Submission Guidelines

The book will accept offerings from everyone directly initiated by Srila Prabhupada, regardless of their personal history, present circumstances, personal views, or institutional affiliations.

The only criterion for eligibility is to be a direct Srila Prabhupada disciple.

For the purposes of this book, a direct Srila Prabhupada disciple is, by definition, anyone included in the disciple database maintained by Mahamaya Devi Dasi. (If you’re not included and think you should be, please take that up with her: mahamaya.acbsp at pamho.net.)

Prabhupada disciples who are husband and wife may submit a joint offering or may each send an offering separately.

Offerings on behalf of temples, projects, or institutions will not be accepted.

The book will be a printed volume.

Thanks to generous sponsorship by devotees from South Africa, every disciple who sends an offering will receive a book, free of charge.

Extra copies for temples and individuals will be available for a small charge, if ordered in advance. Please see the orders page.

We will also publish the book in pdf and e-book formats. It will be available for download at www.sptributes.com and at Krishna.com

• Your spiritual name
• A further way to identify yourself, if needed for clarity

  For example, if you and another disciple have the same initiated name, you might add your occupation or year of initiation or some other marker to distinguish yourself. Or you might add your previous name by initiation if your name has since changed. If you do provide an extra marker or your previous name, please let us know whether it’s for us to publish (in parentheses) or is just for the information of the editors.

• The date of your first (Hari-nama) initiation

  Following Vaisnava etiquette, the offerings will be printed in this order: sannyasis first, then our other godbrothers and godsisters, in order from senior to junior. (This year, sannyasis will again come first, but the sannyasi list too will be sorted in date order, reckoned in terms of the date of Hari-nama initiation.) If you don’t remember the exact date of your initiation, come as close as you can.

• If appropriate, a note that you’re a sannyasi

  If you’re a member of the sannyasa asrama but may not be known to our editors, please add a note to tell us so. (We can’t always tell from your name, since some devotees not in the renounced order have “Swami” or “Goswami” as part of their initiated name.) By telling us you’re a sannyasi you’re saying you have formally accepted sannyasa within the Gaudiya sampradaya and are living accordingly. As a guiding rule, we’ll simply take your word for it.

• How our editors can get in touch with you

  In case we have any questions, please include your e-mail address and, if possible, your phone number. These are for our own use, not for publication, and we will not share them without your permission. For example, we may need to get in touch with you just to verify that an offering with your name on it actually comes from you. If you don’t have an e-mail address, please provide the address of someone close to you who does.
  
  After the book is published, we will provide a facility for readers to contact you through this website. We will not publish your email address, but if you would prefer not to be contacted in this way, please let us know.

• Where we should send your book

  Your physical mailing address. (Please remember to include the country.)

• Your text

  Not more than 1,500 words—and fewer is fine.

• Any notes or special directions to us about your offering

The book is meant for glorifying Srila Prabhupada. And we encourage you to do that in your own way.

Certain kinds of content, however, we ask that you kindly avoid:

• Venting grievances

  Please reserve that for some other place.

• Taking stands on internal philosophical controversies

  Let the jiva fall or not fall in some other book.

• Promoting institutions other than the ones Srila Prabhupada founded and other contemporary spiritual guides.

We respect that you may have received spiritual knowledge or inspiration from contemporary spiritual guides other than Srila Prabhupada and the members of the Society he founded. But we ask that you express your gratitude to them elsewhere. Similarly, we respect that they too may have their own relationship with Srila Prabhupada, but we ask that you refrain from highlighting that relationship as part of your offering.

• Criticizing devotees of the Lord
• Exploring Srila Prabhupada’s personal rasa with Krsna.

Although in 2012 we published a couple of articles offering thoughts about what is Srila Prabhupada’s eternal rasa with Krsna — is it sakhya or is it madhurya? — for future books we ask that this topic be left aside. The topic has “been done.” Let us go forward.

We reserve the right to exclude any offering that to us seems inappropriate or to ask for a rewrite.

By respecting these guidelines, you’ll make the work of our editors easier. And you’ll still have wide scope for glorifying His Divine Grace.

That said, if these guidelines seem too stringent for you, please don’t give up. We do try to work with you, and we’ve been known to bend.

The preferred language for the book is English, but we can also accept offerings in Spanish, French, German, or Italian. If you send your offering in one of those languages, we’d be grateful if you’d also send a translation as well, so that your offering can be read both by our editors and by the other readers of the book. Also: If you do send your offering in a language other than English, we’d be grateful if you’d send it early.

Please make your offering no longer than 1,500 words. (Conciseness is a virtue. Shorter offerings are fine.)

If you’re contributing an offering to this year’s “regular” Vyasa-puja book, you may contribute the same offering here.

Please omit all diacritics on words that can be found in the VedaBase. It’s easier for us to put them in. If you quote a verse from outside the VedaBase or compose original Sanskrit, please include diacritics.

Always leave a double space between paragraphs. If you want some special formatting, please send your offering as an attached file in Microsoft Word or RTF format.

Please e-mail your offering to tributes@pamho.net.

You can either send the text of your offering in the body of your message or send your offering as an attached file. Files composed with Microsoft Word will be fine. Please stick to files with the extensions .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .txt.

E-mail is now available almost everywhere. If you don’t have an e-mail account, please send your offering through a friend who does.

When we receive your offering, we will send you an acknowledgment. (If you don’t receive an acknowledgment, we quite possibly didn’t receive your offering. In that case, please drop us a note so we can sort things out for you.)

If e-mail fails and you need to speak to someone personally, you can call Pradyumna or Nimai in England at +44 116-2542074 or +44 7812-586-790.

If you have any questions or comments, please write to Pradyumna Dasa: vp.production@pamho.net.