For writers
Writers
Str8 Up Publishing licenses columns written with Black independent newspapers and community publications in mind. If you write sharp, honest columns, we’d like to put your work in front of the editors who decide what their papers publish. You get paid every time an editor buys your column.
Why write with us
- Your work reaches editors. Papers browse and buy columns here, so you don’t have to pitch each one.
- You keep ownership. Your column isn’t exclusive to us or to any paper that buys it. Many papers can run the same column, and you can publish it anywhere else, before or after.
- You earn on every sale. You’re paid 65% of the price of each column sold! Payments go out monthly once your earnings reach $50. Smaller balances carry over to the next month, so nothing is lost.
- We handle the selling. We set up the listing, the checkout and the delivery to papers.
- You get your own author page. Your photo and your website and social media links (all optional), your bio and a list of every column you’ve written with us, all on one page. Your byline links to it, so editors who like one column can find the rest.
Who we’re looking for
- Writers with something to say in one of our 12 categories.
- Columns of 500 to 900 words, written by you. No AI-written text.
- Writers who’ve read our Writer’s Guidelines and are ready to work within them.
What happens, step by step
- Read our Writer’s Guidelines. They cover length, content standards, images and how you’re paid.
- Introduce yourself using the application form below.
- We reply by email within 10 business days. If we approve your application, we’ll send you the link and password for our Submit a Column page.
- Submit your column through that page. You’ll get a confirmation email right away.
- We review it and reply within 10 business days: we accept it, ask for changes, or decline it.
- Your first accepted column: we email you a link to a short onboarding form. There you read and agree to our Writer Agreement online (no printing or scanning) and tell us how you want to be paid, plus the bio, optional profile photo or image, and optional website and social media links for your author page. Before your first payment, you’ll get an email from TaxZerone, our tax-filing service, with a secure link to fill out and submit a W-9 form online. You fill it out on TaxZerone’s secure site, so your Social Security or tax ID number goes straight to them, never through our website or by email. It stays in our TaxZerone account, which we use only to file your 1099, and we don’t keep a separate copy. We never ask for bank account numbers. For payment, we keep only the contact you give us: a PayPal email, a Zelle email or phone number, or a $Cashtag.
- Your column goes on sale, and we email you the link.
- You get paid monthly once your earnings reach $50. Smaller balances carry over until they do.
After your first column, you don’t repeat these steps. Once we’ve accepted a column and you’ve agreed to our Writer Agreement, submit each new column through the same Submit a Column page, with the same link and password (step 4). We review each one within 10 business days (step 5). If we ever change the password, we’ll email you the new one.
Want to donate a column instead?
Want more publishers to download and run your work? Donate a column and we’ll offer it to publications free. A donated column is also a free sample of your writing. Editors who run it and see how their readers respond may look for other columns by you and find your paid columns.
Donating a column is separate from writing for pay. To donate a column, you must first complete the Donor Application on our Donors page, even if you already write for us. You complete it only once. After we approve it, you donate each column through our Donate a Column page. There’s no payment and no tax paperwork for donated columns, and a donated column stays free: it can’t be switched to a paid column later.
What to send us
- Your legal name and your email (if you want to write under a pen name, you’ll give us your pen name when you submit a column)
- The categories you’d write in
- A few sentences about you and what you write about
- Your website and social media links, if you want us to consider them when we review your application
- One or two links to columns or articles you’ve published, or a writing sample of 500 to 900 words (a Word or plain-text file)
- Confirmation that you’ve read our Writer’s Guidelines
Questions? Email editor@thestr8up.com.