We respect your right to creativity and we are not attempting to stifle that in any way. However, just as a painter cannot submit a work to a gallery if it's painted on a building or a boulder, we cannot use articles that don't comply with our needs. It is our intent to work with you and hope that you will work with us. To these ends, we have installed software to make your job, and ours, much more effective, efficient and productive, while remaining easy to use and learn.

Our Pledge
It is our intent at all times to display your work in the best possible manner. We will always respect the quality of the work you submit and we've accepted. If at any time you are dissatisfied with something, please let us know immediately. We pledge further to work with you to develop a satisfactory reasonable design to fit your needs.

Submitting Your Work

• You should first begin by familiarizing yourself with our Blog at www.epicurus.com/blog. Once familiar with our articles, the style and layout, and our manner of publishing, we can establish an account for successful canditates to write directly to the EGO blog, with your full byline. We do not, however, recommend you publish your email address, for security purposes. All account information in your profile is subject to your own control.
• Articles should be written in a typical word processing program such as Word but may be written directly into our publishing software.
• Do not use bold, underscoring, changes in fonts, special symbols like degrees, fractions, bullets, highlighting, word art, etc. Simply copy and paste your basic article into our software and edit the format, using the tools provided to add such visual components as bold, underscore, italic or other text formatting. Doing this allows you complete control over how the content will look, though you must remember that the article will follow the site's style sheet, so even if you were to add a text style change to some portions, the style sheet will take over and keep the overall site formatting.
• Do not change your fonts. Again, the site's style sheets will prevail in setting the basic format of text.
• The length of your writing is a major issue. The Internet is not a print medium and you're not writing the great American novel on a website. You should not expect that the reader will curl up with a monitor at night and read your piece before going to sleep. It is a medium of fast, brief site bites. Quick information is the name of the game. So, you need to make the articles short, sweet and to the point in 1,000 words or less. Now there are times when a piece deserves to be longer. If you plan a long work, write to us first. We may already have a long piece scheduled for that month and we might plan your work for the following week or month. In writing long pieces, it is important that YOU, not us, break it up into multiple, logical pages. A series looks a lot better than a boring long piece and it provides you, as a writer, with a greater opportunity to capture and retain readership.
• As mentioned earlier, your work is submitted directly online, provided you have a user ID and password to our publishing system. Once there, you may submit a post, schedule it, and save it as a draft. Once we see you've submitted a draft, we'll read it, make any requisite editorial changes and submit it or decline it.
• Photographs should be sent as jpg, gif or .png images and must be of the finest quality. The resolution should be 72 dpi. Your photos should be no wider than 250 pixels to properly fit within the framework of our pages. You upload them and can place the images precisely where you want them to be, however, it is critical that you understand, the style sheets will force the images to be on the left side of the page. No matter how hard you try to position it on the right, it will always be on the left.
• The title of your article is again, your choice, however, it is subject to editorial approval.
• The use of colorful language is limited. We endeavor to be a family-oriented site, and refrain completely from foul or suggestive language. However, we don't have a problem with a colorful, innovative phrase here and there, even if the context is intended to be a bit off-color. Certain words, particularly racial, sexual or ethnic slurs are strictly forbidden and should we discover your attempt to submit such language, we shall permanently suspend your account and you will be terminated from our webiste.
• Sound files are not acceptable. The quality and volume consistency of homemade sound files is terrible. Sounds are also dependant upon the viewer's soundcard. What comes across perfectly on your system, may sound like garbled noise somewhere else. Even midi files may sound bad. Recently, in an unrelated circumstance, a very melodious piano concerto was played on a computer with an excellent soundcard. Moved to another with a lesser card, it made one cringe, sounding more like chalk on a slate.

Copyrights
The text or photos you submit are your property. They are here only as a vehicle for the work. You have the right to reject the style in which the article is displayed and to demand it's removal. You may sell the work elsewhere and request that it be promptly removed. Your requests, in writing (by email) will be honored.

Commercial Issues
First and foremost, Epicurus is a consulting company, and as such, we have clients for whom we provide services. Sometimes that includes public relations and marketing. When a writer submits a piece for publication, we first analyze it to determine if the writer has written about our client, their competitors or clients of our competitors. We evaluate, on a case-by-case basis, what the writer has said and what we may say in print. Some information that might be available to a writer, for example, may be subject to a confidentiality agreement we may have, or a writer could have suggested after writing about our client, that a competitor of theirs is superior. We will make necessary, and reasonable adjustments to such articles to keep us in compliance with contracts and agreements. Furthermore, we will not directly promote the services of our competitors in our websites. Without trying to be unreasonable, we might accept a review of a restaurant someone else worked on, but we wouldn't permit "it is the brainchild of noted consultant John Doe". Since John Doe is not one of our consultants, we cannot promote him. We would simply edit such reference out. We respect the fact that you, as a writer don't know who is whom, or which propertiles are clients and which are not. We also don't expect you have knowledge of our contracts, so it's completely up to us to determine. We will, of course, inform you about such changes before the piece is published, whereever time permits.

In regards to writing about commercial products, though the same rules apply as above, we do encourage writers to include references to products and services. For example, in writing about a visit to New York, it's reasonable to talk about airport shuttle services, limousines, florists and the like. We generally have little or no problem with such references, nor to books, movies (not adult in nature), theatrical performances, etc. Our only concern here is whether you're accepting financial rewards for writing. Receiving samples is one thing, but being paid is another. Should we determine that a writer is accepting cash or payment for writing about a product or service, we shall terminate the writer immediately. No kidding.

Contacting Us
Your primary contact is and must remain the Editor in Chief. Presently, we are seeking a candidate for thate role, so in the interim, contact our Publisher, Robert Angelone. It is the Editor's responsibility to communicate any problems, concerns or difficulties to the Publisher, under normal circumstances.