Writers' Guidelines
Revised August 2010

Thank you for your interest in submitting your work for our consideration.  Please send a letter of inquiry with a synopsis of your story, to disciplineanddesire@hotmail.com.   If we are interested in the concept of your story, we will ask you to send a first chapter for us to evaluate.  If we then wish to purchase it for publication on our website, we will contact you to send the entire story/novella.  We will notify you as soon as possible, usually within a week, whether we find your material acceptable for publication on our website or not.

We usually pay new authors about one and one third cents per word.  Experienced authors earn more, and we do give increases for quality, volume, and dependability. After publication on disciplineanddesire.com, your stories (eight or more chapters or short stories) will be eligible for book publication, which we do about twice a year. We pay our authors 50% royalties for both ebooks and printed books.

Before we can buy the publishing rights to your work, we will e-mail you an agreement that you must print, sign, and mail back to us by postal mail.  When we receive it back from you, we will need your legal name and mailing address so we can pay you. If you make over $600.00 USD in one calendar year, we will then need your Social Security number.  This information will be kept private and secure, but we are required by federal law to file Form 1099-MISC with the IRS by January 31^st of each year regarding how much money we have paid you during the previous year. This does not apply to authors living in countries other than the U.S.A. 

Please note that your story may not be published on our site for several months, because we keep an inventory of stories in order to provide a steady supply of excellent reading for our members.

Technical Requirements *

·       All stories must be written in either Microsoft Word or any program that can produce a document with a file extension of .rtf, .txt, .doc, or .docx.

·       Use Times New Roman, 12 point black font with no colored backgrounds, headers, footers, or special characters.

·       Use a single column, single-spaced lines with no indentations, and double-space between paragraphs, left-sided justification. If you have questions about how your story should look, go to our website and look at a story as it appears there.  This document’s first few paragraphs are also formatted in the required manner.

·       Do not use all CAPS to emphasize a word; use italics instead.

·       Do not hit the “enter” key at the end of every line.  Only hit “enter” at the end of each paragraph.

·       Grammar and punctuation should be edited before you send us your work.  We have a style sheet to help you, available upon request. We do have editors that will work with you on more advanced writing skills, such as style, sentence structure and overall reading ease. There is no fee for this service, but it can take weeks to months, in some cases, to help you learn and improve upon your story. We do not adhere to any deadlines on helping you edit your story, and there is no agreement by either party that we will buy it upon completion.

·       All short stories must be between 3800 and 4200 words.  Each chapter of a novel/novella must contain between 3800 to 4200 words.  You can write them longer, and we will publish them longer, but we do not pay for any words over the 4200 word limit.  We will buy novel lengths of up to 12 chapters, but anything longer than that must be separated into two or more series before submission.

Story Content *
 

·       You must submit new, never-before-published material. If your story has ever been posted on a forum or blog, it is not new. The only exception to this is that we will pay ½ cent per word for acceptable, previously-published material that meets all of the guidelines herein.  These stories will be published as “bonus” stories in addition to our usual weekly publications.

·       The stories should not center upon the spanking scene. Our goal is to provide romantic stories that include spanking.  There must be a creative plot with good character development, not just a series of spanking episodes, and not a story that is entirely one detailed spanking episode.

·       We do not accept stories involving bondage, BDSM, age play, “golden showers,” Dominant/submissive or other subgenres. No derogatory, obscene, racist or offensive names may be used.  Please do not use “age play” nicknames such as “daddy” or “little girl” in a romantic relationship.  “Baby” and “Young Lady” are acceptable.

·       Anal play or other subgenre interests are not encouraged.  We will publish them occasionally if the writing is excellent and the scene is entertaining, because some of our members do enjoy reading them.  But keep in mind that a great number of our readers are not interested in much more than spankings and tasteful erotic scenes.  Because they have written to us numerous times complaining about these interests, we use icons to rate every story for its content.  So if you write an anal play scene or a caning scene, then know that many of our readers will not even open the story to look at it.

·       We cannot use the words “rape” or “incest” on our site, and these words cannot even be mentioned casually, such as “rape crisis center.”  We cannot mention or describe a rape even without using the word itself.

·       We cannot include any mention of extreme violence, such as killing, murder, gunshots, etc. If your story is about crime-fighting, then a threatened beating or “hurting” a character is acceptable, but no detailed descriptions of violent acts are acceptable.  You can narrate that someone has been hit in the nose, for example, or punched out, or cut, scraped, lacerated, etc as long as you don’t include the gory details.  You can narrate an injury with no details. You may state that someone has died (with no details) but not that they were murdered. We do not publish erotic or punishment scenes where any part of the body is struck except for the bottom cheeks and upper thighs, except that palms may be struck with a ruler or any other appropriate implement. No hitting of sex organs, lower legs, backs, etc. A character may be slapped in the face but not in a punishment context.

·       Minors may not be portrayed in relation to corporal punishment or sensuality. Minors may be incorporated into a family themed story, if necessary, as long as they are not involved in any manner with the romantic couple’s relationship.  A brief mention of a remembered childhood spanking is acceptable, but no details may be published.

·       We publish only romantic, male dominant, female submissive relationships. We publish spankings between lovers, boyfriend/girlfriend, a Male/Female couple that has just met, or husband/wife.  All spankings must be men spanking women, with no exceptions.

·       We don’t publish group spankings, schoolgirl scenarios, or judicial scenarios.

·       We don’t publish public spankings, unless they meet these requirements:  We will publish tasteful, intimate, private spankings involving two couples either demonstrating a technique or observing a deserved punishment.  We will publish an institutional spanking, such as a learning center or behavioral program as long as the spanker and the spankee have (or will have ) a close, personal relationship.  Spankings may occur in public places, such as outdoors in a park, as long as there are no observers that are not well known to the spankee, and there are no more than 2 observers (no crowds of onlookers).  A quick slap on the bottom can be given at any time, in public, in front of any other characters, as that’s not what we consider to be a public spanking.  Also, a spanking may be overheard by others who are not actually witnessing it.

·       No drunk driving plots will be accepted.

·       Most of the issues above depend upon the context in your story, so if you’re not sure about any of your scenes or ideas, please submit your synopsis before writing a story that we might reject, as it will save everyone a lot of time.

Nothing in this document constitutes a contract between the prospective author and the owners of the Discipline and Desire website.  Nor does it obligate either party to buy or sell the works in question.  These guidelines are subject to change as our needs change, but you will be notified when that happens.  We reserve the right to reject stories for any reason that serves the purpose and needs of Discipline and Desire.

* Exceptions to the above requirements are for novels/novellas submitted solely for ebook/printed book publication.  We solicit and accept nearly all genres of fiction or non-fiction for ebook and paperback book publications.  These stories will not be posted on our website and we do not pay cash up front for them. We will sell them in our book markets, which include most major retailers such as Amazon (paperbacks), Amazon Kindle Ebooks, Fictionwise.com, Barnes & Noble’s Ebook Nook, AllRomanceEbooks, Bookstrand,  Lulu.com, and our own retail website, at present.  Our market base is always expanding. You may opt out of any market you choose to. 
Our publication services are free, and we pay you 50% of the net royalties for as long as we publish your book. Net royalties are the amount that we receive from each market, which varies but is usually 50% of the retail price.  (Kindle pays us 70% of the retail price, and our own website nets us around 95% of the retail price.)
We pay for the file formatting, the cover art and images, the ISBN, and all other overhead costs. Our publishing contract is non-exclusive for these books, and you are free to publish them with any other publishing house simultaneously, as you retain the copyright to them.  You may not use our cover image that we have designed, with any other publisher or retail distributor.  If we edit your work, you may not publish our edited version of your novel/novella with any other publisher or retail distributor. You must use your original manuscript to publish it with other companies or markets.