Your Questions Answered
An ever-growing list of Questions & Answers
-last updated 11-21-2020
1) What can I send in to be published in the magazine?
3) Do I get anything for sending something in?
4) What is the basic layout of a page in the magazine?
5) What image sizes can I send in?
6) How can I tell if an image has 300 DPI? Can I change the DPI?
7) What if my image’s DPI is lower than 300?
9) An article posted in IM is about me…
10) Is Imagine Magazine available to be purchased?
1) What can I send in to be published in the magazine?
Anything! Well, besides porn and things that don’t belong to you. Stories can include erotica; however, we do ask that sex is not the main theme/idea of the story. Here’s a list of different things you can send in:
- Jokes
- Comic Strips
- Reviews
- Interviews
- Essays
- Articles/Editorials
- Photos/Images/Artwork
- Short stories
- Poetry
- Rants
- Experiences
- Tutorials
- Tips and tricks
- Recipes
- Advice
- Thoughts, feelings, or ideas
- Advertisements/Promotions
- News
- Et cetera, et cetera, etc.
There’s no limits to what you can send in. If it can be published and printed, we’d love to include it in our next issue! All submissions can be sent to submissions@imagine-magazine.org or you can Click Here.
If you’re writing something with potentially offensive or disturbing subject matter, and you’re not sure if we’ll accept it or not, ask yourself if your story can be posted at Comicality’s Library, Gay Authors or The Fort Family Community. If it would be accepted at any of those places, it’s more than likely that we’ll accept it here. Of course, if you’d still like to make sure, send an email to submissions@imagine-magazine.org and we’ll help you out.
2) Do I need to proofread my work?
Short answer, yes. Every submission sent in is looked over by one of our editors for obvious issues but spelling and readability is assumed.
Please note that we do not edit your work. It’s your work and we respect that. If you require an editor to help you with the structure of your submission, please mention that with your submission. Otherwise, we’ll just post with the assumption that you would not post something that is not ready to go live.
3) Do I get anything for sending something in?
Besides our undying love and appreciation? The answer is: sometimes. For things like contests and submission drives, we like to offer something in appreciation for your help and participation. Unfortunately, we can’t do this for every submission as it gets quite expensive and the magazine and website are a free service. This means that all prizes are funded out of our own pockets. If we are handing out prizes, we’ll let people know in advance to accepting submissions.
4) What is the basic layout of a page in the magazine?
With our current format, we’re only publishing to the website directly. We’ll update this answer if that ever changes. Typically, sending us in your work in RTF or HTML is best and we let the site determine if anything needs to be adjusted. If Images are to be included, RTF or HTML are the only two formats that will work and maintain your original layout.
5) What image sizes can I send in?
At this time, images can be whatever size you like. Of course, the bigger the image, the better. Larger images look better and it’s much easier to shrink an image than to enlarge it. Enlarging images can often make them blurry and destroy the image’s quality.
Images intended for the article’s cover (the main image that will be displayed as thumbnails in lists and searches throughout the website) are 1022 pixels wide by 589 pixels high, with a resolution of 150 Pixels Per Inch (PPI). If you would like to submit an image to be used as the background for a cover, send an image that is either equal to this or larger in both width and height.
For example, header images created by the Graphics Team are put together in 300 PPI, with a width of 3066 pixels high and 1767 pixels high. That way we can use the same image for nearly all media types, such as print, web and eBook. All we have to do is scale the image down to fit our needs. If at all possible, this is our favorite size for header images.
6) How can I tell if an image has 300 PPI? Can I change the PPI?
On a Windows Machine: Right click the image on your computer and select “Properties” then select the tab labeled “Details”. On the third section down, below “Description” and “Origin”, you’ll see the title “Image” Below that is where you’ll find the width, height, and horizontal and vertical resolutions. Both the horizontal and vertical resolutions should say 300 dpi.
On a Mac: Open the image in Preview, click Tools > Show Inspector. Image DPI will be toward the bottom of the resulting popup window.
7) What if my image’s PPI is lower than 300?
We will attempt to convert all images sent to us to 300 ppi. For this reason, smaller images can lose quality and become blury or pixelated in appearence. That is why we ask, if your image is under 300dpi, that you make sure that its width and height are at least 1000 by 1000 pixels. If your image’s resolution is less than 72 ppi, we will not be able to convert it.
We’re glad you asked! A lot of email services, like Hotmail and Yahoo, automatically display attached images as thumbnails or slideshows or even a gallery. This is wonderful for showing friends and family your images, but it can be bad for the image’s resolution. Typically, when you upload an image into an online gallery or slideshow (example: dragging and dropping into the email message), the image’s resolution reduces to 72 ppi, even if it was set to 300 before you uploaded it. This is done to save storage space and delivery time. Images with 300 ppi are a lot larger than ones with 72.
To prevent this from happening, you can either attach your images as a file attachment, or, even better, compress your images (even if it’s just one) into a .ZIP archive.
To do this on Windows:
- Highlight the desired images/files and right-click on them.
- In the menu that appears find and select “Send to“.
- When your cursor hovers over the “Send to” option, a new, hidden menu will appear. Select “Compressed (zipped) folder“
To do this on a Mac:
- Highlight the desired images/files and right-click on them.
- In the menu that appears find and select Compress “File Name” -or- “(#) Items”.
- Your computer will just create a Zip file with the same name in the same folder (It will just be named Archive.zip if there is more than one file. You can rename that to whatever you like.)
The images/files will automatically compress when you do this. After that, all you have to do is attach the zipped archive to an email and send it to us. If your archive is more than 10MB there’s a chance your email provider will reject the attachment. If this is the case, try using a cloud service like DropBox, Google Drive or Copy and upload the archive there. To share with us all you have to do is include the public link in the email you send us.
9) An article posted in IM is about me…
There are a few articles posted in Imagine Magazine that focus on new talent. Actors, Artists, Models, Inventors… These articles are posted to bring much-deserved attention to young talent all over the world in the form of a review. They are posted as inspirational and in appreciation of this talent and there is no ownership of material claimed by Imagine Magazine. If you find yourself in the position of stumbling across an article that you were unaware of and would like to have information changed, have official links to your work added, information updated and reposted, or even removed; we are happy to accommodate you as the work put in is in response to your amazing contribution to all of our lives. Feel free to contact us at admin@imagine-magazine.org and please note the issue you are featured in. If you would appreciate a repost to expose the newly added or updated material, just let us know and we’ll be sure to add you to the next issue!
9) Is Imagine Magazine available to be purchased?
It makes me smile when I receive an email asking how to subscribe and receive a printed copy of IM, and it’s happened quite a few times. As newer visitors to the site may not know, Imagine Magazine was never intended to become a circulated publication as it was intended for members of a very specific reader’s community. Run by and read by many who were survivors of many kinds of abuse, including hazing or physical abuse regarding sexuality, Imagine was a way to give a specific group of people a place to find others who were dealing with the same issues and needed something inspirational to hold on to while getting a smile in the process. It was best explained in: The House That Comsie Built – Imagine Magazine Reboot so, give that a read through.