« Submission Guidelines for The Backstory »

The Backstory is a guest blog open to all independent artists who would like to use the space to share the vision behind their latest project. Think of your ‘backstory’ as a prologue; it can describe the events or the inspiration that guided you, the germ of your idea, or any other salient facts or stories about your journey from initial thought to completed creation. It can be all those things thrown together, but the key is not to sound like a press release or a blurb, or even to reproduce something that can be found elsewhere on your Web site or blog. Have fun with it, find the best angle to explain your project, and keep it between 400 to 1000 words. Links and relevant Web sites for your project can be added at the end of your guest post.

It’s similar to “The Big Idea” on science-fiction writer John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever, but for independent artists of any persuasion. Feel free to check out his guest posts, and the backstory entry that Anne-Marie wrote for guidance and examples. We also have more specific guidelines below.

We will publish The Backstory on Sundays when we have submissions available. You can submit yours to backstory@behindblueeyes.ca. We will review your submission, and confirm the date of publication with you once we accept your post. We look forward to hearing from you, and feel free to email us if you have further questions or concerns.

Anne-Marie Klein
Austin Ziegler

Writing and Submitting Your Backstory

In order to make the process easier for everyone, we’ve come up with some points that will help us handle Backstory submissions easier and faster. Just as we have acknowledged John Scalzi’s influence on the Backstory, so have two of his posts (How to Write a Big Idea and The Big Idea: Open Call to Publicists, Editors, and Authors) helped us form our guidelines below. If you follow his guidelines for the Big Idea, you’ll be doing pretty well for The Backstory.

1. The Backstory is open to independent artists promoting a work that is currently available for sale, or will be available for sale at the time of publication of the guest post. By independent artist, we mean anyone who is making the work available through non-traditional means. By and large, this means that you’re self-publishing your work—but we’re certainly willing to consider your work if you consider yourself independent and convince us with your submission.

2. Your Backstory is about the journey you took as an artist—photographer, writer, musician, or any other sort of art—to create the work you’re presenting. What about your experience will make it so that people who read your Backstory will want to buy your work?

3. Your Backstory isn’t a press release—it’s a chance to connect with your fans and soon-to-be fans. This isn’t what you write for your Amazon listing.

4. When you’ve written your Backstory, read it. If you find it interesting (and maybe learned something about yourself in the process), then there’s a good chance that other people who read it will find it interesting.

5. Your Backstory should be about 400–1,000 words, but should be the appropriate “just so” length to tell your journey. Comments on each Backstory entry will be open (but moderated) until the next Backstory is posted (or one week, whichever is shorter).

6. Please make sure your Backstory is fairly clean. We both have day jobs and Anne-Marie is working on the next installment of Behind Blue Eyes, so we won’t always have time to perform a heavy review on your entry. We will read every submission and make sure that it’s a fit; if we think your entry needs work, we will send it back to you with comments. If we don’t think that it’s a fit, we will let you know.

7. Send us your Backstory as plain text, HTML, or Markdown—no word processor documents or PDF files, please. We also need:

   • A good-sized image representative of your work to display with the post; a 400x600 JPG or PNG works very nicely. Visual artists may place a tasteful watermark over the image.
   • Links to where your work can be purchased. We will not insert our affiliate information to these links; please do not add your own if you have them.
   • Links to your blog, Twitter account, and/or Facebook page.
   • An electronic copy of your work for us to review.

From a copyright perspective, your submission remains entirely your copyright. You are providing us a non-exclusive licence to publish your submission and the associated image in perpetuity; we promise that it will only be published in this blog under the Backstory category.