Welcome! Below, you’ll find the positions that we currently have open if you want to join our awesome community of indie lit supporters. There is no experience necessary or required for most of our positions. We’ll train you, guide you, and provide templates and packets for everything that you will need, and we trust your instincts to bring something new and wonderful to the table. Obviously if you have past experience, that is a super big plus, but we’ll mostly be looking for enthusiasm and passion. Most of these positions are volunteer or commission, but they are remote and fit around any schedule and any workload. Please get involved. WE NEED YOU. Together, we can build a community and achieve more.

Alternating Current Positions

Advertising & Funding Director

USA applicants only. Must act professional and have excellent grammar and editing skills for forms and emails. Must be able to make quick and eye-catching graphics and banners to use for advertisements. Your job would be to reach out to businesses, literary organizations, and apropos authors, publishers, or otherwise, in order to secure funding for our literary awards, book tours, publicity packages, or monthly allotments for paying authors. You would design advertisements for The Coil and would run fundraisers, crowdfunding, and giveaway rewards. Knowledge of grant-writing is a bonus. Would run a business email account. Remote, can work around own schedule, a couple hours per week at minimum preference. You would receive 15% of all the donations, advertising, and support funding you brought in. Looking for a go-getter and someone who thinks outside of the box, not someone who just does the bare minimum; funding is crucial to our survival as a press. One funding position to fill. Send inquiry with experience to alt.current@gmail.com.

Social Media Director

USA applicants only. Must have a good head for social media. Must act professional and have excellent grammar and editing skills. Can’t be easily baited by trolls. Must be able to handle (and / or learn) Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Ello, Google+, YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud. Must be able to make quick and eye-catching graphics for posts. Your job would be to keep our profiles updated daily with our goings-on at the press, at the main hub, and on The Coil, and / or to handle assistants under you who have access. Must be trustworthy with passwords and accounts, and must take that responsibility very seriously. Remote, can work around own schedule but must be able to post regularly, volunteer, a couple hours per week at minimum preference. If your only available time to be active on social media is at midnight, then this is not the position for you; must live in the USA so that you are on USA time. One media position to fill, although we are willing to split the task if it is too much for one person. Send inquiry with experience to alt.current@gmail.com.

Alternating Current Press Positions

Fiction Reader / Editor

USA readers and editors only. Must have knowledge of and regularly read past and contemporary short stories, flash pieces, novels, and hybrid, especially in the American market. Your job would be to read fiction submissions, both single pieces and full manuscripts, and to communicate with the Acquisitions Editor and Submissions Director about acceptances and editing needs. Remote, can work around own schedule, volunteer, a couple hours per week at minimum preference. Three reader positions to fill. Send inquiry with any reading, editing, or journal experience to alt.current@gmail.com.

Nonfiction Reader / Editor

USA readers and editors only. Must have knowledge of and regularly read past and contemporary creative nonfiction, essays, memoir, straight nonfiction, scholarly nonfiction (though not textbooks), biographies, histories, and / or hybrid, especially in the American market. Your job would be to read nonfiction submissions, both single pieces and full manuscripts, and to communicate with the Acquisitions Editor and Submissions Director about acceptances and editing needs. Remote, can work around own schedule, volunteer, a couple hours per week at minimum preference. Four reader positions to fill. Send inquiry with any reading, editing, or journal experience to alt.current@gmail.com.

Young Adult (YA) Reader / Editor

USA readers and editors only. Must have knowledge of the YA field, especially the American market, and be able to identify the language and significance in stories with themes of science, mathematics, engineering, computing, history, and / or invention, with excellent messages for upper-middle school and high school ages. We are not interested in readers of YA romance or YA puberty / growing pain issues or YA vampire fantasy, &c. Your job would be to read full YA manuscripts on the abovementioned themes (no single submission pieces, only full manuscripts), and to communicate with the Acquisitions Editor and Submissions Director about acceptances and editing needs. Remote, can work around own schedule, volunteer, a couple hours per week at minimum preference. One reader position to fill. Send inquiry with any reading, editing, YA, or journal experience to alt.current@gmail.com.

Poetry Reader / Editor

USA readers and editors only. Must have knowledge of and regularly read past and contemporary poetry and hybrid, especially in the American market, and especially of diverse voices. We are interested in important poetry with a diverse, science, or history bent. Your job would be to read poetry submissions, both single pieces and full manuscripts, and to communicate with the Acquisitions Editor and Submissions Director about acceptances and editing needs. Remote, can work around own schedule, volunteer, a couple hours per week at minimum preference. Two reader positions to fill. Send inquiry with any reading, editing, or journal experience to alt.current@gmail.com.

Book Editor

The Coil Positions

Managing Editor

USA editors only. Must have extremely excellent knowledge of, and a near obsession with, the English language, grammar, punctuation, spelling, &c., while maintaining a sense and awareness of author voice, style, and atmosphere of the work. No ESL; English must be your first language. Your job would be to be the final editor on all pieces at The Coil, to coordinate with the senior editors beneath you, and to tie up all loose ends on the online journal so that scheduling and editing is all done on time and that pieces are published on time. Would be responsible for the Managing Editor business email account. Remote, volunteer, can work around own schedule but must have the flexibility to work on projects daily and to be reached daily. Ability to meet deadlines is a must, and perfectionism is a bonus. This is NOT a good job for an overly busy person. One editor position to fill, and this is for a VERY SERIOUS editor only; if you are inexperienced or unenthusiastic, please do not waste our time, as this is one of our most crucial positions. Send inquiry with all editing experience to editor@thecoilmag.com.

Senior Editor

USA editors only. Must have extremely excellent knowledge of, and a near obsession with, the English language, grammar, punctuation, spelling, &c., while maintaining a sense and awareness of author voice, style, and atmosphere of the work. No ESL; English must be your first language. Your job would be to be the middle editor on all pieces at The Coil, coordinating between the Managing Editor and the associate editors of each column beneath you, and to fact-check and tie up all loose ends for your columns so that scheduling and editing is all done on time and that pieces are published on time. Would not communicate directly with authors and would not handle business email accounts. Remote, volunteer, can work around own schedule but must be able to be reached readily and must complete work by its deadline. Ability to meet deadlines is a must, and perfectionism is a bonus. Four editor positions to fill: The Senior Literary Editor handles poetry, fiction, history pieces, and book excerpts. The Senior Reviews Editor handles book reviews and interviews. The Senior Features Editor for the specialty columns handles all the regular named columns that are ongoing weekly or biweekly (The Last Thing I Loved, Made in Michigan, The Hold-Up, &c.). The Senior Features Editor for the Tesla columns handles all the remaining regular weekly or monthly columns that are named after Tesla inventions (The Signal, The Beam, &c.). Send inquiry with all editing experience and your position preference to editor@thecoilmag.com.

Book Reviewer

USA reviewers preferred. Request, read, and review books for The Coil. We prefer to have one book review (or more) per month per reviewer, 600 words minimum, with at least two quotes or snippets of text from the book. All types of book reviews accepted, but no hardcore erotica, romance, religion, or Christian fiction. USA reviewers are preferred because many USA publishers will not ship review copies overseas, but foreign reviewers are welcome if PDF-only or digital copies are acceptable to you or if you want to review books from your own country. If a book is forthcoming, you MUST turn it in by the deadline, or you will be dropped from the list instantly. Reliable reviewers only. Would communicate directly with publishers and publicists, but would not handle business email accounts. Would be on a query list where the Book Reviews Director sends you queries for books that come in. Can choose your own books and can keep the books. Remote, can work around own schedule but must be able to be reached readily and must complete work by its deadline. Token payment ($5 to $15) per month if your review is published that month. Thirty reviewer positions to fill. Send inquiry with reading and writing experience to reviews@thecoilmag.com.

Essay / Memoir Editor

Your job would be to do all initial editing and layout for essay and memoir pieces on The Coil, learning layout on Medium, working with the author on all initial edits, and communicating with the Senior Memoir Editor about edits. Must be able to meet deadlines and have good email etiquette. Would be responsible for making sure we had a memoir piece every week, meaning that you would have to solicit, invite, or do open calls for authors if there were not enough pieces submitted to the submissions portal. Would run a business email account and communicate directly with authors. Remote, can work around own schedule, volunteer, an hour per week at minimum preference. One editor position to fill. Send inquiry with any editing experience to editor@thecoilmag.com.