User (other than Admin) posts/drafts

I’m quite new to this whole blog thing and a bit confused at the moment.

Just to set the scene, run a community theatre and have now created our own blog linked to our site. Have asked all my cast to register as users and to share their thoughts on the blog. However only myself and one other have admin rights and can therefore write and publish.

All new users seemingly (even with me having assigned “AUTHOR” rights to them, can only write and save as a draft, I still have to go in and publish this for them as the Admin person. Is this correct?

But it goes further than this. One user is having problems in as much as her drafts are saving blank, she’s having to copy her writings first, mail me, and I insert this into the “blank” draft that WordPress saved when she clicked on “save”. Surely the draft should be saved with all it’s content intact?

Please help?!?!