Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Writing Wednesday: Short Story Markets


I was googling myself (That always sounds so dirty) yesterday and I came across this: The Genie and The Breadsticks by Darrell B. Nelson.

I google myself for a couple reasons; first I’m an egomaniac who loves to see his name on the Internet, second it’s the first thing agents do if your query interests them.

I’m assuming agents do this in order to see how big of a market I’ve already carved out for myself. As a fiction writer I assume they would like to see I’ve got a few stories floating about to get people interested in my work.

The trouble is finding the right magazine to send my short stories to. I had a horrible method of selecting magazines that I will share. When I would finish a short story I would go to “Every Writers Resource’s list of Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazines” and randomly click on links until found one that wanted the type of story I wrote.

This was a horrible way to market my work as it always seemed I would click on the wrong ones, if I wrote a 5,400 word story my first 10 clicks would be magazines looking for flash fiction (under 1,000) if I wrote flash fiction my first 10 clicks would be magazines looking for well developed stories of 5,000 to 7,500 words. I wished someone had organized the science fiction market with little notes on each magazine as to what they were looking for.

I looked around and couldn’t find any so I made one myself to save time in the future. After getting through the A’s I thought other writers might like a list like this so I’ll post it here.

For now I’ll just post them one letter at a time because of the limitations of blogger, but if it proves popular I’ll work on making it a functional list.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Markets
Brought to you by the letter A and the number 1 through infinity.

365 Tomorrows: http://365tomorrows.xk90.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/365Tomorrows.woa
What they want: Flash Fiction (under 600 words) Science Fiction
What the pay: 0.00

Aberrant Dreams: http://www.hd-image.com/submissions.htm
What they want: Science Fiction under 10,000 words
What they pay: $0.03 per word.
Currently closed to submissions

Absent Willow Review: http://absentwillowreview.com/submissions
What they want: Science Fiction horror 2,000 to 8,000 words
What they pay: Contest: One person wins $50
Once you submit they will send a newsletter constantly.

Alien Skin Magazine: http://www.alienskinmag.com/main.htm
What they want: Flash Fiction (under 1,000 words) micro fiction (150 words)
What they pay: $20
They published my “A home to die for”

Allegory http://www.allegoryezine.com/submissions.htm
What they want: Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy. No word length mentioned
What they pay: $15

Alternative Coordinates: http://www.ac-mag.com/submission.html
What they want: Science Fiction (under 5,000 words)
What they pay: $0.015 per word

Analog: http://www.analogsf.com/information/submissions.shtml
What they want: Science Fiction (2,000 to 7,000 words)
What they pay: $0.06 per word
Professional level magazine

Another Realm: http://anotherealm.org/FAQ/faq.php
What they want: Science Fiction (up to 5,000 words)
What they pay: $25

Aphelion: http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/admin/shorts_guidelines.html
What they want: Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy (up to 7,500 words)
What they pay: $0.00

Asimov’s: http://www.asimovs.com/info/guidelines.shtml
What they want: Science Fiction (up to 7,500 words)
What they pay: $0.06 per word
Professional level

5 comments:

Stephanie Barr said...

I did something similar myself. I think this is a great idea.

P.S. The ads here are very irksome. They take so long to load that, as I'm trying to fill in the capcha phrase, they move the window and I accidentally click them, thereby losing the comment. It's happened with the comment twice so far.

Unknown said...

Project,

Do you want me to start headlining your posts with your real name at my site?

The Project Savior is well known, but perhaps it will help in the google area. I will still use it as the link but put your name in on the lead and the author.

Let me know.

Grant

Darrell B. Nelson said...

Yeah, this site needs a make over. I've been thinking about it for awhile. I'll work on it a bit this weekend.
I've been thinking about changing the structure of my posts as well so they have my name on it.
Bare with me the next few days as I try a few different things.

Anonymous said...

This is a test, I've moved some of the stuff around to hopefully speed up the load time.
It seems to work fine now in Safari on the mac, I'll try firefox on the PC next.
I don't have IE so if people are using that and have a problem let me know.
Darrell

Unknown said...

Firefox (PC) is a lot slower than Chrome(PC) or Safari (mac) at loading the pictures. Does anyone else have that problem?