Deadline: December 31, 2016
Payment: $200 for short stories that are under 5,000 words and $500 for stories that are 5,000 words or longer

How
do you cure your Netflix (or Amazon, Google movie, or Hulu) addiction and return to your first love, reading books? You know you want to read more. You know you enjoy reading. You know you look forward to finishing a book because then you can start a new adventure.

But how? How do you get into reading when the siren call of streaming movies becomes more powerful every year? A three-hundred page novel is daunting in the face of Netflix and friends’ wonders. It’s too easy to put on pajamas, pour a glass of wine, and offer your eyes to a TV, tablet, or computer screen until sleep summons you.

Enter The Binge-Watching Cure: Fabulous Stories that Start Small and Grow Longer, edited by Bill Adler Jr. The Binge-Watching Cure will be an anthology of short stories of increasing size. The first story will be 100 words—anyone can read that. The next, 200 words. Then 500, then longer, all the way to novella length. By the time you’ve finished reading The Binge-Watching Cure, you’ll be able to tackle Joyce and Pynchon. Or at the very least, you’ll enjoy novels you hear about from friends and family. The Binge-Watching Cure will reignite your love for reading; it will better your life.

Just as you enter a cold swimming pool one body part at a time, get used to drinking beer sip by foamy sip, or learn to enjoy spicy food in little, fiery nibbles, The Binge-Watching Cure gradually acclimates you to reading longer and longer stories, until a novel-length book goes down smoothly, tasting sweet, and making you want more.

We want your writing. 

We’re looking for stellar stories of various lengths for The Binge-Watching Cure. The stories must have strong characters and compelling plots. Genre fiction is okay because great fiction often crosses the genre barrier. No erotica and no stories with excessive violence. Please see our FAQ for more about what we’re looking for.

We pay $200 for short stories that are under 5,000 words and $500 for stories that are 5,000 words or longer. We will be licensing the non-exclusive print and electronic book rights, including foreign-language rights (but not audio, film rights, or magazine rights). Your name and bio will be included along with your story. Contributors also receive a copy of The Binge-Watching Cure. Previously published stories are okay, as are simultaneous submissions. There will be a signed contract, of course. The Binge-Watching Cure will be published in 2017.

Here’s the important part: We want stories within 15 percent of the following word counts (within 20 percent for stories 10,000 words and longer):

100
200
500
750
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,500
4,000
4,500
6,000
7,000
8,000
10,000
15,000
25,000

The Binge-Watching Cure will have one story from each of these length categories.

Questions? Visit our FAQ page. Our FAQ page has more detail about the kind of stories we’re looking for.

Ready to submit? Hop over to our submissions page.

Follow Bill Adler on Twitter.

Visit Bill Adler’s Goodreads page.

Via: The Binge-Watching Cure.