Yesterday I successfully submitted my piece for round five of NPR’s three-minute fiction and decided it was great time to explore a few new markets. These are a few of the literary magazines I stumbled upon while searching Duotrope’s Digest, the free writer’s resource. Not only do these magazines have great fiction on site to read, but many have great advice for writers as well. My search leaned toward the scifi/fantasy genre, if that’s not your thing feel free to head over to Duotrope and do your own search.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies – Another literary fantasy magazine seeking secondary-world tales. Will accept up to 10,000 word stories but they have to be good. Pay is 5 cents/word. According to Duotrope only 2% of stories are accepted.
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly – As the title suggests, this magazine only wants swords and sorcery stories and poems. Word limit up to 10,000. If published they pay $100 per short story or $25 per poem (or flash fiction). This is a tough market to submit to so be warned! They also have great suggestions on their submission guidelines page.
Clarksworld Magazine – Seeking fantasy/horror/sci fi up to 8,000 words. Pay is 10 cents/word for the first 4,000 and 5 cents/word after. Preferred length is around 4,000 words. Acceptance rate hovers around 0.1%.
Daily Science Fiction – is seeking shorter scifi, fantasy, slipstream, etc. stories. They currently need flash fiction, but will take up to 10,000 words. Pay scale is 8 cents/word. They receive a huge number of stories and around 5% are accepted.
My Literary Quest 
Thanks so much for this reference, Jodi! I had no idea! Oh, and good luck on the NPR challenge! Maybe you and Nancy will tie! I opted out of submitting because I couldn’t restrict my story idea to 600 words. So, I have attempted my first venture into fiction writing by attempting my own, and first, short story! I’ll let you know how it goes!
I can’t wait to see how the NPR contest turns out – waiting isn’t one of my stronger suits. I initially had a terrible time creating a short story until I started thinking of it as a moment captured in time, preferably with an unexpected finish. After reading some of the preferred submissions I don’t think mine was what they were looking for. If it’s not published through them then I can resubmit it somewhere else after some gentle tweaking.
Excellent inspiration. Thanks, Jo!
And good luck with NPR!
Can’t wait to see yours. Hope they put it up!
When do they start posting selected entries? Do you know?
The rules say they will have the winner by November 30th, but it doesn’t say much more than that. There are three favorites on the contest page, but they haven’t changed them in the last few days.
I know I’m late to this post, but good luck on the NPR contest.
Boy, those acceptance percentages are pretty discouraging. .1%? Really?
How does anyone get published?
Thanks! These are top literary magazines for fantasy and scifi, most are much easier to get a piece accepted. The sheer number of submissions that they receive make the numbers look worse than they are – I have a lurking suspicion that they receive a good deal of submissions that don’t mesh well with the theme or are poorly written, like fan fiction and stories that surface from high school creative writing classes.