March Market Report

The SFWA Blog is now offering monthly market updates. Here’s the March, 2016 report:

Magazine/Webzine News:

Aliterate seeks literary genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, Westerns, pulps, thrillers, horror, romance, etc), unpublished in English, between 3,000-12,000 words (upper limit firm). No erotica, graphic violence, multiple submissions, or unsolicited artwork. Simultaneous submissions OK. Acquires First North American Serial Rights and uses SFWA model contract. Pay 6 cents/word. Reading period deadline: April 30, 2016.

“Review is blind. Please do not include your name or identifying information in your submitted document.”

Full, detailed writer’s guidelines are at http://www.aliterate.org/submit.

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Compelling Science Fiction has two main goals: to find, publish, and promote the best science fiction stories, and to support and encourage the authors who write them. We currently pay 6 cents/word for accepted stories. We are a brand new publisher, and so do not yet qualify as a SFWA market. We will be applying for qualification after one year of publishing, as per SFWA policy.

Pay rate: 6 cents/word

Length: 1,000-10,000 words per work

Rights: First world electronic print and audio rights (for podcasts). Our contract follows the lead of SFWA’s Model Magazine Contract.

We are looking for science fiction that is entertaining, scientifically plausible, self-consistent, and technically detailed when appropriate. We have a preference for positive stories, to act as a counterweight to the currently popular post-apocalyptic genre. We certainly won’t dismiss a well-written dystopian future, but we have a bias toward stories that depict technological advancement rather than decay. We do not publish fantasy stories (although we enjoy them!).

Please submit stories via email at ‘submissions@compellingsciencefiction.com’ for consideration. We prefer .docx, .rtf, or .txt formats. We have no formatting guidelines/preferences, but please realize that we only publish electronically so use your best judgement regarding what would look good on a web page. Please include any information you feel is relevant in the body of the email. You will receive a confirmation email if your submission is successful. We will update you on the status of your submission in less than 4 weeks. No simultaneous submissions. If you have any questions (or need encouragement!) feel free to email us at questions@compellingsciencefiction.com.

[Publisher/Editor-in-Chief: Joe Stech]

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Our Queer Planet: A Summer Celebration from Strange Horizons

Call for Submissions

We at Strange Horizons believe that twenty-first-century speculative fiction must be a global, inclusive tradition, fully aware of and working against the influence of historical marginalisations in both the stories it tells and the voices it enables to tell them. As part of that work, we are pleased to open submissions for a month-long celebration of queer SF from around the world, to be published in July 2016 and to include approximately 20,000 words of fiction (almost twice our usual amount), at least eight poems, and related non-fiction.

The deadline for all submissions is Sunday 10 April 2016. Please include “QUEER PLANET” and the title of your work in the subject line of all submissions for this special. Unless otherwise indicated below, submissions should follow our usual guidelines (http://strangehorizons.com/Guidelines.shtml) and acceptances will be paid at our standard rates.

General Guidelines

For this special, across all departments we are looking for work that explores intersectional queer imaginaries and experiences around the world. We are looking for work by queer authors, especially those from outside North America, the UK, and Australia as well as queer indigenous writers from those regions and migrants to those regions.

We have a preference for stories and poems that are tied to our (queer) planet: works that take Earth as their setting (whether in the past, or the future, or an alternate reality), or works that explore a diaspora from Earth. We are not looking for secondary-world fantasies for this special. (Send us your secondary-world queer fantasies to consider for other months!)

But most of all we want your stories, from your experience; we want to see the possibilities of speculative literature through your eyes. We do not (nor do we expect you to) deny the difficulty of many queer lives, past and present, but we are not looking to reiterate the familiar, often tragic narratives of queerness that have so often confined our stories.

Our definition of queerness is as varied as the people to whom it applies: gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, intersex, transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, agender, and all the unmapped spaces around and between these identities. If you’re queer and we didn’t name you, your perspective is welcome.

We know that queerness is not the sole definition of your identity, and welcome stories that explore the intersections of queerness with race, class, gender, disability, neurodiversity, and other common axes of marginalisation.

If you have any questions, please contact management@strangehorizons.com. If in doubt: please do not self-reject. We look forward to reading your submissions!

Fiction

We are looking for stories of up to 10,000 words, previously unpublished in English. For this special only, submissions should be sent to queerplanet@strangehorizons.com, with “QUEER PLANET” and the title of your story in the subject line as noted above. (Regular submissions should still be sent via our normal portal: http://strangehorizons.com/guidelines/submit-fiction.php.) We welcome completed English translations of stories previously unpublished in English. Translations will be paid at 8 cents/word, with payment split between author and translator at their discretion.

Poetry

We are actively interested in bilingual or multilingual poetry as well as non-Western and genre-bending forms. We recognize diversity in language as well as perspective—break, subvert, repair, or reinvent it however you need to tell the story truly.

Non-Fiction

We are interested in standalone columns (1,000 to 2,000 words) exploring aspects of queer representation in SF, or experience as a queer reader or writer of SF. We are looking for individual perspectives and points of view; we are not looking for journalistic summaries or overviews. You can submit proposals or finished pieces.

We are interested in proposals for critical essays and round-tables (both up to approximately 5,000 words) exploring queer speculative writing from around the world. These could focus on specific works, authors, and/or traditions, or take a broader and more contextual view.

We welcome submission of works by queer writers and creators FOR REVIEW (in all media, from books to film to games), to reviews@strangehorizons.com. Works will be assigned to reviewers by our editorial staff. Submission of a work for review does not guarantee a review.

We are seeking artists to create original, commissioned work. We especially invite those with experimental styles and non-traditional approaches to speculative art. Interested artists can submit their portfolios for consideration via our guidelines: http://strangehorizons.com/guidelines/art.shtml.

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The People Of Colo(u)R Destroy Science Fiction theme issue of Lightspeed Magazine has closed to submissions. The related theme issues will be:

POC Destroy Horror! Submissions

Submission Period: 4/1 – 5/15

Guest Editor: Silvia Moreno-Garcia

POC Destroy Fantasy! Submissions

Submission Period: 5/1 – 6/15

Guest Editor: Daniel José Older

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Anthology News:

From Editor Ellen Datlow: I am editing the anthology series Best Horror of the Year (Night Shade Books) and am currently reading for the ninth volume, which will include all material published in 2016.

I am looking for stories and poetry from all branches of horror: from the traditional-supernatural to the borderline, including high-tech sf horror, supernatural stories, psychological horror, dark crime, or anything else that might qualify. If in doubt, send it. This is a reprint anthology so I am only reading material published in or about to be published in 2016. Submission deadline for individual stories is December 15th 2016. I’ll look at galleys or manuscripts. Authors should check that their publishers are sending review copies to me as I don’t have time or energy to nag publishers to get me material. I request it once (maybe twice) and that’s it.

I will look at e-versions of anthologies and collections if they are navigable and have running heads. I will not read them if formatting is inconsistent and it’s a pain in the neck to move back and forth from story to ToC and back to story the way I need to. But I really really prefer print, if your book is available that way.

You can query me as to whether I have your collection or an anthology in which you have a story at datlow@yahoo.com.

There will be a summation of “the year in horror” in the front of the volume. This includes novels, nonfiction, poetry, art books, and “odds and ends”– material that doesn’t fit elsewhere but that I feel might interest the horror reader. But I must be aware of this material in order to mention it. The deadline for submissions to this section is December 30th, 2016.

Ellen Datlow
Best Horror of the Year Volume Nine
PMB 391
511 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10011-8436

****I regularly read many magazines and webzines that publish horror (Black Static, Dark Discoveries, Cemetery Dance, Supernatural Tales, F&SF, The Dark, Nightmare, and the other digests, etc) or from anthologies and collections, unless I don’t have or can’t get that anthology or collection. Again, please ask your publisher to send me the magazine or book. For online publications, email me individual files.

Please do not send an SASE. If I choose a story you will be informed. For confirmation that I‘ve received something, enclose a self-addressed-stamped postcard and I will let you know the date it arrived.
Thank you.

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Galactic Empires seeks galaxy-spanning stories that both define – and challenge – the field:

Reprint Anthology – Print and Ebook

Publisher: Night Shade Books

Editor: Neil Clarke

Rate: One cent/word advance against pro-rata share of royalties

Length: 2,000 – 20,000 words

Genre: Science Fiction

Language: English language (translations welcome)

Format: .doc or .rtf

Deadline for Submissions: March 19, 2016

Submit stories at http://neilclarke.sendsubmission.com

Recommend stories by email to neil [at] clarkesworldmagazine [dot] com.

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The anthology Long Hidden: Hidden Youth has not been cancelled, and publisher Crossed Genres has posted an update.

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New, best-of (reprint) anthology:

Call: Transcendent

Publisher: Lethe Press

Editor: K.M. Zspara

Seeking: Reprints published during 2015 featuring trans* characters

Details: Transcendent is seeking short, speculative fiction published in 2015 that features transgender characters, including but not limited to those who identify as genderqueer, transfeminine, transmasculine, non-binary, two-spirit, FTM, MTF, agender, intersex, bigender, genderfluid, third gender, and others, with a special note that there is no one way to be transgender with regards to medical, social, and personal transition status.

Similarly, we acknowledge, affirm, and welcome transgender characters of all ages, races and ethnicities, sexual orientations, physical and mental capabilities, socio-economic statuses, and geographic locations. Speculative fiction will also be interpreted liberally to encompass the full spectrum of the genre, including the fantastical, the strange, the horrific, the weird, and everything in between. The moral of the story: if you think transgender speculative fiction applies to your story, please send it. And if you’re unsure, send it anyway! We welcome and encourage authors of oppressed and/or marginalized identities to submit. Authors need not identify as transgender.

Pays $25-$100 depending on length plus one free copy in library binding.

K.M. Szpara, editor. Standard manuscript format. Questions and submissions to transcendent [dot] submissions [at] gmail [dot] com

We recommend a brief cover letter introducing yourself and stating where the story was originally published.

Deadline: End of March 2016; the book releases 3-4 months later.

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Bio Note:

Cynthia Ward has published stories in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (Prime Books), Weird Tales, and elsewhere. She edited the anthologies Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West: Volumes One and Two (WolfSinger Publications). With Nisi Shawl, she coauthored the diversity fiction-writing handbook Writing the Other: A Practical Approach (Aqueduct Press).

If you’re looking for indepth SF/fantasy/horror/paranormal market news, Cynthia publishes the monthly Market Maven e’newsletter, where a sample issue may be found.