AboutShanghai welcomes outside submissions from qualified, competent photographers and writers of content as it pertains to photographs, news and tourist articles, reviews of events and opinion or editorial content pertaining to Shanghai and surrounding area events. If you are interested in submitting such an item, you may do so by emailing us directly, but before doing so, you must understand that you are bound by the following terms:

As a writer for AboutShanghai, what you’ll get is:

1. Exposure. If you’re looking to break in to the travel, business or related writing field, there’s no better way to do it than with regular contributions to an established, successful publication.
2. Experience. No matter how many times you’ve done this before, an extra layer of refinement is always helpful. Our editors will work with you, on our private, writers-only forums, to workshop your articles to insure they are entirely free of errors, and appear in their best possible form, before they go to print.
3. Promotion. As a writer or photographer for AboutShanghai, we allow you to include a link to your personal or professional website at the bottom of your article. So if you have a site dedicated to travel, wellness or anything else you wish to promote, we will link to it at the bottom of every article of yours that we publish.
4. Press Credentials. Once you’ve established yourself as a contributor to AboutShanghai, we’ll email you PDF copies of your press pass, which you can print, laminate and wear around your neck with pride. Such a legitimate press pass can earn you backstage admission to sold out events, as well as up-close meetings with entertainment and business professionals across all related sectors.
5. Inclusion to our masthead. Once you’ve established yourself as a contributor for AboutShanghai, you’ll be eligible to be listed on our staff page with a photo, short biography and a link to your site if you so desire. With the number of readers clicking through to our staff page each month, this can be a huge boost to your credibility as a writer or photographer.
6. Periodic prizes, incentives and freebies. We routinely receive free merchandise for media review, and as often as not, we don’t have time to deal with these personally. If you’d like the newest edition of a travel book, noise canceling headphones, shoes or any number from an odd assortment of other things, we’ll have these to hand out to our top writers each month.
7. Be published in print. From time to time we will publish limited edition travel, tourism, business and expat guidance books. It is almost certain that your published articles would be included in such a book, so within six to twelve months of coming on as a writer, you would have a print-edition contributing author credit you can claim.
8. Uncommon freedom. If you don’t wish to accept our editorial oversight, that is up to you. If you have a unique style not favored by other publishers, you can still find a home with us. If you want to cover something exceptionally rare, perfectly ubiquitous or somewhere in between, you are free to do so. We don’t restrict what topics our writers may cover, and we never censor our writers for anything but profanity. If you have great photos from your last (or current) trip you want to write up, we’re anxious to see what you have.
9. No restrictive guidelines. If you want to write 100-word articles, you can do it. If you want to write 3,000 word articles, you can do that too. Whether you want to write up a ton of hotel reviews, a handful of offbeat nightclub reviews, or establish an editorial column about what really burns you in Shanghai, you’ll always have the editorial freedom to discover and share your voice.
10. Equal license to your works. Although AboutShanghai reserves unlimited rights in perpetuity to use your works, we do not restrict your ability to use it as well. This means that, though we may publish your article and include it in a book, it doesn’t preclude your ability to post it to your blog, sell it to a newspaper, or use it in your own book. The world of publication is big enough that we’re all wise to share our works as far and wide as we’re able.

Bear in mind that our current budget is not sufficient to hire additional staff at this time, but this can change quickly, and when it does, we’ll first pay our existing staff before seeking new writers. We will retain full rights to publish, print and reprint articles and photographs submitted, but original author credit will always be retained. If your article is reprinted into our travel guide or advice books, which is exceptionally likely, you will be given your due author credit, though our current revenue model does not afford for royalty payment or tracking.

It should be noted that in order for us to remain an active news source available to westerns residing in China we must abide by the guidelines as set forth by GAPP, the General Administration for Press and Publication.

Regular writers (defined as those who submit more than five published articles per month) may be permitted to have their author biography listed on our author biography page, but this will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

If you are submitting your photo, article, graphic or other media, you assert that you are the original author and that you have unlimited, exclusive rights to grant us permission to publish the article.

If you are submitting your photo, article, graphic or other media as part of a promotion or giveaway promotion, you acknowledge that we retain unlimited, exclusive rights to use said submission, regardless of whether or not your submission wins the prize or top spot.

If your photo, article, graphic or other media also appears on another site, you assert that you are regardless capable and qualified to grant AboutShanghai these publication rights. If it is published elsewhere, please advise us of this matter.

To learn about GAPP’s Guidelines visit The Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s Virtual Academy.