Want to Write for Scarleteen?

Diversity of voices and perspectives is important to our organization and our users. So is having some of the best content for young people about sex, sexuality, relationships and identities there is. That's where you could come in!
We have and want more great, original and radical writers, sex, bodies and relationships educators and thinkers on our freelance team. We welcome all kinds of voices, though we are especially seeking queer and LGBTQA+ writers, BIPOC writers, women, trans and nonbinary writers, people with disabilities, young writers and other marginalized and underrepresented groups. We do our best to make writing with us a positive, relaxed and supportive experience. Our writers typically report having a very good experience working with us, and feeling like both they and their work were treated with care and respect. We are always very happy to work with young or emerging writers and have often been the first place many established writers in our subject areas have been published. We think Scarleteen is a great place to get started as a writer.

Pitching

Before pitching, please read the content of this page first. We do not accept nor reply to spam, PR/SEO seeking or mass-submitted pitches, nor are we interested in pitches that are not based off the list on this page of topic areas we are looking for. Our successful model of sex education is based in creating content centered in on what our users and readers show an express need or want for. Pitches submitted outside the format we ask for here will not be accepted nor recieve a reply.

Style and form

Content at Scarleteen is high quality and is usually created with evergreen intent. We welcome young or otherwise newer writers, but need writers able to write well, with clean, clear copy, and to do so inclusively, considering factors like diversity of economic class, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, ability and agency. Scarleteen is often ahead of the curve with inclusion in this field, so feel free to look at current pieces as a guide.

Writers here must also demonstrate respect for young people, presenting themselves as a helper, not a parent or director. Young people trust Scarleteen as a place that has and always conveys a real value of them as whole people with agency. If you're familiar with our content, you know already that it is primarily user-driven; based in what users have expressed to us meets their needs. It is friendly and accessible in style, plain and direct in tone, while treating sensitive topics with the sensitivity and sometimes mutual vulnerability they truly demand. We need writers who can give our users depth and expansiveness, and the feeling of someone really taking the time to talk with them in a warm and thoughtful way. Surfacey, purposefully provocative or glib sex talk just doesn't cut it here: our readers both deserve and expect realness from us.

Currently, our site serves around  million unique readers a year. Many likeminded organizations and media services also link to our content, so your work will be seen widely. Scarleteen is and remains the most widely used site specifically for young people seeking out sex and relationships information, so it's a great place to get targeted readers for that content.

Our users -- and thus, your readers -- are primarily between the ages of 15 and 25, and live all over the world. About 50% of our users are in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, and the other half are in the rest of world. Our readership is highly diverse.

Pay and Word Count

Our current base pay rate is $150, paid to you by direct deposit as an independent contractor, usually within a week of publication (and no more than 30 days after publication). We do not support work-for-hire: we share copyright, so you retain the rights to your work. You may reprint or republish as you like after a piece has been exclusive to us first for one month.

Writers who have written three or more pieces with us who continue to work with us are advanced to $175 per piece. Writers who have written nine or more pieces receive $200 per piece with their tenth piece. Whatever your pay rate, it is always okay to try and negotiate a different rate with us, we just won't always have the fiscal flexibility to pay at higher rates than these. We also accept and appreciate donating pay for written work back to the organization for those who want to and are able.

There is no set word count for pieces for us.  Pieces here can and often do vary a great deal in length: if the piece is engaging, how long or short a piece is is mostly influenced by the topic at hand. Human sexuality and relationships are  complex topics, so  very short pieces are not often right for us: clear, engaging longform, or a longer series made of short pieces, tends to be more of what our readers want and respond to. We expect writers to say as much or as little about something as needs be said for a reader to benefit and clearly understand, and to do so in an engaging way. Literacy tends to be high for many of our users, but we still ask that writers do their best to use plain language and explain any terms or acronyms. Demystification of all the things is the name of the game around here. We do like publishing series here, so if you have a series in mind, let us lknow in your pitch! Series are paid per published piece of the series, starting at $150.

The Process

Here's the way a piece usually goes from start to finish with us.

1. You look around the site, including our publicly posted direct services (that's the message boards and advice columns), and see if the tone, style and subject matter here feel like a good fit. Please familiarize yourself with our content and style before pitching: some of the most popular current styles of internet content -- super snappy, snarky and short, or where much of the content is image-based -- are not a good fit for us.

2. You look at the current needs listed below for ideas, throw us a couple examples of your writing, let us know where you have been published before if you have, and a pitch in email based on that list. We have been publishing for getting close to 25 years now, it's helpful to use our search function first to be sure we don't already have what you're pitching. All pitches should be emailed to me, Heather Corinna, at editorialATscarleteenDOTcom. We neither accept nor respond to auto-generated or mass pitches, or to unsolicited submissions of whole content. Do not send these to us.

3. We look at what you send. If we're not interested and you have pitched within our guidelines, we'll get back to you with either a rejection or a request for a different pitch. If we are interested in your pitch, I'll email you , and we can set a deadline for a first draft, hammer out any other details or questions, and then you can get cracking. We care a great deal about fair conditions and value for labor: we believe the agreements we suggest and ask for respect the rights and value of our content creators and collaborators, but if you have any special needs or concerns with it, you can always let us know and we're happy to consider adjustments or changes. Please turn your files in as either Microsoft Word or Apple Pages (Google Docs allows you to save files as Word).

4. You submit a first draft.  If it looks like something we just can't work with, or will have to do a lot of work on ourselves, wemay decline taking it any further. If it looks solid, we will review, leave notes and edits using track changes, and then you'll ideally make another draft based on those notes and edits. The editorial process here is relaxed and collaborative, so we can go back and forth in email for a while if needed.

When working with your document, please do NOT remove anything in track changes, nor accept or delete any changes.  Instead, you'll just leave what's fine with you per edits without touching it or make changes asked for. For any edits you don't like or want to reject, you can add comments/notes to or within the track changes. We also may have some back and forth in comments, or in email.

5. Ideally, we get to a finish within two rounds of edits, but sometimes it takes three.  If it's looking like more than that, we may or may not continue work on the piece, but do always pay kill fees if we decide not to run or finish a piece after the second draft. If a piece looks good to go, we'll polish it up any more as needed, finalize all the track changes, and publish and promote the piece. We email you to let you know when it goes live, and you then invoice us. We'll get you in our payroll system and will pay you within net30, though most typically payment clears in a week or two.

This whole process can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months, depending on the length of the piece, how quickly or slowly you and we are working, and where it fits with our editorial schedule.

Current Topic Needs (last updated 1/23/24):

  • Content by and for intersex readers, or by intersex writers for parents/guardians of other intersex people
  • Content by and for neuroatypical readers
  • Content by and for fat readers
  • Disability content for and ideally also by those with cognitive disability, and disabilities that limit mobility
  • Pieces on trans and queer joy
  • Pieces by and for trans women, especially BIPOC trans women
  • Content expressly for cishet people that is socially progressive and modern, not based in comphet
  • Content by Black and indigenous writers
  • Content from writers in or from India, Australia, the UK, Pakistan and the Pacific Islands
  • Pieces on sex and sexuality for those with mental illness
  • Pleasure-focused content (it need not be expressly sexual: we want content about diverse avenues in and experiences of pleasure)
  • Pregnancy and young parenting content, including: going through a pregnancy, healthcare and choices, childcare, managing intimate relationships while pregnant/parenting, body changes and issues, self-care
  • Youth rights guides
  • Attachment styles and other relationship and intimacy frameworks
  • Healing from sexual assault or abuse
  • Living with HIV or other sexually transmitted (or assumed to be sexually transmitted) illnesses
  • How to survive while living in abuse a reader can't currently leave or get away from (eg, a legal minor in an abusive home)
  • Learning to create and nurture healthy relationships for those who have grown up with normalized abuse or dysfunction
  • Processing and managing familial conflicts with sexuality or intimate relationships
  • Learning to feel more comfortable with sexuality, sexual identity and sexual interactions