Frequently Asked Questions

If you’re looking to contribute, simply go to the menu at the top of the page and select Contribute, then pick Bloggers / Editors or Photographers / Editors. Register with The Printed Blog Blogger Network or The Printed Blog Photographer Network. If you are both a blogger and a photographer you may join both networks.

We select content for publication based on the quality of the submission, and the relevance to the theme. To increase your chances, read some of our back issues to get an idea of the voice and tone of writing, and the style of images we publish. Also, pay attention to the theme of the issue you’re submitting to, because even if you submit a fantastic piece, if it’s not related to the topic we’re currently focusing on, it won’t make the cut. If you adhere to these submission guidelines and select your images or posts with care, it’ll be much more likely to get our attention. Simply submitting the same thing over and over WILL NOT increase your chances of getting published—it will just annoy us.

Because our editors have to sort through hundreds of individual posts and blogs, it takes us a while to get through everything and make our selections—even then, there are several levels of review that all submissions go through before they end up in the publication. You WILL NOT be notified unless your submission makes it through our primary round of evaluation. If your submission does make it to this point, you’ll be contacted via the email address you provided with your submission with further details. Typically, contact occurs approximately a month after the submission deadline.

Getting to the second round of evaluation does not guarantee you’ll be published. Since our editors go through several rounds of cuts when finalizing the selection of posts for each issue, the number of posts decreases dramatically with each round. Only 25-30 posts make it into each issue out of the hundreds received, and a lot of the time the final cuts are made the day we do layout. Often it comes down to the space available, and the way the posts fit together within the overall layout of the issue.

You’re always welcome to contact us, whether it be specifically about a status update, or with any questions in general. You can submit inquiries on our site using the contact form on the top menu under “Contact.”

Payment for accepted submissions will be delivered after the issue has been sent to the printers. We’ll contact you via email prior to the delivery to determine what the best method of payment would be for you, though we prefer to use PayPal.

You’ll receive $50 for each submission that gets published in the final issue. If you have multiple submissions, either photos or posts, you’ll receive $50 per item.

Yes! Regardless of whether you’re a subscriber or not, you’ll be mailed a free copy of the issue your work appears in.

For our purposes, the theme is the guiding motif we use to assemble each issue. We use themes as a guideline to help potential contributors know what to submit, and our editors choose which submissions to go into each issue. Typically, the themes we choose are broad in scope, and able to be interpreted in several different creative ways. However, we strive for variety in our issues, and if we come across a post that’s not quite on topic, but too good to pass up, we’ll still put it in.

Due to the fact that we’re an independent publisher with a huge workload and a small workforce, our editorial cycle varies greatly at the moment. Collecting, sorting, selecting, and laying out all of the content for each issue is a pretty hefty process, and combined with the timeframe of printing and distributing, it can take us anywhere from a month to a few months to fully complete an issue. We hope to be able to streamline this process soon.

Easy! You can follow us on Twitter (@theprintedblog), “like” our Facebook (www.facebook.com/theprintedblog), or even better– keep tabs on our blog.  Click on “blog” in the top menu, and you can sort posts that are categorized under Latest Updates to hear the most recent news about The Printed Blog and its issues.

If you browse through the various categories in our blog (you can access it through the link on the top menu) you’ll find everything from updates and sneak peaks, to teasers on the blogs, bloggers, photographers, and other contributors that are going to be featured in the upcoming issues.

At the moment, our beautiful, glossy, 11×17” print copies aren’t available on newsstands, or for single print purchases. However, you can subscribe to The Printed Blog and get copies delivered to your door for only $24 a year.

Digital copies of all our past issues are available for your viewing and downloading pleasure via the top menu link that says “Past Issues.” Volume 1 is the first iteration of The Printed Blog that was neighborhood-based, and Volume 2 is the series we’re currently producing.

Easy! You can follow us on Twitter (@theprintedblog), “like” our Facebook (www.facebook.com/theprintedblog), or even better– keep tabs on our blog.  Click on “blog” in the top menu, and you can sort posts that are categorized under Latest Updates to hear the most recent news about The Printed Blog and its issues.

So glad you asked! To read about the core team behind The Printed Blog, check out our biographies under the “About Us” drop down menu–Just click “The Team” and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!

The Printed Blog was started in December 2008 by serial entrepreneur Josh Karp.  After making headlines around the world and being one of BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Most Promising Startups, The Printed Blog went into a hiatus before launching again with the Volume 2 series in March 2010. To read more, visit our company bio here.