Write for Tell-A-Tale.com | Contribute Stories, Poems and More

At Tell-A-Tale.com, we believe that every person carries thousands of untold stories within them – and we’d love to help you share yours with the world. Here you can contribute stories, poems, views and much more! 

Why Share Your Stories On Tell-A-Tale.com? 

Tell-A-Tale.com is more than just a platform – it is a vibrant community of 6000+ (and counting) people who believe in the power of stories. Every month, thousands of parents, educators, young readers and story lovers visit the site to browse through the rich and high quality content that the site offers.

When you contribute, you become a part of this community with an opportunity to find readership, gather feedback and engage with the experts.

What Can You Submit?

We accept a wide range of content for readers of all ages, such as –

• Original short stories & illustrated stories for kids and pre-schoolers (Samples here)
• Short fiction (400-1500 words) for young adults and grown ups
• Free verses, haikus and limericks for all ages
• Folklore, folktales and mythical tales from your culture
• Stories about festivals, holidays and seasons
• Write-ups on storytelling traditions from your part of the world
• Booklists
• Book reviews of fiction and children’s books (IMP: Please ensure you read the guidelines for book reviews at the end of this page!)

Submissions must be sent solely via email to editor AT tell-a-tale.com.

Submission Guidelines

Your story doesn’t have to be perfect—we’re here to help you shape it! However, we do require any content submission to adhere to the following basic guidelines –

1. A large part of the readers on Tell-A-Tale.com are kids, parents and educators. So there should be no profanity or explicit content. Submissions not conforming to this will be rejected.
2. All submissions must be original and not previously published, in print or online. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but notify us as soon as possible if a piece is accepted for publication elsewhere.
3. Poems should be at least 20 lines in length. Haikus must be submitted in batches of at least 5.
4. If your story is a translation or re-telling of folk tales/classic tales, credit to the original source must be clearly mentioned in the submission document.
5. Anyone can contribute; age is no bar. However, if you are below 16, a parent’s email ID must accompany your story.
6. All content will be published under the author’s name. If you do not want your name to be disclosed, kindly mention “Anonymous” in the subject line of your email. We will publish your content as a guest author.
7. Contributions accepted for publication may be subject to editing in collaboration with the author.
8. If you are a registered writer with Tell-A-Tale, and your account remains dormant for more than 6 months, it will be de-activated.To re-activate the account, send an email to contact AT tell-a-tale.com

Formatting Guidelines

1. All stories must be submitted as a Microsoft Word Document attached in an email, or shared as a Google Doc via email. Do not send your story in the body of an email – it will be rejected.
2. Share a little about yourself! Each story must be accompanied by a short biography (less than 100 words) which includes the author’s full name, age, nationality, website, etc. A recent photograph can also be attached (optional).
3. The subject line of e-mail must have author’s full name and the title of the short story.

We review all submissions. If a story is a good fit for our platform, we will communicate the status of publish with you over email.

Copyright Notice

By submitting a short story to Tell-A-Tale, authors hereby agree to the following copyright clauses:

1. Stories published on Tell-A-Tale.com website could be included in future print or e-book anthologies by Tell-A-Tale.
2. Authors give Tell-A-Tale.com permission to publish their work on the website and use the story in other story distribution channels owned by Tell-A-Tale. We retain irrevocable first electronic rights including website/ podcasts/ audio books/ e-books and the right to publish submissions either as stand-alone feature or as an anthology anytime in future.
3. By submitting a story, you (the author) certify that the work is original and you are the copyright holder of its content.
4. If the author chooses to post the story on their personal blog, they can do so after it has been published on Tell-A-Tale.com. On their blog, they will update the page status to no-indexed, and a link to Tell-A-Tale.com will be provided, to prevent duplication of content on the web. In case the story has been published in an e-book/ audio book/ podcast, they will post an abstract or paragraph and give the download link on Tell-A-Tale.com. The entire text will not be copied and pasted.

Remuneration Guidelines

Tell-A-Tale.com does not pay a remuneration for voluntary contributions. Content for which we do pay are commissioned articles and commissioned book reviews.

Book Review Guidelines

For commissioned book reviews, a review copy will be provided to the reviewer for free, which they get to keep!

We expect an honest and quality critique of the work being reviewed. The submitted book review will be further reviewed by our editorial consultants, and you may be asked to make revisions if it is found to be biased, grammatically incorrect or sub-standard in any manner.

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Ready to share? Submit your story now!!!