New Policy Regarding Self-Published Works

Due to an excessively large pile of review copies, increased work load at the office and a lack of time to read just for fun, I am changing my policy regarding reviewing self-published works. Just to be clear, I personally don't have any issue with authors who take that route. I have in the past read both good and bad self-published works, but because of the reasons mentioned above I will no longer accept review copies of self-published works.

HOWEVER, I still want to support all alternate historians and their endeavors. That is why I am willing to feature a guest post promoting your work. This policy has generally been in effect for the last few months, but now I am making it official. So if you are a self-published author who has published an alternate history, steampunk, historical fantasy, dieselpunk, counterfactual, etc. work of fiction, you can now promote it on The Update.

Here are the guidelines:

• All entries should be between 500-5000 words (although entries close to 5000 may be split).
• Authors will be allowed to promote themselves and their work with links, pictures, plot summaries, blurbs, etc., but the guest post should be more then an advertisement (general rule of thumb: if I removed all mention of yourself and your book I would still have 500+ words of content to use)
• Send guest posts to ahwupdate at gmail dot com. They can either be included in the body of the email or attached as a Word document.
• All pictures should be attached to the email with instructions on where to put them in THE guest post. DO NOT embed them in a Word document.
• I reserve the right to edit your guest post for spelling, grammar or flow, but any content edits will be discussed with you beforehand.
• I reserve the right to reject any guest post that does not meet the subject matter of this blog or else is otherwise inappropriate.

If you need some ideas, check out A Brief Summary of the Alternate History Genre in Hungary by Bence Pintér and Rethinking the War of 1812 by Bill Weber. Both are good examples of informative guest posts that still manage to promote their author's work in an unoffensive manner.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. I look forward to reading your upcoming submissions.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. His new short story "Road Trip" can be found in Forbidden Future: A Time Travel Anthology. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.