ZO Magazine
• ZO Magazine is a “Daily Changing” online publication. Although we have intended to publish an annual printed “Collector’s Edition” for many years, our online launch in 2014 took off with such energy and acceptance that operations and reach have left little time and resources to print . . . but print we will — in that quintessential fullness of time that we’ve been waiting for.
• All artists and authors published in our magazine are acknowledged as creators of their respective work (with name, byline, or other creator-requested acknowledgments).
• All submissions must be in English.
• ZO Magazine accepts unsolicited submissions. All submissions must be from the creator of the work. (See Parameters below for details.)
ZO SUBMISSION
GUIDELINES
“Parameters”
These submission Guidelines (“Parameters”) are general and meant as basic criteria for submitting all content to the magazine.
All submissions are subject to these Parameters and these Guidelines should be read and reviewed before sending content or entering any of our Expos or contests. Everyone submitting content to ZO Magazine is subject to these Guidelines. If you disagree with the Parameters for content submission, please do not submit material.
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions to ZO Expos are always “free” for the first entry. (The $5 fee for Expo entries is paid for by Artitude International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization.) Additional entries (after the first free entry) are charged at a rate noted on each individual published project.
Submission fees for additional entries allow us to offer awards. Fees also help with costs for the Expos and support our mission to broaden positive artistic communications between diverse people around the world.
Generally, we need to garner at least 100 submissions in each category for all Expos to make an award in it (if not otherwise specified).
Unsolicited submissions are welcome, but we must charge a fee for processing unsolicited content at the following rates.
• $5 per poem for poetry (poems should not be over 25 lines, and will not be considered if so)
• $10 for articles, artistic interviews, and fiction between 300 and 700 words
• $20 for articles, artistic interviews, and fiction between 701 to 1500 words – we do not accept unsolicited material over 1500 words
- We do not accept non-relative unsolicited submissions while Expos are in progress
- We do not accept unsolicited editorial content that promotes a product, brand or creative enterprise. If you would like to promote your product, brand, or creative enterprise – join the ZO Community by Advertising or taking a City Sponsor page which is a really fun way to connect. (Page cost starts at $120 annually — and this is the coolest creative advertising you can do in the world — in our opinion!). Cities are sponsored on a first come basis, so do it as soon as you can before someone takes the City you want.
• We are not set up to give editorial feedback at this time
• We do not accept submissions through email. Unsolicited email submissions will go unread.
Content and submissions for ZO Magazine are screened and chosen based on theme and continuity with our magazine’s style. Please review the abundance of material on our site to find out what we like from what has already been published.
ZO is a community of artists with a growing vision. We invite you to fully explore the creative offerings presented by our “different kind of Universe.” You will gather as you read through our content, that we are not a typical business type — hence, most of our outreaches and creative expos have a certain unique tilt. ZO is an experiment in human artistic connection with the high concept of building respect between people, cultures, and creative disciplines while working to promote peace through the arts.
ALL content must be submitted through a Submission Portal that ZO Magazine opens.
2024—2025 ZO Magazine’s 10th Anniversary
HELP US CELEBRATE AND ENTER OUR NEW CREATIVE EXPOS!
EXPOS NOW IN PROGRESS
COVER EXPO
SUBMISSION & INFO
Design a ZO COVER to win awards and publishing to our global audience in 170 Countries
LITERATURE EXPO
SUBMISSION & INFO
Write a Flash Fiction piece detailing your idea of a “New World” to win awards and publishing to our global audience in 170 Countries
POETRY EXPO
SUBMISSION & INFO
Craft it — Write it — Include the words “10 YEARS” — Edit it — then ENTER and Inspire the World!
CREATIVE EXPO PARAMETERS
ZO’s creative Expos are designed as expository contributions to our expanding community of artists and authors. As such, the goals are not only to find the creative piece judged best — but also to reveal the wealth of work that we receive. We have worked hard to provide clear guidelines regarding the Expos and we continually evolve and improve, clarify, and enhance our communications to accurately evaluate and fairly present content.
Creative Submission, Evaluation, and Selection
Most of our Expos run for three to four months, but 2020 began a very unusual worldwide drama. The worldwide pandemic that we all dealt with and continuing global issues have changed access, especially for young artists in high school and college, who are usually a large part of our constituency.
We are extending the time durations for our Expos to offer more time for consideration. It is certainly our feeling that creativity, art, thoughts, and life in general, could stand to be a bit slowed down and more fully enjoyed. During the term of the Expo, content is assessed and rated by a diverse group of evaluators who compile a blind top tier of finalists to be forwarded to Expo Judges. The Judges then rate the blinded submissions with numerical ratings. Those numerical ratings are then averaged, and winners are chosen based on these mathematical calculations.
Per our developing tradition, we may formulate a schedule from other top-tiered entries for feature and publication and post that schedule.
Awards must be claimed within 30 days of notification. If our email (with notification of the award) is not responded to within thirty (30) days, the award will be donated to charity. Any listed cash awards are in U.S. dollars.
We consider our awards a kind of honorarium for great work. We do not ask for exclusivity to publish the works, nor do we need anything other than a photo for art entries. For video entries, we ask that those be published and we judge from the already published work. Creators of the works retain full copyright to their original work, and we only ask for the courtesy of being able to publish the work in perpetuity (especially since we keep an archive of winners to continue to highlight their work). The awards are intended as a token of our appreciation and celebration of your work. For some entering, the awards may cover no more than a nice dinner with friends, for others, it may buy books, (dependent on where you are in the world — help with rent), etc. ZO has a broad array of international viewers, and we are mainly hoping to inspire and provide an enjoyable place for creative sharing.
We have found a lot of the entries we receive to be quirky, avant-garde, often excellently precise, and at other times deliberately abstract — and there are simply only “subjective” rulings for such when weighed together. The very talented international community that we now reach, and decisions on winners, have been very close and are subject to the broad tastes of our diverse community. That said, we have determined that all our viewers and the large constituency of artists that we deal with are all eligible to enter any of the Expos. We debated whether we should allow past winners to enter and have, for the moment, decided that “yes” past winners may enter all Expos. We believe our diverse constituency of evaluators, along with the blind judging does yield a very fair and mathematically derived winner — so if you win 4+ years in a row — congratulations.
Our highest hope is that you are inspired, enlightened, and feel a part of a supportive community when you visit ZO. We want you to have fun with the creative and literary offerings that we present.
Good Luck in all your positive creative endeavors!
Parameters are subject to change and will be announced on this page. All submissions are subject to these parameters and any changes made.
