submission requirements

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

Touchstone accepts original submissions for the following departments:

—Features
—Views
—Communiqués

Touchstone does not accept:

—Fiction, poetry, or cartoons
—Devotional articles or sermons
—Reviews of current or recent movies
—Simultaneous submissions
—Previously published articles, with rare exceptions subject to the following conditions:

(a) the readership of the magazine or website where the article first appeared does not overlap with ours;
(b) you are willing if necessary to rework the article for our purposes; and
(c) you own the copyright to the article.

NOTE: Submitting a book review? Click here.

submitting an article

You may send a query to the editor at submissions@touchstonemag.com regarding an article if you are not sure that what you have in mind will work for Touchstone. Please note that a positive response to a query does not guarantee acceptance of the submitted article, which will be evaluated separately.

Articles should be submitted by e-mail, as an attached Microsoft Word file, and addressed to submissions@touchstonemag.com.

The first page of the article should also contain your name and contact information (postal and email addresses and phone number).

Articles should be accompanied by a cover letter introducing yourself, briefly describing your article, and containing your contact information (email and postal addresses and phone number). Please include a brief biographical note of 40 to 50 words that could be published with your article, specifying your profession or occupation, your latest book or other identifying mark (office in a national organization, for example), your family (if you wish), and your church affiliation. See the magazine for examples.

With rare exceptions, we do not use endnotes, 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 . . .”).

The articles in Touchstone are closely edited. Submitting an article indicates agreement to work with the editor in creating an article in our style and to our standards.

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

Articles should be of the following lengths (character counts include spaces):

—Features: between 18,000 and 28,000 characters (3,000–5,000 words)
—Views: between 5,000 and 12,000 characters (1,000–2,000 words)
—Communiqués: between 7,000 and 12,000 characters (1,500–2,000 words)

On Lewis and Tolkien: Touchstone has a special interest in the work of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, but the massive proliferation of secondary literature on these authors, including submissions to this journal, has made it necessary that we only accept the especially interesting or illuminating. As their lives and writings are parsed ever finer we find less of what we receive passing these tests. This being said, we will be glad to read over what we are sent, but ask the author not to be excessively disappointed if even a well-written manuscript is turned down.

payment & rights

Original Features, Views, and Communiqués will be paid at the rate of 20 cents per word 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

—that we retain the right to use your article without further payment in any Touchstone anthologies, reprints, audio recordings, or electronic formats (online, CD-rom, etc.). These conditions apply to a reprinted article that has been reworked for publication in Touchstone.

(Revised December 18, 2014)