We are less interested in credentials than in whether you can hold a work up to the light and say something true about it. A contributor to this paper is someone who has read enough of the genre to know sword and sorcery from portal-fantasy, and who can tell the difference between a novel that fails and a novel that simply was not written for them.

Nor does it have to be a novel. Books are the spine of this paper, but the beat is fantasy and adventure wherever they turn up: the screen, games, illustration and cover art, the trade and its contracts, and the craft behind any of it. If a reader who loves this genre would be glad to know it, we would like to see the pitch.

You do not need to have been published before. You do need to be able to write a clear English sentence, take an edit without flinching, and file when you said you would.

Our goal is for readers to find factual, up-to-date, enlightening stories on the genre they love most; free of marketing spin, and free of an agenda. This is our north star.

Like any publishing house, we also have a line, and we would rather you read it before writing than after. Neo-Fantastica sits deliberately in the middle ground. We do not write from either wing of the political spectrum, and we are not looking for contributors who want to use the paper as an ideological soapbox.

In practice that means prose, structure, character, design, craft and insight are the subject. It means that each and every work we evaluate should be done so on its own terms, and that we assume our readers are adults who do not need instructing on what to think.

To that effect, the critical school that reads a novel chiefly through identity, power and oppression is not the one this paper writes in. We do not commission retrospective moral scoring of dead authors against present-day standards, and we treat activist vocabulary as a position rather than neutral analysis.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
As far as A.I. is concerned, it's formidable technology with various legitimate applications, but generating articles for Neo-Fantastica is not one. By all means, use it to research, to noodle, to do your taxes (actually, maybe don't do that), and be aware that we will reject any clearly machine-generated content. That said, it is nearly impossible to verify the content we receive, so we simply take our contributors' work on good faith.

None of this is meant as an insult to critics who work that way. It is simply a different question from the one we are asking.

This is our line. The writer here is the good broadsheet critic; measured, curious, fair to people we disagree with, and never sneering, who states the other view accurately and at its strongest before answering it. Facts are never negotiable, including when they cut against us. And where one does touch contested ground, the test we apply is simple: would a thoughtful reader who disagrees with us still find this fair, accurate and worth reading?

If that sounds like a cage, this is not the paper for you, and no hard feelings. If it sounds like a relief, read on.

While the stories, facts, and insights are real, Neo-Fantastica operates as a periodical published from Barrel Town, a canal city on the world of Theriv where the locks run from the mountains down to the sea, and its writing team file from the literatures they cover. Not one of us was born here. One went through the cellar door of an old house and found herself here. Another made his way here by playing a cursed flute. Our paper therefore has a mythos, and is written as though all of this were simply the case.

We might call this a conceit, but it is not a deception. What it means for potential writers joining our ranks is that you have the chance to invent a persona, a world of your choice to have come from, and whatever contrivance carried you from there to the wharves of Barrel Town. Think of it like creating a character in DnD. The idea is to bring some whimsy and wonder to the world of journalistic review and criticism.

However, the costume changes nothing underneath. Books, people, dates, quotations and money are reported exactly as they are, and the line above applies to a persona's copy without alteration. A character is a pleasant way write with a specific angle or to sign a piece; it is never a licence to be careless in one, and a persona has never yet excused a fact we got wrong.

Of course, if nothing comes to mind, you're welcome to leave the appropriate boxes empty. The desk enjoys working with our writers to craft a persona and backstory, and would rather do it with you than to you.

Rates are banded by the piece rather than counted by the word. Paying per word pays for length, and in criticism the tighter piece is usually the better one; we would rather not put a price on padding.

Capsule notice / Hot Takes / Small Reviews300–500 words

£40–60

Standard Review900–1,200 words

£80-130

Lead Feature, Essay or Interview1,800–2,500 words

£150–300

Where a commission lands inside a band depends on how much work the piece actually demands. A reissue with a new introduction is not the same job as an eight-hundred-page debut nobody has read yet. The figure is agreed with you before you start writing, and it does not move afterwards.

We pay on acceptance, not on publication. Once the desk has accepted a piece it is invoiced and paid within thirty days, whether it runs that week or waits for the right Number. If we commission something and then decide not to run it, you keep half the agreed fee and the piece reverts to you.

We take first serial rights, which revert to you ninety days after publication. After that the piece is yours to collect, syndicate or reprint as you like; we ask only that a reprint says where it first appeared.

Review copies come to you through the paper, so a commission never costs you the price of the book.

We contact the roster on a semi-regular basis with a list of topics going spare; a new release needing a review, an anniversary worth marking, an adaptation about to land. You take one that suits you, or you propose something of your own; the desk is generally happier with the second. Nothing is obligatory, and a quiet month costs you nothing.

A commission comes with a word count, a fee and a date, agreed before you begin. The desk edits for clarity and for house style, never to reverse your judgement. If we disagree with your verdict we will discuss it together, not quietly rewrite it.