User contributions are always welcome!

[Bob Russell]

Just a reminder that many of our best stories come from you, the readers, who have about a billion eyes on the news around the world. That should beat the handful of eyes we have as editors, especially for sources that are off the beaten path which we may not have the opportunity to see!

So feel free to contact us with the "Submit News!" link in the top right corner. That will get a lot of attention because it creates an email that goes to all the editors. Unfortunately, that's also a nuisance when it turns out to be spam, but that's life!

If you are a member (very simple to sign up, by the way), then another way of contacting one of the editors or any MobileRead member is to either send a private message, or an email by clicking on the person's name link, say right next to a post. You'll find options to send your message by private message or email. A private message will initiate a pop up message to notify the person you are sending the message to. No, it's not annoying like web site pop ups. It's actually convenient, and easy to do if you want to contact an editor with a personal note. If you are spamming, please don't bother.

When you do submit news to us, please remember that we do this for fun in our spare time, and there's not usually a lot of spare time to go around. Certain weeks we might barely be keeping our heads above water, so sometimes you might not hear back from us. Please forgive us if that happens. And we might not always have the desire or energy to post what has been submitted. We're not trying to be a pain in the neck, I'm just telling you like it is in the real world.

Also remember that the more your submission is packaged up like a ready to publish story, that doesn't lack info or look like a press release, the more likely it is to get posted. It has to be on topic of course, but we love those stories that are "ready to go". Maybe one day when we get to be as big as Slashdot, we'll be as strict as they are about submissions, and as careful about spelling and grammar too I suppose, but for now we can afford to keep the personal touch.

So if you can handle the caveats, please send us your news! If you only have time to give us a link and a sentence or two to tell us what it's about and why it's interesting, send it on! If it catches our attention, you might just see it appear on the front page.

And one more thing... if you do contact us, please don't forget to include an email address where we can contact you if we have questions, want to thank you, or maybe we just want to say "hi!"

Thanks to all those that have submitted news, and for all the stories that I'm sure we'll get in the future.

P.S. In case you're wondering what caused me to think of this, we got a submission from someone trying to locate information for the editors to initiate contact. But no email address in the message, so we can't respond.

[TadW]

I didn't know it was possible to submit news! Will remember next time I see something interesting online... though usually you guys beat me in time.