Hey everyone! Ferret here to let you all know the fanfiction rules page has been updated and improved!
The new rules page
Hey all! So, first and foremost is the change in the strike system. In the past if you submitted a story and it was rejected, you'd be issued a strike.
This is no longer the case! You can resubmit your story as maaaannny times as you want and as long as you're working on improving and polishing it, you have nothing to worry about. But if you get rejected and immediately resubmit your story without changing anything, then you might get a strike. We want to make sure that strikes are being used as deterrents only.
For example, if you submit your story and it's riddled with typos, we'll reject it. If you go and work to clean out as many typos as you can but miss some of them when you resubmit you won't get a strike.
If however you resubmit it and you've done no work whatsoever, we'll give you a warning and if you do it again we'll give you a strike. If you receive three strikes the story will no longer be eligible for posting on EQD
If you got three strikes in the past though, all is forgiven! If you got three strikes before March 12, 2014 your slate has been wiped clean and you can resubmit your story with no penalties at all. If your story was refused and we said we could not post it due to unsuitable content though, you're still likely to be out of luck. You can contact the pre-readers to ask if you're not certain.
Next up! Our feedback system has changed in a big way too. In the past the Pre-Readers were many and had lots of free time to help all the awesome authors who submitted to us, giving lots of detailed feedback and information on how to improve their stories. This made the authors happy, but made the Pre-Readers unhappy as over time, they got fewer and fewer and busier and busier and couldn't find time to give the feedback the awesome authors wanted. This made the authors unhappy for having to wait months for a reply, and made the pre-readers unhappy since they couldn't help the authors. So, they moved to a new system. This is the yes/no system. This means that the typical email you'll receive will either say yes or no.
Think of us as a fanzine service. If you're submitting to us, your story is as polished as can be. you've gone through the editing guides and gotten others to read and edit your story and you feel there's nothing else you can do. There's plenty of solid editing guides out there and lots of good editing groups too. We can't be editors anymore and we know you guys are capable of seeking these resources out.
Finally, the submission rules have updated. Those rules these days don't tend to change all that much. Think of them this way, if you wouldn't read this to your English class, it might not fit on here.
The biggest change to the submission rules are to do with Foal Shipping and EQG fics. For Foal Shipping it needs to be innocent as they are young. We ask it doesn't go past schoolyard crushes. If you're not certain your story fits then feel free to ask.
We are still accepting Humanized/Anthro stories on a case by case basis but stories set in the Equestria Girls Universe can be submitted without worry.
The other big issue we've seen is people submitting stories that are locked. In GDocs and Fimfic you need to make sure to unlock your document so we can read it. If you submit a story and it's locked we will simply reject the story and you'll have to resubmit. Save yourself the time and unlock your doc!
Finally, if you've had your story rejected and you're wondering why, You're welcome to ask. We can't promise that we can always give feedback, let alone very detailed feedback, but we're happy to try. Simply reply to the rejection email with a polite query for feedback and with any luck you'll get an email shortly giving more detail. Sometimes the pre-readers are simply too busy to help so please understand that we do this out of love and passion and don't get paid.
We are volunteers. We don't get paid and so this has to take a backseat to real life things like school and work.
If there's anything you're still wondering about, feel free to leave a comment or email the pre-readers via fanfiction@equestriadaily.com
If you guys like this post I'll do another one about what to do after you've submitted to EQD.
