

You will not receive a reply once you submit your editorial. We receive over 300 requests per day and it is absolutely impossible to reply to all individuals. If your editorial will be used our Executive Editor will contact you. Please do not follow up on editorial pieces sent. Because of the sheer volume, we cannot address every submission. You are contacted only when your piece is considered or assigned.

FEES & PAYMENT
Midwest Parenting Publications pays .10 cents per word for first publication rights to an article, .12 cents per word if we run the article in both Indy's Child and Cincinnati Parent and .15 cents per word if each story requires different quotes for each city/market. Feature articles will be anywhere from 1500 to 2000 words, depending on what you are assigned.

Reprint articles are paid anywhere from $40 for articles in one publication or $75 for two (Indy's Child & Cincinnati Parent) unless otherwise agreed upon. These fees include the rights to use your article for both Indy's Child Parenting Magazine and Cincinnati Parent Magazine in Cincinnati, OH, as well as for use on both IndysChild.com and CincinnatiParent.com once published.

Payment will be made within 30 days of publication.

SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS
You must submit your editorial manuscript to editor@indyschild.com and include the following in or attached to the e-mail.

1. Author byline for the end of the editorial piece. Who are you? What do you do for a living? Children, spouse, pets, hobbies, etc.?
2. Photos for the article if they apply. While most publications require photos to be submitted with the article we do not require them but do encourage them. Photos should be attached to the e-mail and must be 200 dpi in CMYK format as a .jpg, .tiff, .eps or .pdf
3. Photo of the author for use on our Web site. This is a must-have.
4. A Microsoft Word document of the editorial piece. Please use the font Times New Roman. Please note that we will not return any work or photos submitted. We are not responsible for unsolicited materials. Do not send any valuable or irreplaceable items. If you fail to follow these instructions this may result in loss of your submission.

SUBMITTING REPRINT LISTS
We encourage you to submit lists of reprints that you have available for use so long as they have not been used by local competitors to editor@indyschild.com. We recommend that you do so on a monthly basis TWO MONTHS PRIOR to our publication date so that we may contact you for any we are interested in using. Payment and guidelines for those we select are listed under SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS. Please use the cut-off dates listed above.

SUBMITTING QUERIES
Query letters should be four paragraphs explaining the proposal. IMPORTANT: Propose only ONE topic per query. If more than ONE query is sent your proposal cannot be sorted properly and poses a problem for our organizational methods. The query should be submitted to editor@indyschild.com and include the following:

1. Your central theme or point in no more than a few sentences. If you cannot state the theme in this way, the article surely lacks focus.
2. Your sources on all sides of the issue. Whom will you interview?
3. The story’s general trajectory. Briefly, how will you organize it?
4. A summary of your most important writing credits.
5. Include one or two writing samples.

If your query is selected your article must be original and done on a first-time rights basis only, at which point we will contact you to begin the process. Do not send queries for articles that are already completed as these articles will need to be done using local references.

COPY REQUEST
If you wish to be sent a copy of your work, you must send a 10x12 manila envelope with $2.00 in postage to: Indy's Child Parenting Magazine, C/O COPY REQUEST, 921 E. 86th St. Suite 130 Indianapolis, IN 46240.

As part of your assignment, you will provide to MPP the name, complete address and telephone number of each source contacted for or named in the article. This source list should accompany your article on the due date specified above. Final acceptance of the article cannot be made without receipt of this source list.

When applicable and at all possible, you will submit photos to accompany the article and will obtain permissions to use these images and will include photographer credit and authorizations and names of subjects in said images or photos when e-mailed for submission to editor@indyschild.com.

MPP agrees to pay you the above acceptance fee upon receipt of this article.

Upon request, you will revise the article according to suggestions and advice from MPP’s editorial staff.

If the article assigned or agreed upon is not acceptable in the sole and absolute judgment of MPP, MPP will return the article to the writer for use elsewhere and kill fees will not apply.

MPP will reimburse only those expenses documented by receipts and approved in advance by MPP’s editor.

You grant MPP the following rights to this article:

1. The right to edit, abridge, augment, title, and illustrate the article in first or subsequent publication; and 2. The exclusive right to publish and distribute the article for a period of 48 months from acceptance of the article; and 3. Nonexclusive reprint and resale rights; and 4. Promotional and publicity rights, including but not limited to the right to use your name, biography, and likeness in connection with the publication, advertising and promotion of the article; and 5. The right to reproduce and distribute the article on our own behalf in a compilation of similar articles or of other articles that originally appeared in Indy’s Child and/or Cincinnati Parent magazines.

All rights granted by this Agreement are applicable in all media, including but not limited to all electronic media, whether now known or hereafter created.

You agree that MPP will be credited as the original publisher of your article upon any further publication or reuse of the article by you should first-times rights be applicable.

You will undertake efforts in creating this article that conform to reasonable professional standards. You warrant originality and authorship of the article, that there has been no prior sale, publication or transfer of rights of the article, that exercise of the article will not defame or libel any person, or violate the right to privacy or publicity of any person. You will use all reasonable care to check facts and statements and will ensure that to the best of your knowledge the article contains nothing that is libelous or is an invasion of anyone’s privacy. You agree to keep all notes, film, tape recordings, and any other pertinent material used to prepare your article. You hereby indemnify MPP from all damages, expenses, attorney's fees and the like resulting from a breach of any of your warranties provided herein.

If MPP publishes the article, it will publish the article in an issue of Indy’s Child and/or Cincinnati Parent magazines with a masthead copyright notice in the name of MPP. Registration may give writer certain rights to additional statutory damages in the event of infringement; however, copyright registration is the responsibility of the writer.