Category: Token Payment

Audio / Ongoing Submissions / Reprints Allowed / Token Payment

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Ongoing Submissions: The Centropic Oracle

the-centropic-oracle

Payment: 0.01 per word, CAD
Note: Non-released in audio reprints allowed

The Centropic Oracle is looking for science fiction and fantasy stories that make you feel and think. In our opinion good fiction – particularly SF and Fantasy – should challenge us to examine our own lives and beliefs. It should force us to reflect on how we fit into the world and what it takes to make the world a better place by our being in it. We aren’t looking for things that will give us answers to those questions, but that doesn’t mean your story shouldn’t have a resolution (good, bad, or indifferent!) to its conflict.

What we do not accept:

    • – erotica of any description;
    • – gratuitous graphic violence;
    • – profanity – we need to maintain our non-explicite rating on iTunes, so keep it PG
    • – anything to do with zombies;
    • – pieces that are nothing but proselytization of a religious or political perspective;
    • – racist, homophobic, misogynistic, or misandrist works;
    • – fan fiction – it must be an original story that you own all the rights to.

 
What’s a tough, tough sell and makes us shudder at the thought of having to read it yet again:

  • – vampires;
  • – werewolves;
  • – any supernatural being in a romance with a human.

 

Basics

The prose must be readable and easily spoken aloud. This means that it must flow naturally and not distract the reader from the story. Lyricism is fine (we quite enjoy it) but pointless repetition is distracting. This is flash and short fiction so every word counts. Make those verbs active and incorporate your adjectives well to set mood! A single well-placed word in a sentence can change it entirely. Word usage frequency is something we notice. Take a break from your piece and read it again. Do you notice one word that pops up again and again? If you notice it, it’s guaranteed we will – it’s a pet peeve. Rhythm and cadence matter too, we don’t want to read pieces that sound like they were written by a robot who is only capable of crafting sentences five words long.

Characterization is integral. If you don’t know your character, your reader won’t either. It’s distracting when a character behaves in ways that don’t make sense, or outbursts feel like they came out of nowhere.

Continuity errors are a sure way to get a rejection. If your antagonist changes hair colour part way through the story, you will get a rejection. Continuity is one of the key basics in editing and is an indicator that you haven’t proofread your piece, let alone given your best effort to it.

Grammar matters. Know the difference between your, you’re, and yore, and between to, too, and two. Know when to use a comma. The occasional typo is one thing (even those of us who are proficient in grammar can miss a single typo despite reviewing a manuscript a dozen times) but poor grammar won’t get you past the first read, and if it’s bad enough we won’t even finish the read.

If we have rejected your story, do not resubmit it. We do not ask for rewrites. Ever. If it’s almost there, we will accept the piece contingent on specific edits. If you refuse the suggested edits and we feel strongly enough about the necessity of those edits, we will release your piece unpublished and without payment.

If we accept your story we will require a bio and a photo from you for promotional purposes on our website. In addition, be prepared to be called to interview with the reader and/or a small panel for a group discussion of your story. Talking points will be sent out prior to the voice-only interview so that you can have anecdotes or comments prepared. If you do not wish to have your photo posted, or appear on the show, do not submit.

Word Count

Flash fiction submissions should be between 200 and 1500 words. We accept vignettes in the flash fiction category as long as they make us feel and think. We aren’t of the belief that they don’t have value and we actually enjoy them when the prose is beautiful.

Short story submissions should be between 1500 and 6500 words. The upper limit is absolute and longer stories will be rejected without being read. This is an audio podcast, and we aim to keep our ‘casts to a maximum of 40 minutes.

Query us about serial works (not novels, serials in the fashion of the original Sherlock Holmes stories). It’s a tough sell, but we may go there for the right worlds and characters. Our criteria for those are more extensive and our automated system does not handle our process.

Multiple Submissions

We do not accept multiple submissions. We do our best to keep our response times as short as possible, which means keeping the pending list as short as possible. Once you have received a response to your submitted story you are welcome to submit again.

Simultaneous Submissions

We do not accept simultaneous submissions. We try hard not to keep you waiting long for a response.

Reprints

We do not accept pieces that already have audio recordings published but we do not consider your story a reprint if it has appeared elsewhere in print (hardcopy or electronic) only. Be sure to tell us when submitting if it has been published in print and we will promote it before the ‘cast so our audience may read along if they wish.

Payment

Currently we pay CAD$0.01 per word, but that will increase as we grow. If we publish your story we do ask that you help us promote it on your social media platforms. The faster we grow our audience, the faster we can increase our word rate. Payment will be made within 30 days of publication.

As part of the compensation you will be actively promoted on our website, so please keep us updated with any new credits you accumulate. We will provide an affiliate link to anything you have listed under your byline on Amazon – or any other online retailer – and a direct link to any electronic free-to-read publication. You will receive periodic email requests from us to review your Contributor page and provide us with any relevant updates. Your Contributor page will appear on our Featured Author page in rotation and we will give you notice of when you will be featured so that you can share it on your social media platforms.

Paypal support payments made directly on your page will be forwarded to you less Paypal’s fees and a 10% commission. Payments made from the story’s feature page will be split 50/50 between the author and the actor less Paypal’s and our fees.

In the future, we may ask to include your piece in an audio anthology compensated a on pro-rata royalty basis with 33% to the author and 33% to the actor.

Rights

We require a one year exclusive and five years non-exclusive to audio rights from the date of publication. If you make a print (hardcopy or electronic) or video performance sale, let us know – we want to promote that!

Formatting

Please submit in the Shunn format. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can see it here. Submissions that do not follow this format will be rejected unread.

File Format

Please submit rtf files only as our readers use a variety of devices.

How to Submit

We accept submissions through our electronic submissions manager only. Emailed submissions, or submissions sent via the contact form, will be deleted unread. We do not accept hardcopy submissions.

Our Process

Once you have created an account in our Submission Manager and have submitted your story you will be redirected to a page that shows your Submission ID number and a confirmation email will be sent out. If you don’t get a submission ID, please contact our site support ([email protected]) to report the error. If you don’t receive the email, check your spam folder before contacting us. You can check back often to see your submission progress through the various reading stages. We take pride in our writer friendly submission manager, and hope that it helps your stress level to know where exactly your piece is at in the process, and how long you should expect it to get through that step. Please do not send us an email query unless your submission disappears from the manager (open or closed) and you have not received an email. We do not keep copies of rejected stories, only the submission activity.

Via: The Centropic Oracle.

Ongoing Submissions / Online / Token Payment

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Ongoing Submissions: Metaphorosis

metaphorosis

Payment: $.01/word

We publish science fiction and fantasy, broadly defined.

What we want:

  • style – We want writers who use language beautifully – so that words aren’t just the carrier for your story, they’re part of the scenery. We want the poetry of Roger Zelazny, the finesse and ingenuity of Jack Vance.
  • mood – We want stories with atmosphere, where mood is an important element. Think Patricia A. McKillip or Richard Llewellyn.
  • character – We want stories with characters – real people with real emotions, whether those people are aliens or trolls or both. Think Arthur C. Clarke or Richard Adams.
  • intellect and emotion – We want writing that makes us think and feel. We want the intellect of A. A. Attanasio, the social awareness of Ursula K. Le Guin, the impact of George R. R. Martin’ short fiction.
Whom do we like?

In addition to the above, we like Walter M. Miller, Jr., Richard Cowper, Theodore Sturgeon, Samuel Delany, James Thurber, Orson Scott Card, K. J. Parker, Robin Hobb, Julie Czerneda, Sean Stewart, Mari Ness, Ken Liu, Oliver Buckram, Fran Wilde, and a host of others. Not enough cues? See our reviews.

How long can my story be?

As long as it needs to be. Keep in mind, though, that we’re looking to average 4,000 words/per story; 1,000 to 6,000 words is the sweet spot. We’re unlikely to publish serials.

What we don’t want:
  • isms – We want stories with a modern perspective, not worlds that recreate historical mistakes. If your story is about gender relations, by all means have subservient women (or subservient men, or subservient gender neutrals) if it’s relevant. If that’s not what your story’s about, we’re not interested in a standard medieval model where men are in charge because they’re men, or a distant future world where skin color (or sexual orientation, or …) works just like it does today. Dream bigger.
  • retreads – we don’t mind if the concept of your story is something the world has seen before, so long as you do something new with it. But don’t send us Tolkien and Clarke with the names changed and a fresh coat of paint.
Hard sell

Nothing is out of bounds; we don’t want to set limits on imagination. However, we’re less likely to be interested in military SF, time travel, vampires, or zombies.

Other
  • Reprints: No, unless specifically solicited.
  • Simultaneous: Yes, but if you sell your piece elsewhere, please withdraw it through Submittable.
  • Multiple: Yes, within reason (two pieces at a time).
Vegan bonus points

Format

Follow the industry standard format defined by William Shunn. He has templates available, or you can use ours (LibreOffice, Word). We prefer a proportional, serif font like Cambria or Caladea.

Your story should be in one of the following file formats: ODT, DOC, DOCX, RTF.

Rights and payment:

Fiction

We pay a semi-pro rate of $.01/word. We’re buying the rights to:

  • post the story on our website – exclusive for 6 months from publication, non-exclusive for the life of the magazine.
  • include the story in a monthly issue sent to Patreon supporters.
  • include the story in a best-of anthology published within the calendar year after your story is published in our magazine.

A sample contract is here.

Art

We buy one piece of art per month, at a flat rate of $50. Art submitted must be 1563 x 2500 pixels, or a multiple thereof; templates are available as XCF, PSD, and JPG. We buy non-exclusive rights for use on our website, in a monthly issue, and in an annual anthology.

Content should include science fiction or fantasy elements. We’re not keen on violence or  erotica. We won’t take any pieces that show animals in subjugation.

A sample contract is here.

Payment process

We pay when we accept the piece, regardless of publication date. We pay only through PayPal.

How we’ll respond:

  • turnaround – we’ll try to respond within two weeks. Track your submission at Submission Grinderor Duotrope; we try to watch those figures as well as our own. We’ll likely be a bit slower when we first start up.
  • feedback – we’ll try to give feedback on the content your story, and on what page we decided the story wasn’t for us.

How to submit:

IFF you’ve read all the above,submit

Via: Metaphorosis.

Flash / Flat Amount / Ongoing Submissions / Poetry / Reprints Allowed / Token Payment

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Ongoing Submissions: Sub-saharan Magazine

Payment: 1¢ per word for up to 1000 words, $10 flat for stories above that, and $5 for any piece below 500 words.
Reprints Allowed at a lower pay (read below)

Before you submit to us, endeavour to follow our website, like our Facebook page, and follow us on twitter. We make this a criterion, for now, because we are a new market and we hope our network mushrooms with your support.

WHAT WE WANT

SHORT STORY/FLASH FICTION:
Although we have a soft spot for submissions by Africans, we welcome stories from the rest of the world if they present Africa in a Fantasy, science fiction, or horror setting or with speculative elements. The characters in such stories mustn’t be blacks. In fact, if making your characters black is the only African attribute in your story, then it is probably not for us. We want you to dive into rare African cultures and traditions, tweak them to your taste and sprinkle magic and futuristic science over them. Then serve them to us in a platter made of an unusual and fluid voice, a well-defined plot, characters that are larger than life, dry humour, and imageries that leave their imprints in our minds long after we finish devouring them.

LENGTH:
We consider stories up to 2000 words, but we prefer to see ones between 100 and 1000 words. Anything above 2000 words will be rejected.

PAYMENT:
For Nigerian authors, we pay N2 per word for up to 1000 words, N2000 flat for stories above that, and N1000 for anything below 500 words.

For authors from the rest of the world, we pay 1¢ per word for up to 1000 words, $10 flat for stories above that, and $5 for any piece below 500 words.

We pay on publication via PayPal or with Amazon Gift Cards for foreign authors. For Nigerian authors, we pay via bank transfer or MTN/Airtel/Etisalat recharge vouchers.

RIGHTS:
We buy the right to exclusively publish your piece on our website and in our quarterly Anthology. Most rights revert back to the author after six month of the piece appearing on our website. However, we will retain nonexclusive rights to continue selling the issue of our Anthology in which your piece appeared and to keep the piece in our archive.

HOW TO SUBMIT:
Submit your work as a DOC, DOCX, or RTF attachment to magazinesubsaharan@gmail.com with “Story Submission: Your Story Title” as the subject of the email. Please, the attached manuscript must be in standard manuscript format. Any story that isn’t properly formatted will be rejected. The same goes for stories that don’t follow the guidelines.

POETRY:
We want your poems of up to forty lines. Anything above that will be rejected. We prefer our poems dark, speculative, and humorous. Please no romantic poems, unless it’s about a date with a murderous alien on a poisonous planet where you end up dying by either throttling or sheer asphyxiation before you could write the poem.

Please use “Poetry Submission: You Poem Title” as the subject of your email.

We pay $5 flat for each accepted poem.

REPRINTS:
We occasionally accept story reprints. Therefore, if you are submitting a story for reprint, you must include “reprint” in the subject of your email in this format: “Reprint Submission: Story Title”. Also include where and when the story was first published in the body of the email.

We do not accept poetry reprints.

We pay $5 flat for accepted reprints between 500 and 5000 words.

ARTWORK:
We accept unsolicited artwork. Your artwork must be attached in JPEG or PGN format, and the file size should be no more than 5mb. Use “Artwork Submission: Your artwork title” as the subject of your email.

We pay between $5 and $10 for artwork, depending on the quality and how much we love it.

MULTIPLE AND SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS:
Please no multiple submissions. We, however, don’t mind simultaneous submissions, provided that you alert us if your piece is accepted elsewhere.

RESPONSE TIME:
We try to respond to all submissions in two weeks. However, if you haven’t heard from us in a month, do query via the email magazinesubsaharan@gmail.com with “Query: Your Piece Title” as the subject. In the body of your email, include the date and type of submission.

Via: Sub-saharan Magazine.