Automatic Merchandiser and VendingMarketWatch.com welcome article submissions

Automatic Merchandiser and VendingMarketWatch.com welcome article submissions from industry subject-matter experts. Articles must be bylined, original, unpublished and non-promotional. The article must be focused on solutions specific to vending, micro market or office coffee service operators and can address those topics from a technology, equipment, products or business-building perspective. Consider contributing an operator success story, a guest column, a case study, or a how-to article to share your expertise with our 85,000 average monthly reach. The article should not be self-promotional; it should remain brand- and product-neutral.

All writers will need to sign a writer’s agreement to be published. The agreement will be furnished when the piece is sent to the editor at [email protected].

See the editorial calendar in our media kit for topics that we will cover throughout the year. We will consider articles that are not listed on the calendar if they’re relevant to our audience.

Submitted articles must meet the following guidelines:

Articles submitted for publication should be exclusive to Automatic Merchandiser. Articles previously published (in print or online) will not be considered for publication. Contributed articles published in Automatic Merchandiser or on VendingMarketWatch.com should not be republished in another publication (in print or online).

All articles submitted for publication should be original and non-promotional. Do not reference specific products and brands or other promotional material.

Length: We suggest approximately 900 to 1,200 words, but the actual length depends on your subject.

Author(s): Please include author's name, title and company name; a brief biography; a photo; and contact information, including phone number and email address.

Photos: You or your company must own the rights to submitted photos, or gain written permission to use them for publication and provide a photo credit for the photos. Photos (high-resolution/300 dpi, or a minimum of 900 x 900 pixels, though larger is always better) should be emailed as attachments (JPG, PNG, TIFF or EPS format) or sent via a file-sharing platform such as DropBox or OneDrive. Photos embedded in text documents cannot be used.

If you have an otherwise great article and no images, you may be able to work with the editor to use stock art. Please request this when submitting the article.

Sharing: Upon publication of the article on VendingMarketWatch.com, Automatic Merchandiser will provide the contributor a link to their article for sharing on websites and social media. All references to the article online should point directly to the published article on VendingMarketWatch.com.

Editing: Submissions will be edited for AP Style and internal style guidelines. If significant edits are made by the editor, a revised Word document will be sent to the author for review before publishing.

Publication consideration is at the sole discretion of the editor.

AI Guidance

Contributing authors may utilize large-language-model generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai, Bing Chat, and Bard (or similar tools developed in the future) to conduct certain relevant tasks, consistent with Endeavor Business Media's AI policy.

Service Providers may not use generative AI tools for producing editorial and sponsored content in its entirety, images, videos or audio without prior permission from the Company’s Chief Legal Officer.

The following tasks are examples of approved uses of large-language-model generative AI tools:

• Office productivity uses such as checking or improving the readability of written material
• Conducting background research similar to secondary sources, provided that you conduct 
  separate fact-checking of any facts returned as part of a response result
• Generating potential interview questions, provided you fact-check the questions and do 
  background research to avoid blind spots
• Creating an outline, schedule or project task list
• Generating alternative asset types, including bulleted lists of key findings, infographics and summaries
• Ensuring best practices for SEO by identifying keywords, improving headlines/subheads,  optimizing content for SEO

Contributors must disclose their use of Generative AI tools to write or otherwise generate content that is intended for publication. No more than 20% of published content should be created by or directly derived from verbiage produced by a Generative AI tool. If AI is used, the AI must be cited as a source. This should be accomplished by adding the following note to the end of the piece, in italics:

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence. 

The company may use generative AI-detection tools to evaluate any content submitted for 
publication.