Welcome aboard!
We’re always looking for great stories from across the Caribbean. Whether you’re a professional writer, a first-time contributor, a sailor, a traveler, a photographer, a charter guest, a diver, or simply someone who loves the islands, we’d love to hear your ideas.
Caribbean Compass covers the people, places, culture, and experiences that make the Caribbean special. While our roots are firmly connected to the maritime community, our audience today includes sailors, yacht charter guests, island travelers, waterfront vacationers, second-home owners, marine professionals, and anyone with a passion for Caribbean life.
We’re interested in stories about:
Caribbean destinations and island discoveries
Cruising, sailing, and yacht chartering
Beach bars, restaurants, and local cuisine
Waterfront resorts, boutique hotels, and unique stays
Caribbean culture, history, and traditions
Festivals, carnivals, concerts, and local events
Marine conservation, wildlife, and environmental issues
Diving, snorkeling, fishing, and watersports
Marinas, boating services, and maritime news
Island living, relocation, and Caribbean lifestyle
Travel experiences both on and off the water
The best Compass stories inform, entertain, and inspire. We value authentic voices, practical insights, local knowledge, and first-hand experiences. Whether you’re sharing a hidden beach, a memorable sailing passage, an exceptional waterfront restaurant, a fascinating island tradition, or an emerging tourism destination, we’re looking for stories that help readers experience the Caribbean more deeply.
The Compass is shaped more by contributors’ ideas than by a rigid editorial formula. Write about a Caribbean subject you genuinely care about and tell the story as you would to an intelligent friend who hasn’t experienced it yet.
Feature articles are typically 2,000 words or fewer, though many excellent stories are shorter. News items are generally 400 words or fewer.
Most importantly, make your article informative, accurate, and rich with details. Readers should come away having learned something new about the Caribbean, its people, or its destinations.
If you’re unsure whether an idea is a good fit, send us a query. We’re always happy to discuss story ideas. For more details, email editor@caribbeancompass.com
What to Know
With some exceptions, we don’t typically publish articles or photos that have appeared previously or will appear simultaneously in any other Caribbean publication.
• We don’t publish articles that attempt to secure free advertising on the pretext of furnishing news. If an article that stands on its own merit mentions specific events or businesses in a positive light, that’s okay, but we do not publish articles that could be seen as a promotion for a specific event or business. If an event or business has a genuine piece of news for our Business Briefs department, or if you want to promote a Caribbean marine-related club, charity, NGO, etc., we’re happy to. We typically don’t promote for-profit businesses with editorial content.
SENDING IN YOUR TEXT
• Send text as the body of an email (that can be copy and pasted) or as a Microsoft Word (.docx) document or Google Docs. Do not send text in PDF or JPG format.
• Name all text attachments using a clue word from your article’s subject, and your surname, e.g. “lobster-jones.docx”.
• Send all text submissions to elaine@caribbeancompass.com
SENDING IN YOUR PHOTOS
We cannot use photos embedded in text/Word documents or PDF files. Send them separately
• Photos MUST be in high resolution: 300dpi (or more) at 100% size (between 5”x7” and 8”x10” is good); and in JPEG, BMP, TIF, or TIFF format. (If you’re not sure what all this means, just set your camera to “large” before you shoot.)
• If sending many photos, send attachments over several e-mails, or use Dropbox, WeTransfer or similar.
• Captions/cutlines for the photos are required (e.g. who or what is in the photo, and when and where was it taken). If you did not take the photos yourself, let us know the photographer’s name for photo credits. This information can be included in the body of an email.
• Send photos to elaine@caribbeancompass.com. It’s best if you can send them all at the same time as your text.
(e.g. submissions must be received by January 1st to be considered for publication in the February issue). Please contact elaine@caribbeancompass.com to arrange for exceptions.
We’ll do our best to include time-sensitive articles in the earliest possible issue. “Timeless” stories may be held for use on a space-available basis.
EDITING
• Accepted submissions may be edited for accuracy, length, clarity, fairness and grammar.
• Caribbean Compass does not provide hard copies, tearsheets or clippings. To save the pages where your article appears in the online version of Compass as printable PDF files, go to www.caribbeancompass.com and open the relevant issue at “Caribbean Compass Back Issues Archives” in PDF form in your browser. After it downloads, save it on your desktop. Then Google “splitting PDFs” to save the relevant pages as printable PDFs.
THANK YOU!
We appreciate the opportunity to consider your work for publication in Caribbean Compass — thank you!
I’ll look forward to hearing from you, Elaine Lembo, editor.
elaine@caribbeancompass.com