Boring Little Big Update for all Elephant Writers. ~ Waylon

More on what we are looking for/what we’re not looking for:

We’re a publication. We won’t print anything or everything. We all want Elephant to be quality, interesting, helpful—if it’s timely and workable and we don’t have other articles, obviously there’s many variables in weighting decision to publish/edit.

Changes below are just going back to what we used to do for many years. I used to think of it like if a submission is a “B-,” we can edit it into an “A-.” That kinda thing. If the message is an A, on the other hand, but the writing is a C, we’d still edit then publish it or at worse ask you to get rid of typos, that’s not our job. But for sure we won’t publish everything. ~ Waylon, Editor-in-Chief

Google’s update to SEO is forcing my removal of instant submissions (something I wanted, love, and worked hard and spent money on developing), forcing Elephant to change our submission process back to more of a classic online magazine, which is fine.

• Google now judges instant submissions like spam/fake posts, akin to fishermen catching dolphins and sharks along with smaller fish, so our SEO rating was impacted, which means this change back to direct-to-editors will make Google SEO happier and therefore should equal more readers finding your work.
• So: we’re removing instant publishing/Grassroots (taps playing in the distance).
• So: submit directly to editors, starting now, here (happy music).
• After you submit your article, an editor will review, lightly edit on average, and either publish to Elephant’s main page or remove the post if it’s advertorial, awful, libelous, hateful, spam, or beyond editing. We rarely remove posts unless you/a bot is really asking for it, but we only promote and share up quality articles we edit and love.
• Anything we reject completely, ie it’s past editing, we will not publish but will do our best to email back to you in case it’s your only copy. (But we recommend saving your work to your computer or phone before submitting so you don’t lose it completely.)
• As always, make sure you share up your articles to your friends, loved ones, community, social media, and get our newsletter and promote the fact that your article made it to our best-of Newsletter, if it does.
• Current Academy participants: you will still receive up to two rounds of feedback from editors as a perk to help you get published.
• Your link to submit your writing is, as always, here and also on top of Elephant’s Main Page under WRITE.
• You can mention, in Notes section in the submission form, that you’re emailing photos (if you own them and grant us permission to use them [Elephant will use, not own], say so in the email or we will not be able to use it) and want to request that they’re attached to your article (we love original photos, but may not choose to use your photo if it doesn’t help the article) to [email protected]
• If you have questions, email our Editorial team at [email protected] or DM our editors on Elephant: Nicole, Lisa, and Elyane.
• Comment with any questions or if you understand and love Elephant! Thank you for being a part of independent media in this Big Tech age of smushification.

Listen to Waylon’s Video Update on the Topic: