Publishing for Fun and Profit

breannacarroll:

So there was a list going around tumblr for a while that made it to my dash of literary journals that accept open submissions (and will pay!), but upon inspection about half of them were closed indefinitely, and I found quite a few other places that looked interesting through further research, so I wanted to post my own list. 

I tried to focus on things that paid professional grade (at least 6 cents per word), were friendly to speculative fiction, and specifically encouraged diversity and writing about marginalized groups.

(Please note that as of right now I have never submitted or been published with any of these, so if anyone has experience with them, good or bad, please feel free to message or reblog this with your experiences.)

Speculative Fiction

  • Strange Horizons — Speculative fiction (broadly defined) with an emphasis on diversity, unusual styles, and stories that address politics in nuanced ways. 8c per word. Up to 10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. Responds within 40 days. LGBT+ positive.
  • Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. 7-12c per word. Up to 25,000 words. No response times listed.
  • Asimov’s Science Fiction — Primarily sci-fi but accepts fantasy and surreal fiction, but no high fantasy/sword and sorcery. Prefers writing that is character driven. 8-10c per word. 1,000-20,000 words. Responds in about five weeks.
  • Evil Girlfriend Media — Horror and urban fantasy centered on female empowerment and defying gender stereotypes. $100 flat payment. 4,000-7,000 words. No response times given. LGBT+ friendly.
  • Beneath Ceaseless Skies — Fantasy with a focus on secondary worlds and characters. 6c per word. Up to 10,000 words. Average response time 2-4 weeks.
  • Fantastic Stories — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity and literary style. 15c per word. Up to 3,000 words. Responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.
  • Fiction Vortex — Serialized fantasy and speculative fiction. $300 for featured stories, $50 otherwise. 3,500 words or less. No response times given.
  • Shimmer — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity, strong plots, vivid characters, and beautiful writing. 5c per word. 7,500 words or less (will consider longer words with query letter). Usually responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.
  • Clarkesworld Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. 10c per word up to 5,000 words, 8c per word after. 1,000-16,000 words. Responds within days usually, gives a tracking number.
  • Apex Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 6c per word, +1c per word for podcast stories. Up to 7,500 words, all submissions over will be auto-rejected. Responds within 30 days.
  • Heliotrope Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 10c per word. Up to 5,000 words. Responds within 30 days.
  • Lightspeed Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds, with creativity and originality in terms of style and format encouraged. 8c per word. 1,500-10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. LGBT+ positive. Submissions temporarily closed for their main magazine but is accepting for their People of Color Destroy Science Fiction special.

General Fiction

  • The Sun Magazine — General fiction, likes personal writing or writing of a cultural/political significance. $300-$1500 flat payment  and a one year subscription to the magazine for fiction (also accepts essays and poetry). No minimum or maximum lengths but over 7,000 words discouraged. Responds in 3-6 months. Physical submissions only.
  • One Story — Any and all varieties of fiction, “unique and interesting” stories encouraged. $500 payment plus 25 contributor copies. 3,000-8,000 words. Usually responds in 2-3 months.
  • Camera Obscura — General fiction. $1000 for featured story, $50 for “Bridge the Gap” award, no payment for other contributors. 250-8,000 words. Response time vary, running just over two months as of now.

Flash Fiction 

  • Daily Science Fiction — Speculative flash fiction (including sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream, etc.). 8c per word. Up to 1,500 words, but shorter stories given priority. Response times not listed.
  • Vestral Review — General flash fiction. 3-10c per word depending on length to a max of $25. Up to 500 words. Response within four months.
  • Flash Fiction Online — General flash fiction. $60 flat payment. 500-1,000 words. Response times not listed.

Novels/Novella

  • Riptide Publishing — Any LGBTQ manuscripts between 15,000 and 150,000 words. Currently especially interested in lesbian romances, trans stories, asexual/aromantic stories, romances with a happy ending, and genre fiction such as urban fantasy. Also has a YA branch.  LGBT+ positive.
  • Crimson Romance — Romance stories of all kinds, currently seeking LGBT+ stories with a focus on emotional connections and relationships, especially m/m romance. Novel (55,000-90,000 words) or novella (20,000-50,000 words) length.  LGBT+ positive.

Kindle Direct Publishing 

  • Kindle Direct Publishing — Allows you to set your own prices, create your own cover art, and make royalties off of each sell. Any and all genres are welcome and if you’re prolific and smart about how you’re publishing you can make pretty good money.
  • General Guide to Kindle Publishing — Gives a good rundown of the publishing process on Kindle.
  • 101 Guide to Kindle Erotica — Great guide with lots of resources about how to make money publishing erotica on Kindle.   

Publishing Comics/Graphic Novels

  • Here is a list of potential comic companies and what kind of open submissions they accept.  
  • Here is a list of literary agents who accept graphic novels. 
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Patreon Workshop Schedule 2019

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Welcome all, patrons and guests! One of the privileges of being a patron is access to bi-weekly writing and worldbuilding workshop posts (alternating weeks). Below, take a look at the upcoming topics planned for each series! The Writing Workshops this year will focus both on the actual practice of writing in the first half and on the querying/business process in the second half of the year. The Worldbuilding Workshop will be less of a how-to and more a series of posts featuring my expertise as a folklorist or scholar of English and literature. Hopefully these posts will provide you good resources for building your own world! 

WRITING WORKSHOP

JANUARY: THE NITTY GRITTY

  • January 5th: Building Blocks: Basic Grammar Terminology
  • January 19th: Tripwires: Common Grammar Errors

FEBRUARY: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

  • February 2nd: A Bastard Tongue: A (Brief) History of English
  • February 16th: How to English: The Idiocsyncracies of the Language

MARCH: WRITING HACKS

  • March 2nd: Going Rogue: When Breaking Rules Improves Writing
  • March 16th:  Shortcuts: My Favorite MS Word Hacks
  • March 30th: The Em-Dash Impulse: Identifying Bad Writing Habits

APRIL: THE WONDERFUL WORLDWIDE WEB

  • April 13th: My Favorite Online Resources: Part 1
  • April 27th: My Favorite Online Resources: Part 2

MAY: HIDDEN ENEMIES

  • May 11th: In Plain Sight: Identifying Bad Advice
  • May 25th: Bad Company: Legitimate and Illegitimate Publishers

JUNE: QUERY LETTERS

  • June 8th: Hook, Book, Cook: Standard Query Letter Formats
  • June 22nd: Please Read Me: The Goals of a Query Letter

JULY: SUMMARIES

  • July 6th: Boiling It Down: Identifying the Important Stuff
  • July 20th: Set It Up: How to Format a Summary

AUGUST: AGENTS

  • August 3rd: Hide and Seek: Where to Find Literary Agents
  • August 17th: Building Your Team: The Right Agent for You
  • August 31st: Flash Bang: Tricks to Successful Twitter Pitches

SEPTEMBER: LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY

  • September 14th: Airing my Dirty Laundry: Mistakes I’ve Made and What I Learned
  • September 28th: Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Avoiding the Pitfalls I Didn’t

OCTOBER: THE WRITING MARKET

  • October 12th: Call It What It Is: The Difference Between Categories and Genres
  • October 26th: The Crystal Ball: Predicting Market Trends

NOVEMBER: #NANOWRIMO AND YOU

  • November 9th: Lawful and Chaotic: Different Ways to NaNo
  • November 23rd: Approaching the Finish Line: Your Last Week of NaNo

DECEMBER: THE WRITING LIFE

  • December 7th: An Eclectic Sort: The Culture of Writing
  • December 21st: A Peek Behind the Curtain: My Writing Style

WORLDBUILDING WORKSHOP

JANUARY: GENDER AND SOCIETY

  • January 12th: My Dragon Ate Your Patriarchy: The Ripple Effects of a Man’s World
  • January 26th: Beyond the Binary: Gender Conceptions Across the World

FEBRUARY: FORMS OF FOLKLORE

  • February 9th: Spinning a Tale: Different Forms of Folk Narrative
  • February 23rd: A Tapestry of Culture: Folklore Past Storytelling

MARCH: IRISH FOLKLORE

  • March 9th: It’s Kelts Not Selts: Ancient Forms of Celtic Religion
  • March 23rd: Respect the Fair Folk: How Ancient Belief Permeates Modern Irish Life

APRIL: ARTHURIANA

  • April 6th: History of the Kings of Britain: A Quirk and Dirty Look at Arthurian “Canon”
  • April 20th: Modern Misconceptions: What We (Mis)Remember About King Arthur

MAY: MEDIEVAL MAYHEM

  • May 4th: The Not-So-Dark Ages: Advancements of the Medieval Period
  • May 18th: A Chessboard World: Demographics of Medieval Europe

JUNE: PRIDE MONTH

  • June 1st: Alphabet Soup: The Origins of Our Moderns Ideas of Sexuality
  • June 15th: All the Colors of the Rainbow: A Snapshot of Identities
  • June 29th: From Patroclus to RuPaul: A Quick Queer History

JULY: CLOTHING

  • July 13th: Let the Clothes Do the Talking: Cultural Expression Through Dress
  • July 27th: Cotton Isn’t the Fabric of Their Lives: Remembering Materials and Access

AUGUST: BEAUTY

  • August 10th: Maybe It’s Maybelline: Cosmetics and Culture
  • August 24th: Aphrodite Had Hips: Beauty Standards Throughout History

SEPTEMBER: ARCHITECTURE

  • September 7th: Living in a Matchbox: Vernacular Architecture
  • September 21st: The Walls Have Eyes: Figurative Art and Architecture

OCTOBER: DEATH

  • October 5th: On Death’s Door: Burial and Funeral Practices Around the World
  • October 19th: Memento Mori: Cultures of Death and Dying

NOVEMBER: CHRISTIANITY

  • November 2nd: Like Styrofoam: My Experience in American Evangelicalism
  • November 16th: The Moral Majority: How Politics and Religions Are Entangled
  • November 30th: Bible-Thumpers: What Do Christians Actually Believe?

DECEMBER: HOLIDAYS

  • December 14th: Name-Days: Birthday Traditions Around the World
  • December 28th: According to the Calendar: New-Year Traditions Around the World

I’m looking forward to this year’s series, and I hope you find each post informative and helpful to your own writing processes. These are subject to change, but I plan to stick pretty close to this. If you have any questions or anything in particular you’d like to see, feel free to reach out! Remember, Writing Workshop posts are available to $3+ patrons and Worldbuilding Workshop posts are available to $7+ patrons. See you here each Saturday at noon in 2019!

WIP Game

Go to your current WIP. Find the seventh line on the seventh page and copy and paste seven sentences below. Then, tag seven other writers to do the same.

I was tagged by @spaceshipkat! I can’t think of anyone to tag but feel free to go for it! 

from Undeserted (working title), by NaNoWriMo project and Book Four of the Iridia Series:

I squinted as I looked out over the glowing,
rolling sands. Perhaps I could just walk out into the desert and disappear, and
no one would mind. Or, if I could figure out how to dissolve again, I could
just forget to put myself back together and float away on the wind. Nevea was
so much more capable than me, so much smarter. She didn’t need me.

I didn’t matter.

A large figure moved toward me and I managed not
to flinch away, even when I saw it was my jid, the leader of our asira,
approaching me.

Hi, I’m doing nanowrimo working on an idea I’ve had for awhile. It’s supposed to be a YA novel but one of the themes in it is teen pregnancy. I’m not writing it to glorify it or anything but I am worried that it may be problematic. Do you have any advice on this situation?

Oh my goodness, nonnie, sorry it took me a couple of days to get to this! I’m terrible at answering messages during the work week. 

Without more information I can’t offer any input about how this might be problematic. If there’s slut-shaming that you don’t tackle, that’s definitely a problem. And you’ll need to do research about how income disparity, education quality, and religion all play into teen pregnancy. As long as you’re not using it as a gimmick or a moral lesson, you’ll probably be okay. To my recollection, That Summer by Sarah Dessen is a book that tackled teen pregnancy fairly well in a way that didn’t include shaming. 

Check Me Out on Authortube!

After BookNetFest this year, I decided I’d like to try joining Authortube to talk about my progress in writing and trying to get UNROOTED published! On this channel, I’ll do video versions of my Patreon workshop posts, tags, and progress reports on The Iridia Series. I’m very excited, so I hope you hop on over and subscribe! 

Hi, Sarah! How are you doing? I hope this question doesn’t sound dumb but when you (and many other authors as well) talk about writing several drafts of your novels you mean you open a new document each time and write from scrach? Thank you!

It depends! Drafts can serve several purposes. If you’re making smaller-scale edits and moving things around, it might not be necessary to start a whole new document from scratch (usually I’ll open one to save scraps that I’m deleting or moving around so I still have them later if I change my mind). However, if you’re doing large-scale revisions and rewriting large portions, starting a new document will probably save you a lot of confusion and headache. 

Name Tag Game

Where did you get the names for your characters?

(I wasn’t tagged but I saw @pigeonbooks do this and it looked fun!)

Silvana Pomona Roșu: Silvana is the feminine form of Latin silvanus, meaning ‘forest.’ Pomona is the Roman goddess of fruit and gardens, and my Pomona has magic over plant life and grew up in a garden. Roșu is the Romanian word for ‘red.’

Fera Nevea Alba: Fera is the feminine form of Latin ferus, meaning ‘wild.’ Nevea is a name I coined based on the Latin nominative plural of nix (nives), for ‘snow’. Alba is the Latin (and Romanian) word for ‘white.’

Lympha Delia Koura: Lympha is the Latin word for ‘spring water,’ Delia is a shortened form of ‘Cordelia’ which has been said to mean ‘heart of the sea,’ and koura is the Maori word for ‘gold.’ 

Silvanus Orientalis Ajutor: Silvanus is the Latin word for ‘forest.’ Orientalis means ‘east’ in Latin, and ajutor is ‘helper’ in Romanian. Also, a silvanus orientalis is a Roman domestic deity. 

Vitreum Cris Magnum: Vitreum means ‘glassy’ in Latin. Cris is short for either Crispina or Crispin, both of which are derived from Latin crispus for ‘curly.’ Magnum simply means ‘great.’ There’s also a Renaissance allegorical inscription, Aelia Laelia Crispis, which is a riddle that has long puzzled scholars but which holds multiple references to this character’s identity.

Capta Callisto Molitora: Capta is the feminine form of Latin captus, meaning ‘captured, held,’ which is a reference to enchantment. Callisto is Greek for ‘most beautiful.’ The Latin form is Callista but I liked the ‘o’ ending better. Molitora is a feminized form of Latin molitora, which is a word for ‘miller.’ 

Sana Tacita Fuoco: Sana is the feminine form of Latin sanus, meaning ‘healthy.’ Tacita is the feminine form of Latin Tacitus, meaning ‘silent.’ Fuoco is an Italian word meaning ‘fire.’ 

That’s all I’ll do for now! I tag @susannadlpena and @elenalanstova-morozova!

hmm just wrote a little bit (like little bit) of my side project and it’s looking like I might have a lady named Vengeance who is intentionally Soft™ and another named Serene who is like, bloodthirsty?? The latter has only had one line of dialogue but I see her trying to slit throats and everything. These ladies aren’t related by the way. Maybe I shouldn’t pick a “virtue name” for Serene too but it kind of just happened? so I don’t know … I’m kind of going into this project blind so I have no idea what’s going to happen. 

Do u have advice for writing villains who turn to heroes? Is there anything that I should avoid while writing them or anything I should focus on? Thanks, and Unrooted seems awesome, I relate so much to Nevea already.

This isn’t something I’ve actually tried myself, so I can’t give you specific techniques from my own experience. However, from reading, I would recommend making sure that any villain you’re trying to redeem is held accountable and faces the consequences for their actions. Too many times, I see villains come to the “good side” and it seems like everyone magically forgets all the awful things they did. It’s a more compelling story if it’s something the characters have to grapple with long term.

I’m so excited for you to read Unrooted! I’m so happy to hear you already relate to Nevea. It means a lot that you’d say so! ❤