How to contribute/ fiction V/FT

[Drashner1]

1. Just wanted to update the "how to contribute" pages (not sure if anyone new even reads this anymore?)

Fiction submissions
https://www.orionsarm.com/page/552

mostly I can just changed "Voices:Future Tense" to "Orions arm" or 'fiction submissions' throughout this- but also added a few sentences

2. Secondly, i'm thinking it would be helpful to add the publishing date + author of OA fiction at the top/beginning of the stories (so it's a little easier for anyone to know if they -might- have outdated canon or something, and make sure they all have a link back to stories by author + voices future tense (added at the end).
I know a lot of the stories say they were added into the content management system in 2008 but i'm guessing that some might have been written earlier, like the stories by Anders Sandberg. I caart n just say 'added in 2008'

This is fine, I think. We would want to be consistent with this across all the stories however. Are you comfortable going back into all the current stories and adding pub date and author to the top of each of them or would you like some help?

As befits our participation in the Orion’s Arm project, The Orion's Arm Universe Project encourages non-traditional forms of storytelling. Virtually any format, including (but not limited to) comics/manga, animations, hypertext, poetry, or music will be considered. Please bear in mind that technical dazzle is fun… but story is essential.

Suggest getting rid of 'As befits are ...' And just start this sentence with 'The Orion's Arm Universe Project encourages...'

GENERAL POLICIES:

All submissions, regardless of genre, are subject to the following editorial policies:

Format: Submissions will be accepted via the OA Forum, specifically through the Creative Writing or Voices: Future Tense sub-forum, or email; they should be sent to OAoperations@gmail.com with “Fiction Submissions” in the header, and with the article itself as an attachment in DOC or RTF format. In the event that we publish another book, submissions should include title, author’s full name, address, contact information, and word count at the top of the story. Avoid the use of unusual fonts. Please include a brief bio and credits, if any, in the body of your email. Queries are welcome. Most writers find it helpful to brainstorm and test out ideas in the forums or on Discord before submitting any story drafts. 

Suggest tweaking the first sentence as follows:

'...sub-forum or via email. Email submissions should be sent to OAoperations@gmail.com...'

Though we welcome discussion of any rough drafts in the forum, comic, manga, and animation submissions should be complete and web-ready upon final submission. Where applicable, such submissions should NOT rely upon browser-specific tags or plugins; Fiction in OAUP V/FT is meant to be read on a variety of browsers, including current versions of Chrome and Internet Explorer, older versions of those browsers, Mozilla, Opera, Safari and others.

This bit is a little confusing. As written it sounds as if we don't care if written content is not complete and web ready upon final submission. And that we don't welcome discussion of rough versions of comics, manga, and animation but only want to see the final, web ready versions.

Fiction Reviews: (So few people do this anymore do we even need this section?)
We're always looking for reviews of fictional works and media science fiction which might be of interest to the OA audience, as well as articles on the sciences and technologies which underpin the Orion’s Arm project. These articles will ideally be from 500-1000 words.

Let's get rid of it.

Copyright and renumeration: 
Articles published by Orions Arm Universe Project are published by permission of the authors. For original submissions, we require exclusive electronic rights, meaning the same article cannot be published elsewhere online or in electronic form. (still relevant?) The only exception will be if the Board of Directors of the Orion’s Arm Universe Project considers a story to be of such merit that they invite the author to have it featured on the main Orion’s Arm website, on the Creative Writing pages; V/FT articles will always be allowed to be published in such a case. Articles which have appeared in other venues will be considered for OAUP, or can be adapted to fit OA canon V/FT, in accordance with the rights of the author and all prior publishers. Any article published as OA fiction V/FT will be removed upon request of the owner, at which time electronic rights revert to the owner.

I think this part might need some massaging in the sense that we haven't given thought to this sort of thing in a long time and should perhaps revisit it on general principles.

Personally, I'm not sure why we need exclusive electronic rights. Plenty of short stories and novellas get published in multiple places and these days the main thing we care about is attribution.

The whole thing about the Board approving stories appearing on the main site and V:FT articles isn't relevant anymore, particularly in the age of snapshots. I'd say we can dump all that overboard. The bit about articles that have appeared in other venues I'm not sure about. That seems more related to the EG than fiction and we may have something about that kind of thing in the main How to Contribute pages. We can certainly check.

The bit about removing any article should be removed -at least for 'articles' - our policy for the EG is that we will consider requests for removal but are not in any way required to do so. This is laid out in the main Copyright and Submission pages.

My 2c worth,

Todd