You’ve labored over every word; meticulously checked for plot holes, and made sure your characters live, breathe, and scream. You’ve read your short story aloud, making certain each phrase rolls naturally off the tongue. You’ve triple checked for spelling and grammar. Perhaps most important of all for fiction in the horror genre, you’ve discovered that your story truly scares you. It is ready for publication.
So, what do you do now? This is where quite a few writers begin to make mistakes, by sending their horror shorts to magazines without doing their homework.
Research the Markets
Not all magazines and online publications are created equal. Before you send your masterpiece off to the first editor whose name you discover, it pays to do a bit of research. Some magazines pay more than others do. Some will provide you with a wider readership. It is up to you to determine what your fiction is worth and what you wish to reap from your work.
When searching for a suitable magazine, whether online or print, you should keep in mind the following:
- Read a copy or three of the magazine to see what types of stories they publish. Your epic zombie tale surely won’t fit in a magazine dedicated to publishing nothing but vampire erotica.
- Pay attention to the writer’s guidelines. Don’t send a bloated novella to a magazine that won’t accept stories over 5000 words.
- Know the rights you are selling (First North American Serial, web, audio, etc.), and know when those rights revert to you so you can resell the story as a reprint.
- Check the response time. The life of an editor is demanding, so response times of several months are common. If you feel the response time is too great, consider submitting to a different market.
- Spell the editor’s name correctly when submitting and be courteous!
Five Markets for Horror Fiction
The following markets, which are among some of the best in existence, pay for horror fiction and are open to new writers:
- Cemetery Dance is a bimonthly print magazine edited by Richard Chizmar
- Dark Discoveries, a quarterly print magazine edited by James R. Beach
- Noctem Aeternus, a quarterly pdf edited by Michael Knost
- Pseudopod, a weekly horror podcast edited by Ben Phillips and Mur Lafferty
- Weird Tales, a bimonthly print magazine edited by Ann VanderMeer
A Final Note…
Keep in mind; both paying and nonpaying markets deserve only your best fiction. Don’t send out a story before it is ready. After all, your name is on the byline!
Jason M. Tucker - I am a fulltime freelance writer living in the southern California area. More than 300 of my short stories, audio dramas, and articles ...
