FAQ

The membership to Spillwords Press is free and very simple to obtain. Once registered you’ll be able to:

submit your literary work to be featured on our website and promoted on social media
vote for Author/Publication of the Month
vote for the annual Spillwords Press Awards
comment on posts
create your own customized list of favorites
receive our newsletter
download content exclusive only to registered members

Joining Spillwords.com is easy. Simply go to Register Page and complete the registration form to activate your membership. It’s free – no credit card is needed, just your username and email address.

If you forgot your password please visit the link below. You’ll be prompted to enter your username or e-mail address in order to reset your password.

https://spillwords.com/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword

You can also find this link under the “Login” and “Register” tab on the navigation menu, and below the login and registration form.

After logging in, locate your profile icon on the right-hand side and click on your profile. You can reset your password there.

When you register to our website a user profile is created. It allows you to log in and participate as a Spillwords member (comment, vote, etc.)

Your user profile on Spillwords.com exists independently of your author profile (in case you have published works on Spillwords.com).

Once your registration is processed, our system does not allow usernames to be changed. If you want to retain a specific username, please contact us for guidance

To log out of our site, locate your profile icon on the right-hand side and hover/click on it. Click “Log Out”

If you can’t log in, please make sure you are using the correct username and password. Be aware that our usernames are case-sensitive. If you are copying and pasting the information, please make sure that you are not picking up any empty spaces before or after the logins.

The “Search” field is located on the top right hand side of our main (white) navigational menu. Simply click on the “Search” icon (magnifying glass), and a pop-up window will appear where you can write the keyword that you’re looking for in the field provided. To aid your search a dropdown of possible outcomes will be featured below the search field.

To use Advanced Search options, locate “Discover” on our navigational menu. When you hover over the label a menu of options will drop down where you can narrow your search by language, category, or special interest. You can also use “Popular Tags” widget at the bottom of our sidebar, on the right-hand side of each page (except for homepage) on our website. To search by tag simply click on the desired tag from the featured list of most used tags to filter the results.

When viewing on Desktop (not available on Mobile) hover over “Trending” located on the top right-hand side of our main (white) navigational menu and a dropdown will appear showing Top 3 Trending Posts (currently / within the last 7 days / within the last month).

You can view “Most Popular” posts in the last 7 days and “Most Recent” posts in our sidebar located on the right-hand side of each page (except for the homepage) on our website. You can click on each of them to lead you to the chosen post.

You can find a list of the next upcoming posts that will be published on our website. The list is located on our sidebar on the right-hand side of each page (except for the homepage) on our website.

To like a particular post, on the post page look below the featured image. You will see a row of categories followed by a square with a heart on it. Simply click on the heart and it will turn red. You don’t have to be logged in to do so. The rating reflected under each publication shows the amount of likes the publication has received.

In order to comment on any posts you have to be logged in to our website. You can log in using the “Login” popup, which you can access from our navigational menu, or by clicking on the “logged in” phrase underneath “LEAVE A COMMENT” in the comment section at the bottom of a desired post. Please refrain from using offensive, rude, demeaning, or unintelligible language in your comments.

In order to respond to a comment that someone has written on one of the literary works, simply scroll down to the response section, locate the particular comment, and click the ‘→ Reply‘ link (highlighted in gold) right under that person’s comment. An edit field will then appear beneath the comment where you can type your reply.
Please note, ‘Leave a comment’ section is designed for new comments only and NOT replies to comments. Therefore, it will NOT notify the author of the comment that a response was made. Please note, you must be logged in to comment. Please refrain from using offensive, rude, demeaning, or unintelligible language in your comments.

The “RSS” stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, however, it is often referred to as the feed or news feed. RSS will allow you to keep track of our website and our updates without having to manually visit each time so that you can read our content in your mailbox, feed reader and/or other devices.

You can subscribe to our RSS feed using a feed reader. We recommend using Feedly, as it is available as a browser add-on as well as a mobile app for iOS, Android, and Kindle devices. Adding our website to Feedly is really simple, just enter https://spillwords.com/ and click the add button to subscribe.

Every month, the Members (Authors & Readers) of Spillwords Press choose the Author of the Month. Authors are nominated based on this Weighted Guideline:
40% Quality of Writing (The overall quality, creativity, and uniqueness of the author’s literary work)
30% Popularity (The popularity of an author’s work, measured by views and likes)
15% Consistency (Regular and consistent submissions or contributions over time)
15% Engagement (Interaction on Spillwords.com and its social media platforms, including commenting, and promoting work)

The voting begins on the 26th of each month at 12:00am Eastern Time and lasts 4 days. You can cast One VOTE, per registered user HERE. You have to be logged in to be able to vote. The voting is communicated via email and reminded via social media. The winner is announced within the first days of each month and featured on Spillwords.com sidebar during the entire month.

Every month, the Members (Authors & Readers) of Spillwords Press choose the Literary Work of the Month. Publications are nominated 100% based on their popularity within the last 30 days. The voting begins on the 26th of each month at 12:00am Eastern Time and lasts 4 days. You can cast One VOTE, per registered user HERE. You have to be logged in to be able to vote. The voting is communicated via email and reminded via social media. The winning publication is announced within the first days of each month and featured on Spillwords.com sidebar during the entire month.

Once a year, the Members (Authors & Readers) of Spillwords Press vote for nominated authors/publications in numerous categories. The voting begins on the 26th of January at 12:00am Eastern Time and lasts 5 days. You can cast One VOTE, per category, per registered user. You have to be logged in to be able to vote. The voting is communicated via email and reminded via social media. The winning authors/publications are announced within the first days of February and featured on Spillwords.com

After selecting the appropriate checkbox of your choice and clicking on the “Vote” button underneath, you will see a small looping icon indicating that your vote is being finalized. Please give sufficient time for this process to be completed, as sometimes the connection may lengthen the waiting period. If an error occurs, please refresh the page and select your vote again. 90% of the time refreshing your browser will solve the problem. If the error persists, or for any reason, you’re not able to vote via our voting page, you can cast a manual vote by sending us an email to vote@spillwords.com Please include your username and your vote in the body of the email.

Spillwords Press is a place for everyone who believes that words matter. We are open to new and continued collaborations with published and unpublished authors, or anyone who wants to share their work with our audience.

Spillwords Press is a place where you can submit many literary genres: haiku, found poetry, micropoetry, poetry, free verse, essays, prose, flash fiction, short story, nonfiction, article, editorial, commentary, novel/book excerpt and more. We accept unpublished, as well as previously featured literary works, as long as you are the rightful author.

Yes, you can submit literary works in languages other than English. Ideally, an English translation should accompany the submission, but it is not required. If submitting a piece in two or more languages, please include all versions with translations in the BODY OF YOUR WORK section via the standard submission form.

Yes, you can submit an audio of spoken word or a song, as long as it is of good quality and in MP3 format. A written version of a literary work (standard submission) should accompany the audio. You can submit the audio via one of the image upload fields in the submission form.

We do not have a minimum or maximum word/character count when it comes to submissions. We feature a variety, from very short haiku to a few thousand words long short stories, however, we do not publish novel-length books in their entirety.

We highly recommend for writers not to simultaneously submit to Spillwords.com and other publisher/s as this often leads to a withdrawal of literary work before it is published. Please note, that our editing team communicates if either piece will be published or not.

There are no submission limits or waiting periods between submissions. You can submit as you wish and our editing team makes selections based on the ebb and flow of submissions received, in addition to scheduled publications and daily literary relevance to the schedule. That being said, we would advise our writers to not bulk submit multiple submissions as it may prolong our review process.

In the field “Your Name or Alias” you can put either your real name or your pen name under which you write. Use the name you would like your work to be published under, as it’s going to be used to credit your work and in your bio.

By “Body of Work” we mean the actual literary work you’d like to submit to us to be featured on our website. We are open to many different kinds of poetry, articles, essays, etc. For example, if you wish to submit a poem, in this field you would put the actual verses of your poem. Please note that this field should NOT include the title of your literary work. Please include only ONE literary work at a time.

Please make sure to edit your submission for grammatical and syntax errors. If you’re using a poetic license please ensure to state it in the “ADDITIONAL COMMENTS/NOTE FROM AUTHOR” field. If our editing team should find any of the aforementioned errors, be advised that we will make corrections as we see fit.

By tagging we simply mean categorizing your work. Please pick a tag or tags from below that describe your literary work. If you can’t find the proper tag below, write your own.

In the field “Brief Description of Your Work” you should include in one sentence what is the topic of your literary work. The content entered in this field will not be published alongside the literary work itself. The description field is solely for internal use and helps our team ensure the best possible presentation of the submitted work.

In the “Bio” field you can include any information you feel describes you as a person and as a writer. Please note that the bio should consist of min 200 characters, but be concise.

Once your submission is approved your author profile will be created and available under your author link. Soon after you will receive a confirmation email with the publication details of your literary work.

Your author profile on Spillwords.com exists independently of your user profile. An author profile is created by our editing team with the information provided by you with your first submission.

Any information pertaining to an author bio is handled by our editing team. Please send a direct request to editor@spillwords.com including the updated version of your bio and/or new photo.

It is highly recommended that you provide the links to your social media accounts (Twitter/Facebook/Instagram) as we will link your author bio to your Twitter/Facebook/Instagram profile (account has to be viewable by the reader, no private, protected accounts), inasmuch as we use these accounts to promote your work and you, the author. If you do not have or don’t want to be tagged on social media, please use N/A in these fields.

Any literary work that has been publicly exposed to readership, whether published in an online magazine, posted on social media, personal blog, etc. is considered digitally published, as well as published in print. Therefore the answer would be yes.

We create a bio for you to accompany your literary work and, the image you’ll upload will be used as your profile photo. We value your right to privacy, therefore you can opt to upload an avatar. 

This field is not required. You can include here any comments for us or any comments you would like included below your work, under “Note from Author” that describes your inspiration for your submitted work, etc. Also, if your submission has special formatting requirements please use this field to specify the details.

This field is optional as our team will create a featured image to compliment your work. The selected image has to reflect the words of a submitted piece in order to be selected as the featured image. If you are an artist, and you created an original image to accompany your writing or, if your writing was a reflection of a particular imagery, feel free to submit the image.  Please make sure that your uploaded image adheres to the following guidelines:

-the image is of your own photographic/artistic creation or is in the public domain
-minimum jpeg|png size 1700×900 px
-landscape positioning
-there is no watermarking other than your own if the image is of your creation
-no self-promoting advertisements
-the words of the literary work are not imposed on the image
-the image is of good quality (no pixelation or blur)

We do reserve the right to a final decision if your image will be published.

If your submission is approved you will receive a confirmation email with the date your work is to be published and a URL at which your work will be available once it’s published. Our editing team will send you a corresponding email as soon as your work is edited and prepared for publishing.

You will receive a confirmation email only if your submission is approved. Please add our email address – editor@spillwords.com to your Address Book/Safe Senders List to ensure proper communication delivery and check your SPAM folder to make sure that our email was not sent there in error.

The publishing date of your work will vary as our editing team reviews and then makes selections based on the order of submissions received, scheduled publications and daily literary relevance to the schedule.

Linking to us is optional and not required but very much appreciated. In the confirmation email, you will receive a link (a URL to your work) that you can place on your blog or website to promote your published work on Spillwords.com You can place it on the page where you feature “Your Published Work” or you can just include Spillwords.com on a page with “Links” or “Friends”. We thank you in advance.