Guidelines for submitting your review to Rain Taxi

Rain Taxi publishes work by writers in all stages of their careers. Our quarterly magazine provides a place for the spirited exchange of ideas about books, particularly those overlooked by mainstream review media. While Rain Taxi focuses on current releases, it also devotes space to the discussion of older works that continue to resonate. Interviews, essays, and "Widely Unavailable" (reviews of out-of-print books) are also regular features of the magazine.

Our print issues usually appear in March, June, September, and December. An accompanying Online Edition with additional, original material is published shortly after each print issue. Submissions are accepted year-round, except for the months of June and December. Please note also that we do not accept submissions of original poetry or fiction.

Before submitting a review to Rain Taxi, we ask that you please carefully review our guidelines.

ETHICAL AND EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

Rain Taxi is dedicated to publishing unbiased, objective reviews. If you have a connection with the author or press, please disclose it upon submission. Not all relationships constitute conflicts of interest, but we respectfully request your candor regarding any relationships. If you are friends with an author and would like to highlight their work, please feel free to email us and suggest a review, or consider pitching an interview instead.

We discourage reviewers from having any direct contact with the author or publisher prior to submitting a review. If it is necessary to clarify facts, our editorial staff can handle that for you. If you must contact the author or publisher, please be careful to ask specific questions rather than sending them the entire review for approval, and please disclose the extent of your communications upon submission.
Rain Taxi publishes original work that has not appeared previously in any other venue, including magazines, newspapers, personal web sites or blogs, and mass emails.

We reserve the right to edit, though major content or style edits are always discussed with the writer before publication. We also reserve the right not to publish work that we feel does not meet our editorial standards or is in conflict with our mission and aesthetic.
Material may be published, at our discretion, in either our print issue, Rain Taxi Review of Books, or in our Online Edition at www.raintaxi.com. Please disclose upon submission if you have a strong preference for either format.

If you become a regular reviewer for Rain Taxi, note that we assign books according to the reviewer's interest. If a book assigned for review turns out to be uninspiring, we will usually be happy to assign something else. While we generally prefer to use our limited space for discussion of books that are worthwhile, negative reviews that engage larger issues are certainly welcome. Article lengths and deadlines are determined upon assignment.

Rain Taxi holds the copyright to all articles published. Copyright reverts to the author one year after publication, though Rain Taxi should always be credited as the original source. Please discuss with us any reprint plans.

Our contributing writers are truly “contributing”—as a nonprofit organization, Rain Taxi does not have the means to pay (except in copies) the more than five dozen writers who write for each issue. We invest our resources instead in maintaining our high circulation and good reputation, making Rain Taxi a place where our contributing writers will be widely read and proud to be published.

HOW TO SUBMIT

1. We encourage you to submit by email. Send your review submissions to info@raintaxi.com. Please submit your review as a Microsoft Word or RTF attachment, or pasted into the body of your email. If sending via snail mail, please use our postal address, and include a SASE or email address for response:

Rain Taxi
PO Box 3840
Minneapolis, MN 55403

2. Please include a cover letter or email that indicates you: a) are submitting an original piece that has neither been published nor is under consideration elsewhere; b) are familiar with Rain Taxi through its print magazine or Online Edition; c) have read and agree with our ethical and editorial guidelines. Please disclose any relationships or communications with the author or publisher.

3. We encourage you to include in your cover letter a note about your background, reading interests, favorite authors, and other publications (if any).

4. If submitting a review, send something approximately 500 words in length, and please indicate how you obtained the book you have selected. Please include book title, author, publisher, and price as well as page numbers for all quotations. (If submitting an interview or essay, please provide any background information that may help us evaluate it.) Writers who have previously published reviews in newspapers or magazines and would like to be considered for an assignment may send three samples instead of newly written work.

5. We do not accept simultaneous submissions. We normally respond within one month. Please do not send submissions during the months of December and June.