FAQ

What is SMITH?
SMITH Magazine launched on January 6, 2006, National Smith Day, as a home for storytelling of all forms and kinds, with a focus on personal narrative. Whether a professional or unpublished writer, we believe everyone has a story, and everyone should have a place to tell it. Our editorial is bottom up, aspirational, populist, and participatory. SMITH is our stories, our history, our friends, our moments, our lives. We believe everyone has a story. Everyone is a SMITH.

Do I submit a story to an editor or can I just post my story on the site?
Your stories find their way to SMITH in two ways.
1. Directly from anyone who is registered user (signup takes about 15 seconds). Registered users can submit to any of our story projects, including Six-Word Memoirs, The Moment, Brushes With Fame, My Life So Far,

2. By submitting to editors, who both assign stories and accept stories over the transom. These stories can be found in our Obsessions section (which covers topics such as weird jobs, war, the ever-popular Beautiful Pregnant Women photo essay, and photo essays) and Memoirville (excerpts and interviews from published memoirists).

How do I find stories I’ve written?
First, make sure you’re logged in (if you’re logged in, you’ll see your name in the top right corner of the site.) All your stories are found in your profile. Once you click on a story, you’ll be taken to the specific Story Project (Six-Word Memoirs, Brushes With Fame, My Life So Far, etc.) where it lives on SMITH. Make sure you look under both the “featured” and “recent” tabs if you’re having trouble finding your story.

For more help on the stories you’ve written, see our Help page.

Do you pay for stories? And who owns the copyright to the stories I submit on SMITH?
We rarely pay for stories, and we share copyright with the author. By registering on SMITH, you agree to our Terms of service, which states:

Users retain their copyrights to all submitted works.

All user submissions to SMITH are governed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This means visitors are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the submitted work with attribution, for non-commercial purposes only, and cannot make derivative works from the submitted work.

In addition, users grant SMITH a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States license to use the submitted work for promotional, commercial and non-commercial purposes, such as advertisements, books, and other products.

If my Six-Word Memoir or other story is selected for a book, will I be notified?
Yes. We’ll send a note to the email you signed up to let you know you’re either a finalist or have been chosen to be in a book. All book contributors will receive a free copy of the book as soon as it’s published. Note: You must include your real name in your profile to be considered for a book. Your real name won’t be visible on SMITH, only to editors. We credit each memoirist by first and last name, and can only consider submissions for which we have this information.

I see you have all these different story projects. Can I suggest a story project?
Yes. The current slate of story projects are all topics we’ve found people respond to with wonderful personal stories.The plan is to grow the range of story projects over time. If you think you’ve got a topic with legs, and would potentially like to be that project’s editor, email us at news AT smithmag DOT com.

Do you plan on publishing a print version of SMITH?
We’d like to enable you to take SMITH to the beach and the bathroom, and one day you might. However, we’re currently focusing on SMITH online, as well as putting out books from the Six-Word Memoir project, our comics, and, in Fall 2011, a book based on The Moment project.

 
SMITH Magazine

SMITH Magazine is a home for storytelling.
We believe everyone has a story, and everyone
should have a place to tell it.
We're the creators and home of the
Six-Word Memoir® project.