Writers and Photographers Guidelines

Thank you for your interest! We very much appreciate the opportunity to consider your writing for the pages of Kindred . We welcome unsolicited articles and photographs, and we encourage you to familiarise yourself with what our goals are for the articles we publish.

Kindred 's main goal is to empower parents and professionals, by inspiration and information. It is an inform-yourself journal for creative change, personal growth, social and political awareness and conscious relating. Articles that challenge and confront as well as articles that support and nourish are the sorts of pieces we are looking for. We are more interested in articles that provide not only information about issues, but within-reach solutions to those issues. We like articles that are brave, challenging and from the heart. Kindred is a place where you as a writer can take risks, speak out, and be bold.

We stand on the fine line between mainstream and alternative, inviting readers to perhaps move into new perspectives or support them to feel met in places that can often feel alone. Optimally, articles are to be backed up (when appropriate) with supportive well-documented research, information or references.

We publish articles in relation to other articles we have published on the subject, how current the topic is, if it is new to us, and if the presentation is unique in some way.

It is good to familiarise yourself with Kindred and helpful if you are a reader of Kindred or at least familiar with the topics and direction of the magazine. Hang out with the web site, the magazine and our mission statement found in the magazine "letters" section or on the web site home page.

Kindred is published quarterly – December (summer), March (autumn), June (winter) and September (spring). It has a national Australian circulation and an international subscription base. Readership is estimated at about 15,000 readers.

We have several ongoing sections in Kindred :

"Progressive parenting" focuses on how we see and relate to our children. Ideas, philosophies, spiritual inspirations and real life stories that help us to be the best parents we can be.

"Pregnancy, birth and babies" a place of inspiration and also a place to confront the growing "norm" in child birth with non-interventionalist information. We look for articles to help mothers and fathers to be armed with knowledge as they embark on this journey.

"Relationship" this is where we talk about dynamics between couples and families. We encourage articles that challenge readers to see beyond what may be their current perception so as to move closer to the "other".

"Age of Empowerment" a place for empowering our teens and the parents and professionals who are going through this time with them.

"Manhood" we are the only parenting magazine in the world that has an ongoing section especially for boys and men. Articles can relate to boys issues, fathering, men's issues. An exciting section as the men's and fathering issues are just beginning to be honestly exposed and expressed.

"Health and Wellbeing" explores new approaches to health care for the whole family. A wide range of topics and approaches is possible in this section, and we encourage articles on unconventional approaches to common childhood health questions.

"Spirit of Learning" features articles on innovative, multidimensional, child-centred approaches to education. This section focuses on how people learn and includes learning about traditional subjects as well as subjects usually thought of as outside the realm of education: responsibility, ethics, adventure, travel, intuition, spirituality.

"Thinking Global" gets readers in touch with global issues. Globalisation, community, genetically modified food, politics, global trends, consumerism, corporatisation - - these are the kinds of issues we view, but through a lens of local need and what is good for the children.

"Midwifery" a special place where midwives, doulas and anyone interested in birth support can read about ideas, methods and information. The focus is in supporting natural birth.

"Sustenance" is our food and nutrition section. Not only a great place to learn new recipe ideas, but also a place to understand the politics of food, and what makes us really thrive.

Length of article
Length is not a significant consideration. Although we recommend 8 to 10 typewritten pages, or 2,000 words, do not let length be a limitation. Say what you have to say.

Format for articles
Work must be submitted in Word format, sent as an attachment and emailed to Kali Wendorf, editor or sent by post to PO Box 971, Mullumbimby, NSW 2482. Please do not send floppy disks.
Double-space your manuscript, and leave wide side margins for possible notations. Please do not format in any way. At the top of your piece please put the following information:

•Your name
•Date submitted
•Your address
•Your email and/or phone
• The word count
• A 50 word personal bio (to use if we print your article)

Accompanying photos make your piece even more attractive to us! Photos should be high-resolution, 5" x 7" black-and-white prints or colour prints. If you email them, please send high-resolution (300 dpi) photos in jpeg or tiff format, large files. If you mail photos, please include a self addressed stamped envelope so we may return them to you.

Ensure that you are sending an article, and not a promotion. Kindred does not publish advertorials, and holds a strong clear line between content and advertising with no cross-pollinating.

Please let us know if you have already submitted elsewhere so we can make sure it will not be published simultaneously.

Format for photography
Work must be submitted in jpeg, tiff or pdf format, sent as an attachment and emailed to Kali Wendorf, editor or sent by post to PO Box 971, Mullumbimby, NSW 2482.

Please include the following information:

•Your name
•Date submitted
•Your address
•Your email and/or phone

Photos should be high-resolution, 5" x 7" black-and-white prints or colour prints. If you email them, please send high-resolution (300 dpi) photos in jpeg or tiff format, large files. If you mail photos, please include a self addressed stamped envelope so we may return them to you.

Fact checking
We fact check all the articles before publishing them, we therefore ask that your research be current. 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. Please have your research organised and readily available, so you will be able to respond to fact-checker's questions quickly and accurately.

Payment
Kindred is a reader-supported magazine with a self-imposed ceiling of 30 percent advertising as well as self-imposed advertiser criteria (advertisers must reflect the values of Kindred – no disposable nappies, no sweat shop products, no products tested on animals etc). We are dependent on subscriptions for our operating expenses. This is a unique situation in the magazine business, but we like it this way as it means the reader dictates the content rather than the advertiser. This means that our current budget does not allow for payment of writers. Currently, we rely on the generosity of contributions to keep the vision of Kindred alive. Your contribution will be a part of supporting an important movement among parents, families, public policy and media.

If your piece is published, in exchange we will give you or a friend a free one-year subscription, plus two copies of the issue that features your article. You retain all rights to the article and / or photography.

This is normal procedure for a magazine of this size. We are very grateful for your support and look forward to moving up into another type of payment strategy as we grow.

Copyright agreement
Your contribution is for the one-time use of your article for publishing in a particular edition. Articles will be used in the magazine, on our web site, for electronic subscriptions and for electronic production of CD's/DVD's once magazines are out of stock. Contribution of your article is deemed as agreement to these conditions.

Should you have any special requests regarding its usage, please let us know.

Since you are contributing the article – you will retain all rights to the article and may run the piece in any other magazine or web site you would like at any time. However, as a courtesy only, we would ask that you not publish the article any where else for the three months duration of the Kindred issue it is running (i.e. if it is running in the December issue, don't publish it elsewhere for the months of Dec, Jan and Feb). But if this is a problem, please speak with us. Also, again just as a courtesy, I would ask that you put "this article was first published in Kindred magazine http://www.kindredmagazine.com.au" at the end of the article where ever it might be published.

We regularly post articles published in Kindred , on our website at a later stage. We do not seek additional permission from authors to do this. If posting your article on our web site is an issue for you, please let us know so that we do not post it.

Article and photograph acceptance
We find that our desire to run an article is only the first hurdle to jump in the actual publishing of an article. There are lots of other unrelated contingencies that effect which articles go in and when, so it can sometimes seem like a very long time before it gets in, especially as we are just a quarterly.

Our procedure is to read and consider all articles and photographs. Due to time constraints and a small staff, please allow two months for a response to you. Certain built-in processes can still cause delays, however. Remember that we are extremely small-staffed, being a fledgling magazine. It can seem like a long wait to hear from us, especially if you are eager for a reply. Please be patient. If you wish to inquire about your manuscript before hearing from us, please do so by email.

Once an article is received and we retain it, we will usually want to retain it for the next 3 issue deadlines. This way, if it does not fit into the immediate issue, it can be reconsidered for the next one. Final decisions are made only after all articles on hand are evaluated; yet even when an article is selected for an issue, it may be pulled for lack of space at layout time. These uncertainties make it difficult for us to be as specific in our acceptance as we would like, and we appreciate your understanding of this creative process. We try not to keep an article longer than 6 months to a year because, although we may like it, we feel it should have a chance in another market.

Rejection
Our hardest task is returning articles that we cannot use. We try to be honest in our replies, but it is not always possible to provide in-depth feedback. We evaluate all articles in light of the other articles we have on hand, when last we covered the subject, and our readers' interest in the subject matter. We retain only about 1 out of every 50 articles we see and then must select again from this smaller group. Returning a manuscript is not a personal rejection; it is a practical consideration.

We consider all submissions on a speculative basis. That is, even if we have expressed an interest in, or a go-ahead on, a proposed article, we cannot guarantee its publication.

Thank you again for your interest in Kindred magazine.

Enjoy the writing journey!