Writer’s Guidelines for TOS

We’re always looking for creative minds and thoughtful writers to publish in The Objective Standard (“TOS”). If you’re interested in writing for TOS, here’s what you need to know.

We publish articles on a wide range of subjects including philosophy, arts & culture, good living, history, science & technology, education & parenting, politics & rights, and economics. We also publish book, movie, and other reviews, as well as interviews. Some submissions are published on our website, some in the quarterly journal, and some in both.

Philosophy and Audience

TOS articles should be written from an Objectivist perspective—or, more broadly, from a rational philosophic perspective. However, our target audience is not primarily Objectivists. Rather, our audience is active-minded people in general. Accordingly, articles and reviews should not assume understanding of or agreement with Objectivism—at least not beyond the relatively obvious aspects of the philosophy (e.g., a thing can act only in accordance with its nature; wishing won’t make it so; people should be treated as they deserve to be treated).

Although you need not be an Objectivist to write for TOS, we are not interested in publishing anything that contradicts the basic principles of Objectivism. We’re interested in advocating and supporting reason (not faith or any form of mysticism), egoism (not altruism), individualism (not collectivism), and capitalism (not statism or anarchism).

Articles

Articles for TOS should be fact-based, logically structured, and written in plain English (not academese). They also should be crafted to convey a clear and specific theme and should not include any material that does not work toward conveying that theme. Please include a clear, single-sentence theme at the top of your submitted document. (In nonfiction, the theme is the primary argument or idea that the reader should clearly understand by the time he finishes reading the piece.) If the article is longer than one thousand words, please also include a brief, thematic outline (i.e., the overarching theme of the article followed by three or more section themes, each expressed in a single grammatical sentence).

Reviews

TOS publishes reviews of books, movies, music, and other art forms. To warrant review in TOS, a work must be philosophically rich and of interest to our audience. Reviews submitted to TOS should do essentially three things: (1) tell the reader what in essence the book or movie is about; (2) tell him why the book or movie is essentially good or essentially bad; and (3), if you think it’s essentially good but has significant flaws, indicate the nature of those flaws. (As with articles, please include a clear, single-sentence theme at the top of the document. If the review is longer than 1,000 words, also include a brief, thematic outline—i.e., the overarching theme of the article followed by three to six section themes, each in a single sentence.)

Interviews

If you are interested in conducting an interview for TOS, please email us at thomas@theobjectivestandard.com to see whether we are interested in an interview with the person you have in mind. If we’re interested, we’ll schedule a time to discuss interview questions and procedural details.

Exclusivity

All submissions to TOS must be exclusive to TOS. If an article (or its likeness) has been published elsewhere in any form, we will not republish it.

Our Style Guide

Submissions should adhere strictly to our style guide, which can be accessed here. Although we will make minor corrections as needed, we neither read submissions nor reply to senders if the submissions significantly depart from our style guide.

Article Length

Articles for TOS can be as short as a few hundred words or as long as five thousand, depending on the subject and the purpose of the piece. The sweet spot for articles is generally between five hundred and two thousand words. We prefer to keep reviews and interviews in the range of five hundred to two thousand words. If you are a first-time contributor to TOS, we ask that you start with a relatively short article or review no longer than eight hundred words.

Submitting Queries or Drafts

Short pieces—1,000 words or fewer—may be submitted in full, without prior queries. For longer articles, queries should be submitted in advance of manuscripts. A query should state in a single sentence the theme of the proposed article and provide a brief indication of how that theme will be conveyed in the piece. Queries should be no longer than three hundred words. (Alternatively, you may submit a brief, thematic outline consisting of the overarching theme of the article followed by three to six section themes, each in a single sentence.)

When a query or outline leads to a request for a draft, this does not mean TOS has accepted the article for publication. TOS reserves the right to reject any article at any time during the submission or editing process.

Queries and manuscripts should be sent to thomas@theobjectivestandard.com as Google Docs, in 14-point Times New Roman font. (You may draft the document in Word and upload it to Google Docs. Copying and pasting is not recommended, as this generally causes formatting issues.) We aim to reply within a day or two, but sometimes we take longer. (Please note that if a query or submission patently contradicts our philosophy or grossly disregards our writer’s guidelines or style guide, we will not reply at all. Time is too precious.)

Editing

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, it enters TOS’s editing process, which varies from writer to writer and piece to piece. We work with each writer as necessary.

Payment

TOS pays 15¢ per published word for articles and reviews, and 10¢ per published word for interviews (we pay the interviewer, not the interviewee). Payment is made by ACH direct deposit or PayPal on the 25th of the month following publication of the article online (regardless of whether it’s included in the quarterly). To ensure timely payment, please forward your account information to sarah@theobjectivestandard.com at your earliest convenience. Although we may publish an article in more than one venue (TOS Weekly, the quarterly, an ebook, etc.), we pay for the article only once. We do not pay for endnotes, charts, or images included with an article.

Copyrights

TOS retains worldwide exclusive ownership of all copyrights to works we publish. We grant writers blanket permission to reprint articles in any book of which they are authors or editors, without charge, so long as they (a) publish it at least six months after its publication in TOS, (b) note that the articles were originally published in TOS, and (c) give credit to TOS as the holder of the copyrights in accordance with standard publishing conventions.

Get Started Today!

Share your query, article, or review with thomas@theobjectivestandard.com via Google Docs and we will get back to you at the earliest opportunity.