Payment: $0.08/word for the first 2,000 words, and $0.02/word after that.
Theme: Speculative fiction with a bent toward science over fantasy, details below!

Submissions

We are open for submissions of original speculative science fiction.

If you’re already familiar with our submission guidelines, head to our Moksha submission portal.

Fiction Submission Guidelines

We accept stories ranging from 250 to 15,000 words. We will accept stories longer than this, but they will be harder to sell.

For us, speculative fiction involves speculating in some form or another (directly, indirectly, metaphorically, etc) about the human condition in the immediate or distant future. This can be done in many genres under the umbrella of speculative fiction, including, but certainly not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, and *punk.

We prefer stories that use technology over stories that use magic, but welcome stories that cleverly contain both.

We prefer stories that try not to compromise creativity by over-focusing on scientific accuracy.

We prefer stories that rely on characters who interact with technology, rather than technology that interacts with characters. (Of course, some technologies are characters…)

That being said, we are very open and welcome to many interpretations of what “speculative fiction” is, the genre’s diversity being what we love so much about it.

No reprints, please. We consider reprints to be any story that has previously appeared in any medium that is accessible and/or purchasable, including, but not limited to, blogs, websites, magazines, books, whole-back tattoos, and private subscriber/supporter-only feeds. (Private critique groups do not count).

We are not interested in stories about: zombies; violence for the sake of violence; sexual assault; rapists; sexy vampires; sexy werewolves; sexy vampire-werewolf shapeshifters; sexy zombies; Democrat/Republican turf wars; petty matricide; painting real-life past atrocities in a positive light; sentient body parts that fall in love with other sentient body parts; whatever fits in between these.

Payment

We pay $0.08/word for the first 2,000 words, and $0.02/word after that.

Rights & Terms

• First worldwide electronic rights
• First print rights
• Nonexclusive anthology rights for our annual collection of all fiction published by Proton Reader in a given year

Sample contract coming soon.

At all times, copyright remains exclusively with you, the author.

Payment is made via PayPal.

Publication & Distribution

We are purchasing the rights to publish your story in three places:

• First, your story will appear in the DRM-free e-book version of the magazine issue on the date of publication.
• Second, your story will appear on the ProtonReader.com website when the next issue is published, for anyone to read for free.
• Third, your story will appear in an annual collection of fiction published by Proton Reader for the year it was published, both as a DRM-free e-book and physical print-on-demand book.

Please note that Proton Reader is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run magazine; 100% of all revenue from sales on any platform goes toward paying authors and running the magazine.

Simultaneous Submissions & Response Times

We do not accept simultaneous submissions. If you’ve sent us a story, please do not send it to another place. Likewise, if you’ve sent a story for consideration somewhere else, please don’t submit it to us.

We are committed responding to submissions as quickly as humanly possible, but please remember that we are all volunteers, most with children and full-time jobs. If you haven’t heard back about your submission in four weeks, please reach out to sami at protonreader dot com.

Multiple Submissions

Please only submit a maximum of one work of fiction at a time.

Please submit each work separately.

Unless we specifically ask you to send us revisions, please do not resubmit stories that we have previously passed on.

How to Submit

1. Prepare your story in Shunn Modern Format.
2. NEW! Please submit your story via Proton Reader’s Moksha submission portal.

Questions or Comments

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter (@protonreader) or to Sami directly (sami at protonreader dot com).

Via: Proton Reader.