Where to submit your short stories for maximum exposure

If you are a passionate writer and have written short stories, you must have faced the dilemma of finding a platform to publish your writing. Fortunately, there are many online and offline resources that are looking for good short story writers and you are in demand if your stories are deemed interesting and worthwhile. A piece of advice, start close to home, look up your local literary circles, local magazines, or newspapers that publish short stories. This could be your start. Other resources that you may wish to explore. Links to the submission sites are included, so just click and choose.

Paying and Non Paying

Though there are hundreds of resources that are looking for short stories, there are few who will pay the newbie author money for the stories. Most will publish it, and all you can expect is exposure to an audience. There are a few who do pay.

List of Paying Publishers

The Fiction Desk

Pays £20 per 1000 words. It is a publisher of anthology series for new short stories. It releases a new collection of short stories every four months or thrice a year and publish in both paperback as well as eBook formats. The Fiction Desk also runs an Academic Inspiration program to support new writers and readers to involve with the short story genre, with the aim to create interest. The company prefers online submission of stories. Though the company is based in the UK, they accept stories from across the globe. They typically encourage submission between 2000 – 20000 words. The typical short story on The Fiction Desk is between 2000 – 7000 words.

Scribble

Scribble is the short story magazine published by Park Publications, UK. The stories can be emailed if you are an annual subscriber or submitted by post and should not be more than 3000 words in length. They have a very specific submission format and each submission requires a fee. The three top voted stories are awarded a cash price which could be up to £75.

Shoreline of Infinity

It is a magazine that publishes Science fiction. It publishes in Print, ePub and PDF versions. So this is the magazine for you if you write sci-fi short stories. They pay £10 per 1000 words with the maximum word limit of 5000 words. It is a new magazine and they are just starting off, but as they progress they intend to pay the authors a royalty too. They retain the printing and publication rights for the first six months on any published stories. The rights are returned to you after six months so you can publish elsewhere, though they retain the rights to continue publishing the story in their back issues and anthologies. They accept online submissions as prefer one submission at a time. The response time is typically around 8 weeks.

Agni

Agni is perhaps one of the best known literary magazines in the US. They have first published many authors who went on to win The Pulitzer Prize. They accept manuscripts between September 1^st and May 31^st only. You can submit online as well as mail your manuscript to them. There is no word limit, but they prefer to keep it short. The magazine pays $20 per page up to a maximum of $300 per story. They have a print as well as an online edition. Other magazines that take submissions for short stories and literary writing include The New Yorker, Granta, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and many more.

List of Non Paying Publishers

Smokelong Quarterly

They are publishers of flash fiction and accept submissions of up to 100 words for one story. There is not payment and their review time in about six weeks. They often have competitions for flash fiction and you can compete if you wish.

Word Haus

They only take email submissions and publish online. Though they do not pay the writers, they do help the writers with publicity and social media marketing and provide a free Bio Data Page on their site. If you wish to trade publicity for writing you should try them.

Bunbury Magazine

Another new magazine that will help you with publicity as well as help with your writing by providing you with comments and suggestions whether they accept your work or not. So if you wish to get some professional advice and tips, then keep in touch with Bunbury Publishing. Check out their site for more information regarding submission and feedback.

Black Clock

Is an online fiction magazine that publishes stories of all genre. They do not pay anything outright to the authors, but do send you complimentary copies of the magazine. It is a bi annual publication. The maximum length allowed is 3500 words. There are many other platforms where you can submit your fiction and short stories without being paid. Some publishers charge for submissions, other don't. Some will give you a free feedback and critique of your writing when rejecting it, others will ask you for a small fee to do so. What you do and where you submit, is eventually up to you. There are services that will match your writing with publishers who may be interested. Such service sites create a list of publishers based upon your writing and then you can submit your work and keep track of your submissions. Two such sites are Duotrope and Writer's Market. You need to sign up, create an account and subscribe to the service which can be as low as $5 per month. Duotrope, as well as Writer's Market provide a free trial subscription. If you like the service, you can continue with your subscription or cancel it after the trial is over.