Update: Why Was My Article Not Accepted.

Unfortunately, You&Me lacks the resources to dialogue with all our potential contributors. And even more unfortunately, we are not able to accept submissions from all those who query us. So we have created this blog post with an update on "why was my story not accepted?" in hopes that it will answer that question for those that wish to know.

Here are the chief reasons we cannot use a queried submission--not necessarily in order, but mostly so.

1. The query was for a work that was not within our content guidelines. For example: poetry, cartoons, fiction, advertising, "guest posts," factual or informative articles more suited for Wikipedia, articles not on medical topics.

2. We already have enough articles on a particular topic or theme. You&Me strives to represent a broad range of conditions and themes around medical topics, so we restrict the number of articles we will accept on any one topic. 

3. The article tries to address too broad a range of experience. A thousand word article that covers everything that happened to someone from childhood on is just going to turn into a list, and not do justice to someone's story--and not have any impact for our readers.

4. The article was about someone other than the writer. Due to privacy concerns, You&Me is very restrictive about accepting articles that discuss the health information of someone other than the writer.

5. The article is potentially libelous.

6. The query displayed a lack of writing skills or understanding of how to approach an editor such that any submission would clearly be too problematic to accept. You will note that this reason is far down on the list of "whys" and is not the chief reason that we do not accept an article, although it does at times occur.

We hope this list is helpful to both those whose submission query was not accepted and those contemplating a query. We don't actually enjoy turning down a query, and we do appreciate that each and every query represents an investment of time an energy on the part of the writer. So thank you to everyone who queries us, even if we cannot use your submission.