Writers' Guidelines

Please read these guidelines in full before submitting. Please also read these guidelines in full before sending a query to ask something that's probably listed here. Yes, we know they're long, but please understand that a lot of what you see below has been added or changed because of specific experiences and repeat problems we've had in the past. There are some very specific requests in here, and that's for a reason. If you haven't read the guidelines, or decide that you're above following them, we'll be able to tell from your submission.

Important!!! As of January 11, 2012 we are closed to submissions for our Print Edition! Any submissions received on or after 01/11/12 will be considered for the Web Edition only.

What we're looking for

Horror, Science Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Magic Realism, psychological literary fiction. We're not as concerned with genre as tone. Our tagline is "dark, imaginative fiction," and that's exactly what we want: dark stories with some sort of an imaginative twist. It doesn't have to be speculative fiction, but there should be some sense of "other" to it. We recommend reading at least one issue to get an idea of what we publish. (Either print or web; the type of stories is the same.)

The only things that could conceivably fall into the above description that we don't want are poetry and sword & sorcery fantasy. We really don't want poetry.

We're not at all squeamish about language, sexual content, or gore, but it must be relevant to the story you're telling.

Word count:

We divide stories into two categories: Short Stories and Flash Fiction. They are defined as:

Flash Fiction: 900 words or less

Short Story: 900-10,000 words

The word count max on short stories is flexible, but query first if your piece is over 10,000 words. We post a limit for mainly two reasons: Because we only have so much room per issue, and so are very limited on how many longer stories we can accept, and so that some asshat doesn't send us his 200,000 word novel.

Payment & Terms:

Rights requested: We request First North American Serial Rights and First Electronic Rights for all stories accepted for the Print Edition, and First Electronic Rights for stories accepted for the Web Edition. (See "Submitting Your Work" below for more details on submitting to the two editions.)

Payment:

TGH publishes a Print Edition (which is available in print and .pdf/ebook form) and a Web Edition. The payment details listed below refer to the Print Edition Only. The Web Edition is, unfortunately, not a paying market at this time.

Short Stories (see above for definition) pay a flat $5.00, paid upon publication. Each issue has one Lead Story which pays $7.50 instead.

Flash Fiction (again, definition above) is paid on a sliding scale based on length, ranging from $1.00 to $4.00. Click here for a detailed Flash Fiction payscale.

Payment does not include a contributor copy, nor are we able to provide discounts on issues to authors. We wish we could, but it's just not an option for us at present.

Manuscript Formatting

Please read this entire section carefully. Yes, we know it's long, but everything here is important. Especially see the "non-negotiables" below; not following some of these will result in automatic rejection, and any of them will at least annoy us if you don't follow them. You don't want the editor considering your story for publication to go in annoyed, do you? We didn't think so.

We don't include the blurb so many magazines give about proof-reading your work, because we assume that you don't need to be told. Please be aware, however, that a sloppy manuscript full of errors will be reason for rejection, regardless of the content of the story itself.

We'd like to just say "standard manuscript format," but we realize there's simply no consensus whatsoever on what the standards really are. Basically, as long as your manuscript is easy to read, and is presented in a professional manner, we’re not going to reject it just because you used Garamond instead of Courier, or because your margins are 3/4 of an inch instead of an inch. Editorial preference is 12 pt. Courier New, double spaced, but any standard font at a size that can be read easily when printed is fine.

The following bullet points are our non-negotiable items. All submissions must follow these formatting rules at risk of being rejected unread:

All stories must be submitted as attachments, not in the body of your email. We can accept .doc, .docx, or .rtf files. We do not accept any other file types. Other file types will be deleted unread, as will stories pasted into the body of the email.
Double Spaced
No manually applied web-style formatting. In other words, do not manually include an additional space between paragraphs.
Italics for italics, not underline (we hate when editors make US underline our italics, and we hate to read it, too!) This also extends to bold for bold, or any other manuscript markup. Likewise, only use italics, bold, etc. for text you actually expect to appear in print that way. DO NOT SEND US AN ENTIRE STORY IN BOLD FONT. We realize some word processors do this in the conversion process; check it before you send it to us.
Include author name, title, and page number in the header of EVERY page.
No reprints (Definition: stories that have already been published elsewhere, in print or online. This DOES include your own blog)
No simultaneous submissions (Definition: submitting the same story to more than one market at the same time. If someone is already looking at it, we don't want it until they're done with it. If we're already looking at it, don't give it to someone else until we're done with it.)
No multiple submissions (Definition: more than one story in the same email, or a second submission before we've responded to the first. Note on the second part: we also ask authors to wait 90 days after receiving a response to submit again)
No poetry. At all. Ever.

Timeframes:

Automated Confirmation: As soon as you send your submission, you'll receive an autoresponder reply. This will confirm that your submission has been received by our email server. It will also have some information in it that you should read. If you do not receive the autoresponder within 24 hours, resend your submission; it probably didn't go through.

Personal Confirmation: Within two weeks of submitting (and usually a lot sooner) you will receive a personal confirmation from one of us letting you know that your story is in our pile. If you have not received a personal confirmation within two weeks, please query, because you may have been overlooked, and we definitely don't want to do that!

Response: You will receive a response from your editor within 120 days of confirmation of receipt. Most of the time, this will be an accept or reject, but we do reserve the right to request additional consideration time. Obviously you can tell us no, we just reserve the right to ask, just in case. The response might also be a rewrite request. These are rare, but we might ask.

Submit Again: We ask that once you have received a response from us on a submission, whether an accept or a reject, that you allow 90 days from the date you receive the response before submitting something else.

Publication: We try to stay several issues ahead, so that we have plenty of time to fill future issues with stories that work well side by side. We make no across-the-board guarantees on how long it will be between us accepting a story and its publication date, but we will let you know with your acceptance offer which issue we're offering to publish the story in.

Other Stuff

The below items don't fit neatly into the categories above, but they're actually some of the most important information here. As we said above, please READ ALL OF IT.

Be sure you are ready to submit your story before you send it. Once we have received a submission, we will not accept a revised version of it. If you change your mind about the submission, you may withdraw it from consideration, but we will not replace a current submission with a new revision of the same story. (Please keep in mind that if you do withdraw the submission, the 90-day resubmission wait period will apply beginning the day you make the withdrawal.)
If you do not receive one of the responses listed in the Timeframes section within the stated expectation time, please query. However, please do not query if a response is not yet due per our above Timeframes. We have no problem whatsoever helping out people who take the time to read our guidelines and work within them, but we do not have time to respond to emails asking for status of submissions that are still within the 120 day consideration period. "Friendly reminders" that we have your story are not actually friendly at all; they're a waste of everyone's time.
Please specify in your cover email which edition(s) you would like your story considered for. Indicate "Print Only," "Web Only," or "either." Submissions received without specification will be considered for both. (Please understand this means you will be considered for both; accepted stories will only appear in one or the other.) This is very important, and has been a major issue in the past. This information will be repeated in the autoresponder as well as in the personal confirmation you receive from an editor. While we can't force you to accept a publication offer for the web, it really is a lot of unnecessary work on our part, and a lot of needless wait on your part, to accept a piece for the web only to discover that the author had no idea we had a web edition and refuses to be published online.
Please make sure that your file is formatted correctly, and can be opened and read. If you’re unsure about your word processing or email programs, please try emailing your attachment to yourself or a friend to test it out before sending to us–we’ve had to reject a few stories simply because the files were unreadable. It would be a shame to miss out on a great story just because a word processing program decided to scramble it.

submitting your work

Send your submission to submissions@title-goes-here.com

The subject line of your email should read: Fiction Submission: Author Name/Story Title (If your title is longer than three words, just use the first three.) The subject line is important - we have lots of email coming into a communal inbox; correct subject line formatting will ensure that your submission is identified and handled in a timely manner.

Please include a cover email. We don't need your life story; we don't even want it. Ideally, we would at least like to see:

The name you'd like us to call you (which simply means please sign your email so we don't have to send your confirmation to "hey you")
Your pen name, if it's different
The title of your story
The word count of your story
Which edition(s) of the magazine you'd like your work considered for (Note!! As of 01/11/12 we are closed to submissions for the Print Edition until further notice; all submissions received on or after 01/11/2012 will be considered only for the Web Edition.)
Where you found our listing for submissions

The above does NOT mean that we only want a bulletted list in an otherwise blank email. That's better than nothing, certainly, but we're perfectly fine with a simple paragraph or two. Also, if you'd like to include highlights from your publishing history we'd like to see that, but please do not list hundreds of individual publications. Just give us the most recent few, or the ones you're the most proud of. We do like to see cover letters, but it shouldn't be longer than your story!

Lastly if you found us listed at Duotrope, please remember to report your confirmation and response. (If you don’t use Duotrope, we highly recommend you check them out!) If you found us elsewhere, it’s not required, but we’d love to know where!

Thanks for your interest!!

C. Bryan Brown & Inanna Gabriel,
Co-Editors in Chief
Title Goes Here: Magazine

*****

Flash Fiction Payscale: (Applies to PRINT ONLY)

up to 99 words: $1.00

100-299 words: $2.00

300-599 words: $3.00

600-899 words: $4.00

900+ words: $5.00

Home About Us News Calendar Party Lounge Contact Us