June Market Report
Welcome to the June Market Report for SF/F.
Deadlines and Closures to Note:
Pro anthology Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation (Upper Rubber Boot Books) is open to submissions of fiction and poetry until June 4 and submissions of line art and coloring pages until June 30, 2016.
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Changes of Address:
Aliterate guidelines page has moved. (note: they are currently closed to submissions).
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Magazine/Webzine News:
Lightspeed Magazine will be open to (non-theme) submissions June 16 – June 30, 2016.
Theme issue People Of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror! is now closed to submissions.
Theme issue People Of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! is open to submissions through June 15, 2016.
Lightspeed pays 8 cents/word for original fiction and 2 cents/word for reprints.
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Nightmare Magazine Writers’ Guidelines
Current Submission Period: Nightmare will be open to submissions June 1 – June 15, 2016.
Instructions for submitting to Nightmare follow. Please read everything on this page and read the magazine before submitting.
Submission Procedures
Instructions: All fiction must be submitted through our Moksha online submission system, located at http://nightmare-magazine.com/submissions. Please do not email your submissions. If one of the Submission Type options is grayed out, that means we are currently closed to that Submission Type.
Guidelines: Nightmare is seeking original horror and dark fantasy stories. All types of horror and dark fantasy are welcome. No subject should be considered off-limits, and we encourage writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope. We do not accept simultaneous submissions or multiple submissions. You may submit one horror and one dark fantasy story once every seven days.
Word Count: We are open to stories of 1500-7500 words. Stories of 5000 words or less are preferred.
Pay Rate: Nightmare pays 6 cents/word for original fiction, or 1 cent/word for reprints.
Rights: To see which rights we’re seeking, please view our contract template for original fiction or our contract template for reprinted fiction.
Cover Letters: Your cover letter should contain the length of your story, your publishing history, and any other relevant information (e.g, if you send us a hard SF story about black hole clusters and your doctoral dissertation was on black hole clusters, mention that). If you’re not sure what should go in your cover letter, this article on cover letters might help.
Questions/Problems: Email submissions@nightmare-magazine.com for all fiction-related inquiries, or if you have any trouble using our online submission system. Please do not email your submissions to this address. All submissions must be submitted via our Moksha online submission system.
Rejections/Response Times: Be aware that we receive several hundred submissions every month during our submissions periods. As such, we cannot offer personalized feedback on each story. If we say, “send more,” however, it does mean that we hope to see something else from you. Most rejections will be sent out within two business days, while stories being seriously considered may be held for up to two weeks. Please do not respond to rejection letters, even just to say “Thanks for the quick turnaround” etc. We appreciate the thought, but it is unnecessary and will just clutter up our editorial inbox.
Diversity Statement: We believe that the horror genre’s diversity is its greatest strength, and we wish that viewpoint to be reflected in our story content and our submission queues; we welcome submissions from writers of every race, religion, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation.
Nightmare is a qualifying market for membership in both HWA and SFWA.
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Heather Shaw is editing a new weekly speculative fiction magazine, Persistent Visions, which pays 7 cents/word and is now open to submissions:
Persistent Visions is looking for fresh fiction that skirts the edges of reality, pushes the boundaries of people we could become, and has an updated, innovative perspective on the people we will become. We’re looking for edgy, raw, unconventional, difficult, speculative fiction stories. You can pluck our heartstrings, but make it a tune we’ve never heard before. We want stories that inspire the reader to think in new ways, stories that include a diverse cast of characters, that challenge conventional assumptions regarding race, relationships, gender, neurodiversity, disability, and sexuality in thought-provoking, exciting new ways. Show us the people we will be, or illuminate the path we’re taking to get there. We want science fiction and fantasy that is truly revolutionary, and that embraces the variety of human experience in all of its glory.
We pay 7 cents/word for first English world rights, and first option on anthology and podcast reprint rights (stories selected for reprint in our anthologies and podcasts will receive further remuneration). Stories should be up to 7500 words long (though flash fiction will be a hard sell) and previously unpublished. We pay on acceptance.
We welcome new voices; if you are a writer who has yet to make a pro sale, we encourage you to submit a story to us.
If you would like to send us work, please see our fiction submission form: https://persistentvisionsmag.com/fiction-submission.
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Publishing News:
Tor.com will be reopening June 5th to unsolicited novellas in certain subgenres only for June 2016 only:
Until the end of June, Tor.com will only be considering novellas of between 20,000 and 40,000 words that fit one of the following science fiction subgenres:
* Time Travel
* Space Opera
* Near Future Thriller
* Cyberpunk
If you have a novella you want to submit that doesn’t fit these parameters, don’t give up hope. Our plan is to rotate which genre we’re soliciting periodically, so check back here and on our submissions guideline page regularly. Once we’ve worked our way through these submissions, we’ll re-open for a different genre. Please don’t ask us what genre we’ll be moving to—we’ll be deciding that closer to the time.
As always, both Lee Harris and Carl Engle-Laird actively request submissions from writers from underrepresented populations. This includes, but is not limited to, writers of any race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, class and physical or mental ability. We believe that good science fiction and fantasy reflects the incredible diversity and potential of the human species, and hope our catalog will reflect that.
How to Submit:
Please submit your novellas through the form at http://submissions.Tor.com/tornovellas. Once you’ve registered there you can also use that portal to check the status of your submission.
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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. Her short novel The Adventure of the Incognita Countess is forthcoming from Aqueduct Press. She is the editor of 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 more spec-fic market news, Cynthia publishes the monthly Market Maven e’newsletter; a sample issue is available.
