Submission Window: October 1st – 31st, 2024
Payment: 4 cents per word for original fiction and 1/2 cent per word for reprints
Theme: Speculative fiction, speculative poetry, and related non-fiction
Note: Reprints Welcome

Trollbreath Magazine is a journal of speculative fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, publishing electronic issues on a quarterly schedule. Our interests are as varied as the endless amount of genres, from dark fantasy to hope punk to surrealism, and everything in between. We have a particular fondness for slipstream and fabulism in all their delightful forms, but what motivates us most are great stories by wonderful authors eager to share their visions of the past, the future, the in between, and everything that lies outside the margins. Coloring beyond the lines encouraged.

Examples of stories we particularly love (but there are too many to include):

Bears Discover Fire, by Terry Bisson (England Underway as well)
Last of the Winnebagos, by Connie Willis (Even the Queen; all her work!)
Rabbit Test, by Samantha Mills
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson
Bride, Knife, Flaming Horse, by M.L. Krishnan

Stories, poems and articles will be available at the beginning of the quarter for those with paid subscriptions to the magazine, either on the website or sent via email depending on membership level. Over the course of the quarter, a new story will be opened every Friday to the those without subscriptions, until all stories have been publicly released.

We read for two issues at a time during our month-long submission periods. Submission periods for fiction/poetry are as follows:

April 1st- 30th (for the September and December issues of the same year)
October 1st – 31st (for the March and June issues of the following year)

Note: we are open year-round for non-fiction pitches (see below poetry).

Fiction – Trollbreath Magazine will consider original short stories from 1500 words up to 7500 words. Our preference is for stories between 4,000 and 5,000 words, so the closer you are to that, the more likely we will be to purchase your work. We will consider reprints which were previously not available online (if readers can already access your story without paying for it via webzine or podcast or your blog, etc., we’re not interested).

No sim-sub, no multi-submits – Please only submit one story at a time. If we respond to you with a rejection before our open submission period ends, you should feel free to submit another story. Please do not submit to another market until we’ve responded to your submission. We’ll do our best to reply back to every submission within 60 days, barring unforeseen circumstances. We understand all-too-well how painful it is to wait long periods for a response to your submission.

Format – please format your story using Shunn manuscript format (name and email address in the upper left are all that’s required, you do not need to include your address or phone number).

Pay Rate and Rights: We pay 4 cents (United States currency) per word for original works, and 1/2 cent per word for reprints at the time of publication. In exchange, for original works we ask for the right for first printing in English for a period of 3 months from the date the quarterly issue your story appears in is published, as well as non-exclusive inclusion in any yearly anthology of original works we publish. For reprints, we ask for the right for the first printing in English of the title online, with all rights reverting to the author once the paywall period of the story ends and it is freely available to the public.

Submitting a story – Please email your story as an attachment to [email protected]. When attaching your story, make sure it is in Microsoft Word .doc or .docx formats only. Stories in any other format will be deleted unread.

Your email subject line should read:  Short Story Submission – Name Of Story, Your Last name

Please do include a short bio in your email and indicate if your story is an original or a reprint. Do not tell us about your story, but do tell us a little about yourself, your background, your work, previous story publications you’ve had, or awards you may have received.

Poetry – Trollbreath Magazine is open to original, unpublished poetry of any length that falls within the bounds of speculative fiction. Please feel free to send up to five poems at a time for consideration, all within one document.

Pay Rate and Rights – We pay a $25 flat fee for any poem we purchase at the time of publication. In exchange, we are asking for the right for first printing in English for three months from the date the quarterly issue your poem appears in is published, as well as inclusion in our yearly anthology of works we published.

No Sim-Sub – Please do not submit to another market until we’ve responded to your submission. We’ll do our best to reply back to every submission within 60 days, barring unforeseen circumstances.

Submitting Poetry – Please email your poem(s) as an attachment to [email protected]. When attaching your poems, make sure all of them are included in a single Microsoft Word file with .doc or .docx format only. Poems in any other format will be deleted unread.

Your email subject line should read: Poetry Submission – Name of First Poem in Document, Your Last Name

Please do include a short bio in your email. Do not tell us about your poem(s), but do tell us a little about yourself, your background, your work, previous publications you’ve had, or awards you may have received.

Non-fiction – Trollbreath Magazine is open to a wide range of articles on topics of speculative fiction, geared to both writers and readers. We are interested in reviews of all types (movies, novels, video games, writing tools, cons), interviews, constructive criticisms of the movie/publishing/television/media industry, discussion of a current scientific advance, and so on.

Pay Rate and Rights – We pay a $40 flat rate for any article we publish at the time of publication, up to a total of 2500 words in length. In return we ask for rights of English first publication for three months from the date of publication.

Submitting Non-fiction – Please email your pitch (not the article itself) to [email protected]. In the body of the email, please detail your topic and what you plan to cover.

Your email subject line should read: Non-fiction submission –  Your Last Name

Please include a personal bio with any relevant information about yourself, or about the topic. Please provide links to examples of previous non-fiction work. Links to articles you have written, even if they reside on your own personal blog, are helpful when we make a decision on which pieces we would like to commission.

Art – Trollbreath Magazine is looking for cover artists to grace the front of every issue. Each artist will be paid for their work, and will be given an interview within the issue that their artwork is used.

Pay Rate and Rights – We pay $150 for cover artwork. In exchange, we request exclusive use of the art (other than any copy you maintain on your personal portfolios) for three months from the date of publication of the issue, and the right to interview the artist, to include copies of an additional two or three works with the text (at lower resolutions, or linked directly from your site).

Submitting Art – send an email to [email protected]. In the body of the email, provide a bio of yourself and a link to your online portfolio or website. Do not send us image files.

Your email subject line should read: Art Submission – Your Last Name

Note: we will only respond if we are interested in using your work. If you do not hear from us, you can assume a response of no.

A statement on AI – We do not publish stories created wholly or partially with the use of the current crop of AI tools. Submitting a story written wholly or partially with AI tools may result in you being banned from further submissions.

Via: Trollbreath Magazine.