I’m always on the lookout for people interested in writing for CabbieBlog and I am open to submissions.

Be warned, however, that I have a few editorial guidelines that articles must follow. These are summarised below, and it’s probably best to make sure you’re happy with them before putting pen to paper.

If you want to discuss the guidelines you can drop me a line.

Some of the no-noes
I have a few caveats. First please write about something that is directly relevant to London, not just a product or service that can be purchased in the capital. I will not accept submissions from advocates of gambling, nor from anything which could be associated with ‘adult’ entertainment or services, and finally I am afraid that I cannot accept hyper-links to any mini cab companies for obvious reasons.

If you can provide a Creative Commons landscape photo to illustrate the post it would be appreciated. Also please include any background details about yourself that you wish to be published.

I charge a fee to publish a Guest Post if it includes a link to a commercial organisation, for that fee the post would remain indefinitely on Cabbieblog, would get social media coverage at the time of posting and have follow up tweets @londoncabbie

Other Guest Posts about London which only have a hyper-link to a non-commercial blog or website will be most welcome and published gratis.

Tone is important
You’ll notice that all the articles on this site conform (or at least try) to a relatively reserved tone without the use of blasphemy. Use of the first person is minimised and humour, where present, is gentle and dry. If you want to write at a personal level Mr. Burgess in Jack Rosenthal’s play ‘The Knowledge’ pitches it about right.

Facts not opinion
The primary goal of CabbieBlog is to entertain and inform, if you want polemical debate on what is wrong with the cab trade you can get into most cabs in London and get that before reaching your destination.

In the blog’s entire history, the number of opinion pieces I have run can be counted on one hand, and this is a situation that is unlikely to change greatly for a while. There are numerous websites out there devoted to cabbies’ opinions.

At CabbieBlog I try to keep a reasonably strict division between primarily fact-filled posts and the comments. In the comments section at the foot of each post opinions are not only allowed but are positively encouraged. So if you have it in your heart to write an article on what you personally feel is wrong with Transport for London, then CabbieBlog is probably not the place for it. But, on the other hand you have found some nugget which you feel might be of interest to Londoners (and the rest of the world) let your fingers do the talking, and you might start a debate on your chosen subject.

Research, research and more research
CabbieBlog’s commentators are far smarter than me, and I’m rather proud of that fact, it keeps me on my toes and keeps standards high.

The downside as an author, of course, is it means that you will get pulled up fast if you haven’t rigorously fact-checked your writing. Writing for CabbieBlog is not as much fun as you might think – mostly it’s trawling through lots of books, papers and documents looking for facts which are informative as well as entertaining.

Don’t worry too much about spelling and grammar
Although obviously articles should be written as professionally as possible, but I don’t expect every contributor to have a background in writing. If you are knowledgeable about your subject or work within the cab trade and have something you think you can add, but are worried that you may not be able to write to the necessary quality, or quantity then don’t worry! Just drop me a line and you may still be able to contribute – after all, that’s why I moderate everything that is posted on CabbieBlog.

Other things to remember
There are various other things that people writing for CabbieBlog should remember – including the fact that I reserve the right to edit all articles and may hold back or reject an article if it clashes with another that is already scheduled or has been previously published.

CabbieBlog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you do not wish to share your work with others please indicate by the copyright symbol © to ensure that you assert sole rights over your work.

The short list above hopefully gives you a feel for what you might be letting yourself in for should you decide to contribute. So if you’re still keen on writing for CabbieBlog, then just drop me a line at the Contact Page.