S u b m i s s i o n s
Solstice Magazine gives you the opportunity to contribute your work and have it published in a high end, exquisitely printed editorial.
Being published in Solstice Magazine is fantastic for any creative's portfolio and can be used as a springboard to further success.
Submission windows and deadlines:
Website Editorials - Always open
Issue 60 - Released at 10pm (EDT) 21st June:
Taking the first round of submissions until 18th May.
If we have space available we will be taking the second round of submissions until 18th June.
Issue 61 - Released at 10pm (EDT) 21st August:
Taking the first round of submissions until 18th July.
If we have space available we will be taking the second round of submissions until 18th August.
When submitting please follow the guidelines outlined on this page. Upon reviewing submissions, Solstice Magazine reserves the right to accept or deny any submission we receive.
Submissions are reviewed based on their content, quality and relevance. We only publish the highest quality work, so make sure you step up to make the cut.
NB: Solstice Magazine doesn’t provide complimentary print copies. Printing and shipping print magazines is extremely expensive - the vast majority of magazines are sold at a big financial loss. We are an independently run magazine and do not have the income brought in by advertising and massive resources and budgets of a magazine owned by an international media corporation (E.g. Vogue by Condé Nast, Harper's Bazaar by Hearst Magazines International etc.) so we simply cannot send out complimentary copies of the print magazine.
We also don’t pay for editorials. We are looking for only UNPUBLISHED editorials. We are happy to send out digital tear-sheets should you want them.
If your photographs are published in Solstice Magazine, they must be ONLY be published in Solstice Magazine, if we find out that they are published by another magazine they will be removed before publication, or removed from the website if it is an online editorial. We will not publish photos from shoots that have already been published in other magazines, even if they are different photos. Once your submissions are accepted they must not be posted online or any social media until the magazine is released. We will put you on a blacklist and not accept anything from you in the future should we find out that one of the editorials we published has been published somewhere else.
Submission Email: submissions@solsticemagazine.co.uk
We get many submissions via email, so it can take us up to a week and a half to reply.
Rules/Requirements for Submissions
- We are a women's fashion & beauty magazine, so we only credit women's clothing in an editorial. We are not interested in male models & menswear Any editorials featuring male models / menswear will not not have the men's clothing credited. If there are men in the editorial, they should be in the background and not a main focus of the photos.
- We only credit clothing and accessories, any other type of product will not be credited.
- We accept Fashion, Beauty & Written Submissions.
- All fashion submissions should have a minimum of 5 outfit changes for website publication, and a minimum of 5 outfit changes for print publication. - All Beauty submissions should have a minimum of 5 different hair & make up looks.
- We do sometimes make an exception and publish editorials that have less than 5 outfits/looks, but this is incredibly rare and at the discretion of our editorial team. If your editorial does have less than 5 outfits/looks, you can opt to pay a penalty fee of USD280.00 to have the work published by our magazine, but this would have to be agreed upon by both you and our editorial team. We will not accept it if the standard of work itself is not good enough.
- We require at least 3 finished (retouched) photos of each outfit for fashion editorials, this is so that we have some variety to choose from for the editorial design. As beauty work is more time consuming to retouch, we do not require at least 3 photos per look, but it would be appreciated. As always, a good amount of choice/variety of photos will raise the probability of your work being accepted for publication.
- Once your submission is accepted for publication we will require high-resolution photos to be be sent to us. The photos will need to be at least 3000 pixels on the shortest side, and at at least 300DPI. We may ask for the high-resolution photos prior to making a decision on the editorial, as we may need to see the photos in detail to check the retouching.
- Photos are printed at 8.5 x 11 inches for Portrait orientation and 17 x 11 inches for landscape orientation images. We use mostly portrait images, so the less landscape images the better. For landscape images, subjects should be to one side and not centred. Centred subjects will be distorted due to the way the pages bend inwards, this doesn't look good at all.
- Photos may be cropped to ensure the best fit for the editorial layout design.
- When submitting for consideration, please try to submit your images in a PDF document, or a zip file with low-resolution images inside as attachments, include the team credits, styling credits and a suggested title for the story. Please do not submit heavy high resolution email attachments. We also accept download links to Dropbox folders, and Wetransfer downloads.
- For fashion submissions, styling credits are required the form of an editable PDF document. The styling credits document should have one photo of each outfit, with each photo having its respective credits placed next to it. Every piece of clothing and jewellery should be credited individually and clearly. We won’t be held accountable for any missing or misspelled credit. Be sure to double check that all brands/designers used are included in the styling credits and that their names are spelt correctly. We do not take responsibility for any missing or misspelt credits, as we copy and paste directly from the styling credits document sent to us.
- For the styling, a variety of well known brands must be used. Any particular brand may only feature in a maximum of 2 different outfits.
- If a set of photos features a brand(s) that has been featured in more than two different outfits a fee of US$380 would have to be paid for it to be published. A good editorial should feature a wide variety of different/brands. A lack of variety in brands/designers used is detrimental to the overall quality of the editorial, and in turn, the magazine. This is why there is a fee for publishing these.
- 'Stylist's own' or 'Model's own' credits are not acceptable. We will reject any submission with these kind of credits, unless you can provide the actual brand/designers of the clothing. This also applies to vintage and second hand/thrifted pieces, they will need to be credited with their actual brands/designers.
- Clothing items must not be repeated in different outfits. If there are outfits with the same piece of clothing, we will only publish one of the outfits.
- We usually only publish one photo per outfit/look.
- Some photos / outfits may be omitted from the editorial publication entirely due to them either not being good enough, being too different to anything else in the editorial, because we do not have enough space to fit all of them in (or including an outfit or image would mean that there would be a blank space/page due to having an even amount of images instead of the optimum odd number of images).
- We do not credit any boutiques, PR companies or shops that clothes are sourced from, only brands and designers are credited. Educational establishments such as fashion schools will not be credited. We also won't credit any company that sponsors people involved in an editorial. If any of these want to be credited, therefore advertised by our magazine, a fee will need to be paid.
- Team credits are essential for all submissions, if we have accepted your submissions and you provide the high resolution images without team credits, your submission will not be published. We won’t be held accountable for any missing or misspelled credit. Be sure to double check that all people involved in making the editorial are included in the credits and their names are spelt correctly. Social media profile names should be included, but are secondary in importance to the team members' names - we require all team members' actual or professional names. If for any reason a submission is published and an individual/s credit is missing, the person who submitted the editorial will be held responsible. Along with model’s name be sure to list the agency name. Model's should be credited with their full name. Be sure to send credits as editable PDF files or Word Files.
- We reserve the right to give our own title to an editorial. We will consider any title you provide, but may go against it if we feel it isn't representative of the editorial, we already have an editorial with that title, or if we think we have a better title. Please mention that you are not willing to have the title changed from your suggestion if that is the case.
- Any content that is of hardcore pornographic or violent/gory nature will not be published.
- We charge a non-negotiable US$30 fee for the amendment for any credit mistakes that are not our own fault. It is your responsibility to make sure that the credits that you send us are correct.
- You may cancel publication of your editorial within 48 hours of us accepting it, this is free. However if you want to cancel it after the 48 hours window has passed, a USD220.00 penalty fee must be paid to us. We design editorials after 48 hours of accepting them. It may also be the case that we rejected other people's submissions because they were too similar to your editorial. So the penalty fee is in place to cover the time lost in designing the editorial, and potentially the lost opportunity to publish somebody else's editorial because we already accepted yours.
- The deletion of any published works on our website and social media is subject to a non-negotiable USD280.00 fee. It costs us time and money to publish work, and we will not have those wasted by people changing their mind after publication.
Medium
We keep website and print editorials separate. Your editorial will be published in one or the other, not both. Please state your preference in your email if you have one.
Exclusivity
- Once an image is accepted to be published, it grants us the permission to use your work in any of our publications, websites, videos, marketing pieces, advertisements, and any other mediums or formats used in the creation, dissemination, and monetisation of Solstice Magazine.
-Photos from a photo shoot must not have been published on any other publication's magazine, website, blog or social media and must not do so after we publish the editorial. All editorials must be fully exclusive to Solstice Magazine.
- Photos from an editorial must not have been published on any social media or portfolio websites apart from personal websites. This includes websites such as PhotoVogue, Flickr, 500px and other such websites.
- We reserve the right to pull an editorial from our magazine without your consent if we find out that photos from the photo shoot have been published somewhere before. In some cases we may downgrade publication from print to the website, or if it was initially accepted for publication on the website it will not be published at all. We may choose not to feature your editorial on social media at all.
Pull Letters
In order to be eligible for a pull letter the stylist of the editorial must have been published by our magazine at least three times in the 12 months prior to the pull letter request. The stylist must be an experienced professional, with a good styling portfolio.
We also need a full proposition document which includes a mood-board showing the type of styling and hair & make up you have in mind, details and photos of the location you would like to shoot at (if it is a location shoot), the confirmed team members and their websites (including models and their agency profile) and the date of the shoot.
Contributing Writers & Bloggers Submission
We are always looking for guest writers and bloggers who would like to contribute to the magazine and website. If you are interested in writing or blogging for us, please send an email to info@solsticemagazine.co.uk with the headline “Writer Submission” or “Blogger Submission” and include writing samples and links to your work, blog or portfolio.
Please note that we do not pay for your articles as we are an independent magazine and do not have the budget at the moment.
Rejection Reasons
- Work was submitted after the deadline.
- The quality of the images aren’t of a high enough standard.
- The submission doesn’t fit the theme for the issue.
Although your rejection could be due to any of the above stated reasons, we will not have time to state which of the reason applied to the submission. Please note that all submissions will NOT be replied to, you will receive an acceptance email once your submission has been accepted, if you don’t receive a reply within 7-10 days of your submission then it wasn’t accepted; you do not need to send multiple emails to receive a reply.
Deadline:
- All submissions must be sent before the stated deadline.
- If a submission have been accepted and the final pieces aren’t sent before the deadline, that submission will not be published in the issue for which it was accepted.