The Anticapital Submission Guidelines and Style Guide

Updated February 2021

Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

Welcome to The Anticapital. We are a brand new publication with the goal of amplifying the voices of the working class. Our aim is to create a space to tell our stories — ones that capture the beauty of our diversity, our struggles, and our solidarity.

We welcome the writing of those typically behind classist barriers to publication. It’s not accolades or degrees or follower counts we care about, only the strength of your writing, the insights of your work, the meaning you convey.

We want visiting our publication to feel like self-care for the alienated working class individual. Your work is more likely to be published here if it is unique, makes a strong point, and is bursting at the seams with solidarity.

Topics we look for

• Culture, race, and politics. Especially marginalized, colonized, indigenous, BBIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, feminist, working class, and otherwise oppressed perspectives
• Experiences from poverty
• Artists from the movement and their work
• Mental health advocacy, especially self-care, self-love, and self-compassion
• Sex and relationships
• The human condition as it pertains to working class solidarity or struggle
• Mutual aid, community organizing, and anti-capitalist unity
• Film, game, and book reviews or recommendations based on relevance to our movement or critiques/analysis through that lens
• Critique of individualistic culture or ideas in favor of systemic analysis. This includes taking academic studies and data on social systems and explaining them in laypeople’s terms.
• Have an idea you think would work for us that isn’t on this list? Email the editor your pitch to mguevarra.q@gmail.com, and include “Article pitch” in your email title.

In short, we’re looking for great writing that either makes a clear argument or an interesting, resonant point. When it comes to quality, we share the perspective of Medium’s curation guidelines with the added texture of our preferred topics.

Formats we dig

• Personal stories with a narrative structure
• Essays with a clear thesis or rhetorical purpose
• Research pieces
• Lists or “listicles”
• Transcribed interviews or Q&As with artists, activists, and other persons from the movement
• Topical poetry and fiction

Submission and Remuneration Info

• We only accept stories and articles as unpublished drafts through writer accounts here on Medium.
• We encourage writers to read and understand the details of Medium’s Partner Program, and to determine for themselves if they’d like to submit content behind the gated paywall in order to receive pay directly from Medium.
• Similarly, as we are a new publication staffed entirely by volunteers, we can’t yet pay writers up-front for their work. Our goal is to grow together, and in doing so, help your stories reach and be read by more people, which translates as more pay through the Partner Program.

Things to avoid

• Articles that call for violence, discrimination, or otherwise break Medium’s Rules, Content Guidelines, or Ad Policy
• Plagiarism
• Narrow or localized op-eds that lack appeal to a global audience
• Surface-level stories with vague or trite advice, or with abundant poorly-sourced claims
• Personal stories that lack narrative structure and read like journal entries
• Grammar and spelling errors (given that notions of “proper” language are frequently expressions of class/ability/race, this is a general and not absolute rule — see notes below)
• Distracting calls to action, spam, advertising, or self-promotion
• Stories or articles that stoke anti-capitalist infighting
• Stories that place an asymmetrical focus on electoralism as the primary vehicle for working class progress, which is related to the previous point

Style guide

• Include at least one featured photo with your article, preferably just above or just below your headline. Be sure to respect copyright law and only use images for which you have the right. We recommend using Unsplash. Photos provided by the author should have a caption indicating so (e.g., Photo courtesy of author.) If possible, please provide alt-text for accessibility.
• Do not use curse words in your headline or subtitle; this is to ensure your story is eligible for Medium curation.
• Please revise and edit your articles before submitting them. Don’t feel confident regarding your grammar and spelling? There are plenty of great free editing tools available — we highly recommend grammarly and the Hemingway App. Still looking for more help on that front? Submit your draft or pitch and let us know the context.
• Headlines should always be in title case, and subtitles should be in sentence case. Use a title case converter if you’re unsure.
• Headlines should clearly indicate what the piece is about. Vague or click-bait titles will not be accepted.
• Break longer articles into sections by using headings. These should use sentence case as well.
• When in doubt, go with short, clear sentences. Avoid walls of text without break. Read your piece out loud to see how it flows, and write for clarity and ease. Being unnecessarily verbose or troublesome to read will hinder your story’s chances of being published.
• Besides poetry, submissions should aim to be at least 3 minutes long in Medium’s duration calculator. Four to eight minutes is ideal, but longer stories or features are always welcome if the concept calls for it.
• Do not flood your story with images. Use pictures sparingly and in ways that enhance, rather than distract from, the text of your story.
• Use relevant tags for your story. This helps its chances for Medium curation, and also helps us categorize it properly.
• The spelling of our publication is The Anticapital. People against capitalism are anti-capitalists, with a hyphen.
• We use Medium’s Style Guide.

Ready to submit your unpublished draft? Send an email to mguevarra.q@gmail.com and include “Submission” in your subject line. If it’s your first time submitting, your email should include:

• A short introduction of yourself or your writing experience
• A short description of the piece (a paragraph or two is fine) and a suggested headline
• The link to the unpublished draft
• The link to your Medium profile
• The word count for the piece

Be sure to mention if you’ve been previously published or have had stories curated on Medium. Feel free to include links to your favorite pieces you’ve written.

If you’ve previously written for us, simply click the three dots at the top right when editing a complete draft, click “Add Story to Publication,” and select The Anticapital. Being on our list of writers and submitting this way does not guarantee the work will be published, but it does guarantee that it will be reviewed by our team. It’s not a must, but accompanying these types of submissions with an email makes things easier for our editing team.

Miscellaneous notes:

• All writers are encouraged to submit their work under Medium’s Partner Program. Writers are paid directly by Medium.
• We welcome stories that you’ve already published elsewhere. Merely make use of Medium’s “import story” feature and note these details in your email.
• Stories are subject to minor edits without notice. This includes edits to the headline, subtitle, formatting, images, and also for grammar, spelling, or style guide peculiarities, all of which are aimed at increasing your story’s likelihood of being curated by Medium and increasing its exposure.
• Please do not make a habit of removing articles or stories from The Anticapital once published. Writers that do this risk being removed from our publication.
• Keep edits after publication to a minimum.
• If you don’t receive a reply within three business days, we welcome and encourage you to self-publish, to submit to other publications, or to revisit the piece under the lens of these guidelines.
• Finally, here’s that link to Medium’s curation guidelines one more time. Stories that comply with these are more likely to be published.

Whew! Got all that?

We look forward to hearing you tell your stories. Remember to enjoy the process, to do self-care and rest, and to keep moving forward.

Solidarity.