Touchstone Submission Requirements

If you are not well acquainted with Touchstone, before submitting an article, please read several copies of the magazine or a selection of the articles on our website to see the subjects we treat and the way we treat them.

Articles must be written for a broad audience of traditional Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox believers.

Touchstone accepts original submissions for the following departments:

• Features (18,000–28,000 characters or 3,000–5,000 words)
• Views (5,000–12,000 characters or 1,000–2,000 words)
• Communiqués (7,000–12,000 characters or 1,500–2,000 words)
• Book reviews (4,000–10,000 characters or 700–1,500 words)

Touchstone does not accept:

• Fiction, poetry, or cartoons
• Devotional articles or sermons
• Movie reviews
• Simultaneous submissions
• Previously published articles

Submitting an Article:

• Articles must be submitted by e-mail, as an attached Microsoft Word file with a cover letter, and addressed only to submissions@touchstonemag.com.
• The cover letter must include your contact info, a brief description of your article, and a biographical note of 40 to 50 words that could be published with your article, if accepted. (See the magazine for examples of bio notes.)
• The first page of your article should contain your name, postal and email addresses, and phone number.
• We do not use footnotes, so necessary citations should be worked into the body of the text (e.g., “In his book How to Train Koala Bears, John Smith argues . . .”).
• Book reviews should be of recent books, i.e., with the current or previous year's publication date. A full bibliographic citation should appear at the beginning of the review, which includes: the book title in italics; the author or editor; the publisher and date of publication; the number of pages, price, and cover type. Example:

  The New Renan
  Emil Trautt, ed. and trans.
  Éditions LaGrange, 2015
  332 pages, $24.95, hardcover

Submissions are evaluated by a group of reviewers, a process that may take up to six weeks.

Touchstone subjects all accepted submissions to rigorous editing, with particular attention to clarity and economy of expression. Submitting an article indicates agreement to work with the editor in creating an article in our style and to our standards. The author will have an opportunity to review and approve the “house-edited” version of his article before press-time. No piece will be published that does not meet its author's approval, but if the editor and author cannot agree on the final form, it is possible that the article could die on the vine.

If you are not sure that what you have in mind to write will work for Touchstone, you may send a preliminary query to the editor at submissions@touchstonemag.com, outlining your idea. Note that a positive response to a query does not guarantee acceptance of the submitted article, which will be evaluated separately.

Payment & Rights:

Original features, Views, communiqués, and reviews will be paid at the rate of 20 cents per word as published in the final version.

Authors receive two complimentary copies of the issue in which their piece is published. Additional copies may be purchased separately.

Touchstone buys the right to the first publication of an original article, with the following conditions:

• that the article not appear elsewhere (including web pages) for 90 days from the date of publication in Touchstone;
• that whenever it is reprinted elsewhere (including on web pages), the following notice be included with it: “This article first appeared in the _____ issue of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity (www.touchstonemag.com)”;
• that we retain the right to use, without further payment, a portion or description of your article with your name in our promotional materials; and
• that we retain the right to use your article without further payment in any Touchstone anthologies, reprints, audio recordings, or online.

These conditions also apply to a reprinted article that has been reworked for publication in Touchstone.

(Revised July 27, 2023)