Deadline: August 31st, 2024
Payment: Royalties
Theme: Darker legends of the mermaid. Sirens, womenfolk (fishfolk?) who lure men into the sea.

We are looking for darker legends of the mermaid. Sirens, womenfolk (fishfolk?) who lure men into the sea. Of the men (or their wives!) who seek revenge for lost loves, lost fortunes, and wrecked ships. We want Tails of Tragedy and Terror, Stories of Sails and Seas and Sorrow, Accounts of Attractions and Actions, Allegories of Alligators, Apologues of Apologies, Travelogues of Living Logs!

Wait. No. Sorry. Got carried away.

Anyway, be they romance gone wrong, horror, sci-fi, dark comedy, or whatever genre, we want to see your dark stories about mermaids.

Editor Jessica Guernsey

Executive Editor Sam Knight

Submissions open June 1^st through August 31^st 2024.

Full general submission guidelines for Knight Writing Press can be found here: https://knightwritingpress.com/submissions/

TLDR: (Warning, if you don’t correctly follow the aforementioned guidelines, you will likely be rejected.)

Payment: Royalty sharing only, and only through Draft2Digital

Wordcount: 2,000 to 6,000 words

No reprints. (Not because we don’t want them, but because Amazon is a problem.* See end of this page for more information.)

Rights asked for: For both print and electronic, First worldwide, English, Exclusive anthology rights ONLY until publication (because of that Amazon problem again*) and then non-exclusive as soon as the anthology is published, for as long as the anthology remains in print.

Submit to [email protected]  with the subject line of: Mermaidens 2 (story name) by (author’s name) as an RTF, Word doc. or docx file, in standard manuscript format (https://www.shunn.net/format/)

Please make sure you read and follow all submission guidelines and look over the sample contract before you submit. In the text of your query letter, please include confirmation that you understand we are using Draft2Digital and that you must have an account there in order to receive royalties for your story. Your story may be rejected without having been read if you omit this.

We exclusively use Draft2Digital to distribute so that we can take advantage of their payment splitting program. Please make sure you understand what that means and how it affects you before you submit.

ALSO, to clear up some confusion: You do NOT have to have a D2D account to submit a story, but it will be required to finalize any acceptance, and you will need it to receive any payments.

No extreme horror or sex. Please keep content and language limited to the equivalent of a “PG-13” rated movie. We want to be able to share this with our mothers and children.

Knight Writing Press will not accept a story that glorifies, supports, encourages, or gratuitously includes hate, hate crimes, rape, sex, sex crimes, or any other forms of inhumanity.

Do not send stories using/based upon song lyrics/movies/novels/comics you do not own the rights to.

There are no genre restrictions on this anthology, however the main premise is mermaids and darker stories. Please keep this in mind if your story does not contain those elements, or contains them weakly, it will be up to the editors to decide if your idea fits the theme well enough.

While rejections may be sent out prior to the deadline date, acceptances will not be determined until after the close of submissions.

*The rights we ask for have been modified to be exclusive until such time as the anthology that the story will be in has been published. We regret this, but some sales outlets (specifically Amazon) have caused problems when a previously published story appears (in whole or in part) online anyplace. This means if you posted your story (or part of it) on your (or any) website, it has “already been published for free” and SOME sales outlets (really just Amazon, in our experience) won’t carry it for sale, even as part of a collection, which means we can’t either (because Amazon is still about 80% of our sales). This also means (we are sorry to say) that we will no longer be accepting reprints for the foreseeable future.

Via: Knight Writing Press.