Rules and Submission Guidelines

[klb]

These are the rules and submission guidelines for the thirteenth annual Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology. See this post for general information about the anthology.

Basic Rules

• Each reader can make up to 5 podfics to include in the anthology (though an unlimited number may be included in the spreadsheet/AO3 collection), and each story should be no more than 1500 words.


• All stories should focus on characters who identify as female within the story.


• All fandoms, including rpf fandoms, are eligible.


• All podfics should be submitted in mp3 format.


• The submission deadline is February 14th. As long as it is still the day of the deadline anywhere on Earth, you are allowed to submit podfics.


• Effects, soundscaping, and underscoring are fine, but please do not use intro or outro music in the version of the podfic you submit for the Anthology (just for the sake of time—it's usually hours long, so we'd like to keep each podficlet within it to the header info we requested, the words of the story, and "the end" in order to not expand the time further.) If you'd like to add in music to the version that you crosspost or that goes into the excel spreadsheet of individual podficlets, that's totally fine!


• All ratings are allowed

Submission Guidelines
For the sake of consistency within the anthology, we'd like to ask that everyone follow these guidelines:

Audio Guidelines (required):

1. All recordings should begin and end with two seconds of silence.


2. Each reading should begin, "[Title], written by [author], read by [reader]. Fandom: [Fandom]."


3. Verbal warnings or content notes are required for sexual assault, major character death, racism, slurs, depictions of hate crimes, and graphic violence. Warnings for other common triggers are recommended but not required. Warnings do not need to be detailed and can simply be given by saying "Warning for [trigger]" or a similar statement. Please see this document created by the mods of the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology for more information on how and when to use warnings.


4. Each reading should end with "The End".


5. To help make sure the volume across the anthology is consistent, we are providing a benchmark volume file to use for volume-matching. Please make sure that your own podfics are approximately matched to this volume. One way is to listen to the benchmark at a comfortable volume, then listen to your file, and if you don't find the transition jarring or feel a need to turn the volume up or down when the file switches, you're good! If you aren't sure how to adjust volume, in Audacity it's Amplify under the Effects menu, and in Garageband it's track volume (the blue line here). The benchmark file has been set to the Auphonic defaults, so another method is to use Auphonic to adjust your podfics to match. If you have more questions, feel free to ask in the comments! The benchmark volume file is here (right-click save to download).

Text Guidelines (Optional):

- We suggest that your metadata follow this format:

Name: Title
Artist: readername (reader) & authorname (author)
Year: 2023
Album: Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology XIII
Comments: Text at: http://link
Genre: Podfic

Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology XI Info Post

[klb]

It’s time for the eleventh annual Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology! As always, we'll be collecting short lady-centric podfics by different readers in different fandoms to release as an anthology and as a collection of individual files.

This year's submission deadline is February 14th, and we will post on February 28th.

Changes this year:

• We have simplified the formatting for our written metadata, and we have changed it from being required to being optional. (Please note that the audio guidelines are still required.)


• We are now requiring warnings included in the audio for the following: sexual assault, major character death, racism, slurs, depictions of hate crimes, and graphic violence.


• Participants now have the option to use auphonic.com for volume leveling, as we have aligned our benchmark volume file to auphonic’s default volume settings.

The theme for this year's anthology is representation. It's optional—all podfics are welcome as long as they follow the rules laid out in the Submission Guidelines—but feel free to let it inspire you if you'd like.

If you are not familiar with this project, you can see the previous ten anthologies here.

To Podficcers: Interested in participating? We'd love to have you. This should be a low-stress project, even for people who are new to podficcing, due to the word-count: 1500 words or less (with many being as short as 1-2 minutes). If you'd like to record something for this anthology, please fill out this quick google form and we'll send you the link to the spreadsheet where we'll be keeping track of all the podfics. If you would prefer to interface via email instead of using the form/spreadsheet, you can leave us your email address in a comment on this post or by sending a private message to us on our Dreamwidth, Twitter, or Tumblr, and we will reach out to get you set up.

Here are some good places for finding short fics about female characters:
-The Women Being Awesome, Female Characters, Female Character of Color, POV Female Character, and Female Relationships tags at the AO3, limited to word counts of 1500 or less.
-The Misses Clause Challenge from Yuletide
-Femslash Minis
-Awesome Ladies Ficathon (original LJ ficathon deleted, but these works crossposted to AO3 remain)
-Real Women Fest
-Female Character Trope Fest
-The Bechdel Test Comment Ficathon
-The Bechdel Test Comment Ficathon II
-I am the Plot, Babe: A Villainess Ficathon
-Where No Woman: Un-erasing the women of Star Trek and Women of Star Trek
-Femslash Kinkmeme
-The Femslash February Collection
-Focus on Female Characters Collection
-Purimgifts

Since this project has a relatively quick turnaround time, you may want to refer to this database of authors who have posted blanket permission statements and/or install this browser extension that highlights all blanket permission authors from that database in green.

To the Podcurious: If you have ever thought you might like to create podfic, this is a really great starting place. It's low pressure, you might get listeners you wouldn’t otherwise reach, you're contributing to a cool fanwork that celebrates our love for female characters, and it's not too intense of a spotlight, because your piece is in the company of many other voices.

To Everyone: Feel free to comment with links to other fests or specific works that you think would be a good fit for this anthology. Additionally, we are looking for beta listeners who can absolutely commit to at LEAST two hours of beta listening between February 17th and 24th. Please let us know if you'd be available and interested; we'd be very grateful!

To Authors: We've had some awesome authors get involved in the past, in pod_together style, to create short female-centric pieces for the anthology in collaboration with podficcers. If you’re an author who’s interested and is seeking podficcers to work with, feel free to comment below. Podficcers who would like this sort of collaboration, please reply directly to the authors.

See this post for the rules and submission guidelines. If you have any additional questions, please let us know!