CONTRIBUTOR TERMS
Version 1.0 · Effective September 5, 2026 · Studio Dream Factory, LLC · Los Angeles, California
§1. YOU OWN YOUR WORK.
You retain the copyright to any work you submit to us for consideration for publication. None of the terms set forth hereafter transfer nor revoke your ownership of the work you submit. While these terms grant us permission to publish your submitted work, they do not grant us ownership of or the copyright to the work itself.
§2. WHAT PERMISSIONS YOU GIVE US.
By submitting work, and thereby agreeing to these terms, you grant Factory Settings and its publisher, Studio Dream Factory, a worldwide, royalty-free, non-transferable license to publish, reproduce, distribute, excerpt, reformat, and, as necessary, modify the work, in order to:
publish it first, in English;
share it via any Factory Settings digital content distribution channels, including but not limited to: our website (https://www.factorysettingsmag.com/), newsletter(s), social accounts, streaming services, and documents;
retain it in our own archive;
publish it in Factory Settings print issues (e.g., magazines, zines, mail products), and in anthologies drawn from our own pages;
use or display it, or extracts from it, at Factory Settings events and exhibitions, including Factory Nights;
in the case that the submission consists of compiled raw material(s) (e.g., clips, photographs, voice memos, tracklists, etc.), assemble it into a coherent, finished piece for publication, with attribution to you;
use extracts, always with appropriate attribution, to promote Factory Settings.
You retain all other rights, including film, television, dramatic, and standalone audio adaptation, yourself.
This license is exclusive for a duration of 30 days from the earliest date of publication by Factory Settings within either our print or digital publications (i.e., on our website). Once 30 days have elapsed from the first instance of publication, exclusivity is no longer required. If your piece has been selected for a particular award or recognition that poses a conflict with these terms while they remain in effect, contact us via email, and we will amend your agreement to waive the exclusivity terms to meet your particular needs.
§3. WHAT WE WILL NOT DO.
We will not sell, license, or syndicate your work outside Factory Settings without discussing and agreeing, in writing, to terms beforehand. The singular exception applies to Factory Settings publishing activities on platforms (e.g., Instagram, our site host, our email provider, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), in which case, permissions are governed by each respective platform’s own requirements.
We do not use any submitted or published work to train AI systems, nor do we ever license it to any third parties for that purpose.
§4. POST-EXCLUSIVITY PERIOD PUBLISHING AND REPRINTS.
Once 30 days have elapsed following a work’s first instance of publication, you are welcome to republish it freely at will. This includes on your own site, in a portfolio, in another publication, in a book.
We ask that any subsequent publications or reprints of the work include a short acknowledgement crediting Factory Settings as the place of first publication (e.g., “Originally published in Factory Settings”). If another publication would like written confirmation from our editors, please reach out via email, and we will gladly fulfill their request with a maximum turnaround time of one week.
§5. ARCHIVING AND REMOVAL OF PUBLISHED WORKS.
We preserve published work in our archive to ensure the record of what we have published remains complete, accessible, and consistent. To that end, we first attempt to address any problems that may arise by issuing a correction, update, or annotation to published work rather than removing it.
If one year or more has elapsed since your work was first published, you may request your work be removed from our website or archive at any point, and we will ensure it is taken offline within no longer than 30 days of our receipt of the request.
Within the first year after publication, if you face circumstances that you feel necessitate removing or amending the article—especially if there are concerns related to safety or accuracy—contact us via email with your request and a brief explanation of your situation, and we will make sure to reply within no longer than a week. We are, however, unable to recall any print issues or materials that have already been published and circulated as physical copies.
§6. ATTRIBUTION.
You will be explicitly credited for any of your work that we publish across all platforms and formats. Unless specified otherwise, we will default to our standard attribution format of your full name (or, when applicable, and if available, this may be substituted with your social media handle on platform-native content). If you have particular or alternate preferences regarding how your work is credited, please specify your requested attribution in your submission, and we will do our best to accommodate your request.
In keeping with our editorial standards, if you elect to publish your work anonymously, you must still disclose your identity to our editorial staff. The layer of privacy or protection that anonymity may afford between you and the reader relies critically on trust in our internal team to properly select, vet, verify, and vouch for the credibility of an unnamed source, so it is crucial that, even when work is anonymous to the public, we retain visibility and transparency. Therefore, unless a particular open call, prompt, poll, or other submission opportunity is designed intentionally for anonymous submissions, contributors should expect to be required to provide us with their full names, even if they intend for their work to be published anonymously.
§7. PRE-PUBLICATION EDITS.
Prior to publication, we may edit submitted work for clarity, spelling, grammar, length, house style, and formatting. We will not, however, change the meaning or argument of your work without discussing such revisions with you and ensuring we reach alignment prior to publication. Insofar as time permits, we will typically try to send you the edited, final version of your work before publishing it to provide you an opportunity to flag any minor, last-minute fixes or issues before your piece runs. In the case that this is not possible, and you do have any requested tweaks to the published work, let us know, and we will work with you to make any necessary changes live.
Headlines, standfirsts, pull quotes, and captions are written or selected by our editorial team independently and appended during the editing process, and they are not covered by the above approval. However, if you feel strongly about any of these choices with respect to your own published work, contact us via email, and we will determine how to proceed on a case-by-case basis.
§8. UNPUBLISHED WORKS.
We reserve the right to elect to publish or not publish any submitted or commissioned work we receive or request, paid or unpaid, at our discretion. Commissioning a piece, for instance, does not constitute a guarantee of publication.
However, if you have submitted a piece, either on commission or in response to a posted open call, and we have not run it within 90 days of its receipt (of the final draft), the exclusivity period specified above in §2 never takes effect, and you are free to publish, submit, present, and distribute the work freely, including sharing it with other publications.
§9. CONTRIBUTOR COMPENSATION.
For full transparency: as of now, there is none.
While we immensely value your contributions and hope to soon be able to compensate contributors for their work, Factory Settings is a brand new publication building entirely from scratch, with no funding and limited resources, currently operating not for profit, with any revenue we may generate currently going straight into covering a small portion of our operating expenses.
What we can offer, though, is a byline; real, hands-on, human editing, workshopping, and collaboration; a masthead line for contributors that become regulars; distribution across the website, newsletter(s), social media, print, and local events/exhibitions. In addition, any contributors whose work is published two or more times will receive a dedicated spot on the invite list for our exclusive recurring Factory Nights live event series with all event costs (excluding additional purchases from outside vendors) waived for the first year, as well as access to invite-only, private Factory Settings events. If and when we are able to begin paying contributors, anyone named on the masthead will be first to hear, followed by prior contributors.
§10. WHAT YOU AFFIRM BY SUBMITTING WORK.
By submitting work for consideration, you thereby affirm that the submitted work is your own and original; that nobody else holds exclusive rights to it; that you agree to temporarily withhold publishing the work elsewhere per the terms of this agreement (see §2, 4, and 8); if applicable, that any quotes, samples, or photographs of someone else’s work were obtained and reproduced with the requisite permission; and that, to the best of your knowledge, the submitted work does not defame, infringe on the rights of, or breach a confidence with any other party.
Unlike most publications, we do not ask you to indemnify us. Given that we are not yet able to pay our contributors, and we control the final edits and publication of the submissions we receive, we assume the risk an honest mistake poses in published editorial material.
In return, we ask that you notify us immediately if you become aware of an inaccuracy or error in a work of yours that we have published so that we can fix it promptly.
This does not extend to deliberate fabrication or plagiarism.
§11. PHOTOGRAPHY.
Unless otherwise noted, the same terms apply to photography submissions as do to any other forms of intellectual property covered within these terms, with several additional key details, specified below, to note.
If you are photographing in a public place exclusively for editorial use, you do not need to obtain a signed release to publish images portraying identifiable persons. However, if Factory Settings ever would like to use an image depicting an identifiable person for commercial purposes—e.g., advertising, merchandise, sales/marketing efforts, etc.—we may reach out to you and inquire about the subject and any releases that you may have obtained, as those usages require any identifiable subject’s explicit, documented permission.
If you submit a photograph that prominently features a clearly identifiable person who is unaware that they may appear, let us know ahead of publication, if possible.
If your photography features anyone under the age of 18, you will need to obtain permission from a parent or guardian. Please include any documentation, formal or casual, indicating that this permission was granted alongside your photo submission itself.
If you photograph someone else's artwork, product, interior, design, or other original creative material, ensure you were permitted to take and distribute the photo.
§12. INTERVIEWS AND RECORDINGS.
Per California Penal Code §632, you may only legally record a private conversation if all participating parties are informed that a recording will take place and unanimously consent to this Penal Code §632 is a criminal statute, and it also bears a statutory civil minimum of $5,000 per violation, with no requirement of proof of harm nor of distribution. Identifying yourself as a reporter does not constitute informing or obtaining consent regarding recording a conversation. The exemption only applies if all parties are explicitly informed that a recording will be taking place.
If you would like to record an interview, ensure you take the following steps:
Prior to commencing the recording, explain to any participants in the interview or conversation that you intend to record it for reference while writing a piece, and ask them whether they are comfortable with that. Provided they agree, proceed as follows.
Begin recording, and start by first stating your name, the name(s) of whomever else is participating, the date, and that the interview is for Factory Settings.
Next, before saying anything else, ask the participant(s) again, this time while recording, to confirm whether they agree to be recorded. Wait for a clear confirmation before proceeding any further.
If, at any point you encounter anything that feels unclear or off, contact the Factory Settings editor with whom you are working for their input and guidance.
If your submission quotes, features, and/or discusses the content of an interview you conducted personally, ensure you include the full recording and/or transcript of the interview with your submission. We will never publish this material. However, we ask that you share it with us for our internal records so that we can both verify any and all quotes and ensure we have it on file in case any legal claim happens to arise with respect to the associated work, quotations, or interview.
§12.A. USER-GENERATED CONTENT.
Some of what we publish was written by hand at a Factory Settings event—a postcard, a letter, a note left on a table. Signs at the event say that anything left with us may appear in Factory Settings: on the site, on social media, in print, and in our archive.
We publish these anonymously. We do not print names, and we never reproduce a home address, phone number, email, or anything else that shows where someone lives, at any size or resolution. We do not run content that names or make claims about an identifiable third party.
If you left something with us and would prefer we did not run it, or if you have seen it and would like it taken down, send us an email with your request. We with remove it from the website and/or social media within a week or receiving your request and keep it out of anything not yet printed. An already published printed issue or material cannot be recalled.
§13. AI USAGE.
While we strongly encourage independent research, discovery, thought, and writing in submissions, we do not expressly ban nor do we attempt to police AI tool usage in the creation of work you submit to us for consideration. We do not penalize submissions that appear to be AI-aided, nor do we implement any restrictions that affect contributors themselves who submit work that appears to have involved AI usage.
Whether or not you elect to incorporate AI into your work process for a particular submission is entirely up to you. We are not here to be morally or philosophically prescriptive, nor to impose upon you our own personal views with regard to AI usage in written or creative production. Furthermore, given the fallibility of the AI detection tools presently available to the public, we feel that presumptions about the origin of your work based most heavily on tools that demonstrably err with substantial frequency, and that are particularly susceptible to inaccurately categorizing work as AI-generated for identifiable demographics like second-language English-speakers, serve only to exclude meaningful work with potential to provide value to readers while failing, in our experience to effectively eliminate content that does not meet our standards for publication.
As a result, we have determined that our preferred approach to evaluating content for potential publication rests primarily on our own editorial team’s personal review of each submitted work, and their determination on topical relevance alongside quality, depth, originality, and distinctiveness of thought, rather than on what role, in our unscientifically verifiable assessment, AI may or may not have had in the creation of your work. If you are using an AI tool to do your thinking, research, and writing we feel that this will most, in most cases, result in an output that is distinctly inferior to one your real, subjective, contextual, and experience-informed human brain would have been able to produce if thoughtfully engaged throughout the process.
Two practical notes. If AI usage played a meaningful part in your creation of the work, this will not in itself disqualify either the work or future contributions you make. However, there are legal implications that apply, in this case, that make such instances important for us to be aware of. The US Copyright Office's current position holds that AI-generated material is not protected by copyright, so if a piece is substantially machine-written, you are therefore unable to legally grant us the rights delineated in §2, as you yourself may have never held them.
§14. CHANGES TO CONTRIBUTOR TERMS.
The terms that apply to your piece are the ones in force when you agreed to them. If we change them we will tell our roster of prior contributors, but the new version will apply only to work submitted following said changes.
§15. QUESTIONS.
Reach out to us anytime at editor@factorysettingsmag.com. If you have specific questions about and/or requested amendments to the terms set forth above, we are happy to provide any answers, clarifications, and, where possible, individualized provisions on a case-by-case basis.
Governed by the laws of the State of California.