Submissions Guide for Lighthouse
Everything you need to know about writing for Lighthouse
Thanks for considering writing for Lighthouse. We are a new publication and looking for original uplifting articles that will shape people’s lives.
The twin purpose of a Lighthouse is to shine a guiding beacon and to warn of dangerous areas. If you can write uplifting content that can do this, we would like to invite you to submit your work.
Please read this submissions guide before you submit an article to discover:
Who we are at Lighthouse
We are a community of positive thinkers. We believe in the power of sharing experiences, thoughts, ideas and reflections. We publish uplifting articles that inspire people, provide them with a sense of purpose, and empower them to see, seize and create opportunities.
The content we want
We invite you to submit original articles that are uplifting in nature. We prefer unpublished content and will rarely consider previously published works. Anything previously published will be displayed on our publication relevant to the date of original publication.
We will accept a range of topics such as leadership, diversity, personal development, dating relationships, self improvement.
Our overarching theme is that our articles have a positive spin for the reader and provide a beam of hope and inspiration.
Diversity of thought is encouraged and our intent is to be inclusive.
We will accept all types or articles such as how to guides, listicles, personal essays, case studies and strategies as long as they are positive and include takeaways for the reader.
How we want our readers to feel
After reading a Lighthouse article, we want our readers to feel positive, inspired have a renewed sense of purpose.
In order to achieve this we would like each article to have some positive takeaways for the reader. Something simple that they can put into practice themselves.
We want to make a difference, not just provide a reading experience.
What we don’t want
Articles that are negative in nature or that do not provide some ideas for the reader to implement.
How to submit
Submitting the first time
Please complete the form below or click here.
Once you have been added as a writer you will be notified.
Subsequent submissions
Once you are added as a writer please submit articles directly through the ‘add to a publication’ function in the draft of your article.
- Click on the “…” button at the top of your draft
- Select “add to publication”
- Scroll down until you find Lighthouse
- Select Lighthouse
After you have submitted to Lighthouse the ‘publication’ button changes to a ‘submit’ button. Make sure you click on it. The last thing you should see is a screen that says that your story has been submitted to Lighthouse.
Things to remember
You should select five relevant tags for your story. The tags will help to get your story out to people who are interested in the topics you are writing about.
Access the tags by clicking on the ‘change tags’ from drop down menu. Access the drop down menu by clicking on the three dots next to Publish.
How to format and edit your article
Our editors are busy people so our expectation is that your article will be formatted and edited to the best of your ability.
Everyone makes mistakes and misses the odd typo but if we see anymore than three or four errors you will be asked to re-format and edit and re-submit.
Here are the basics of formatting and editing.
Titles
Please make sure your titles are properly formatted.
When you create a story you will see a prompt for a title and a sub-title. Please use them.
Make sure you use title case:
Capital letters for major words — Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns.
Small letters for minor words — Short words of less than three letters.
Make sure your subtitle is in sentence case. It does not need punctuation.
Please do not use a Kicker in your title, it will be removed when we publish you article.
Images
You can import images from Unsplash by using the Medium editor.
Click on the plus sign, click on the magnifying glass icon (between the camera and arrow sign), type in your keywords.
Always accredit your images. This will happen automatically with Unsplash.
Please do not use Screen-width or Out-set images as they tend to clog the screen, taking focus away from the story.
Spacing
Use white space in your stories. Remember that people are reading on their mobile phones.
You can use the spacer tool (the two dashes in the screen shot in the image section above).
Also use short paragraphs of only four or five lines of text.
Attributions
Please make sure you attribute any quotes you use by mentioning the author. Similarly if you are talking about work in a book or another article, you must give credit to the author.
Grammar and spelling
Our expectation at Lighthouse is that the grammar and spelling in your article is correct.
Please run your article through Grammarly or a similar tool to make sure your Grammar is up to scratch.
These are the basics of formatting and editing. We recommend you look at Medium’s Creators Hub and Distribution Standards for a more detailed understanding.
Links and Calls to Action
At Lighthouse we realize that all writers like their work to be widely read and are eager to increase the size of their audience.
In order to facilitate this we are happy to allow authors to put links to their previous stories within the text of the story like this.
We do not allow box links to stories like this one below:
Box links may be added at the end of your story.
Similarly we are happy to allow one single line call to action at the end of a story, but no more.
If you include box links within the body of the story or more than a one line call to action, you will be asked to remove them before publication.
How long we will take to get back to you
We realize that you are keen to get your article published and we will endeavor to get back to you as soon as possible.
Please bear in mind that we all have full-time jobs or our own businesses to run and sometimes we cannot get to your piece as quickly as we would like.
However we will ensure we get back to you within seven days and will advise you that we have received your submission.
Reasons why your article may not have been published
If there are minor changes we will put a note on the article and ask you to amend it.
- It is poorly formatted or the editing was of a low standard
- Images were not accredited
- The title was not in title case
- It doesn’t fit our message. For example it is not uplifting and does not have any tangible takeaways for the reader.
- It contains some sort of hate speech towards a group of people
- It does not conform to Medium’s publishing criteria
Questions and queries
If you have any further queries or specific questions please email us on TheLighthouse.ink@gmail.com and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
