Literary Magazine Submission Guidelines Written on Truth Serum

"Any piece containing the letter g will be deleted unread."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

---

Please indent the first sentence of each paragraph using the formatting option in your software NOT the tab bar. Please pry the tab button off of your keyboard. Light it on fire. Walk it carefully down the hall. Put it in trash chute. Run.

We do not accept genre fiction. By that we mean interesting or fun to read.

We are busy. Very busy. You will hear from us no matter how busy we are because we are decent people, certainly better than those people at that publication we will not name who definitely will not respond. But we have a lot to do. We have told this to our significant other many times, but it seems not to register.

As to our response time, we beseech patience. We are embroiled in a dispute with Duotrope as to how they characterize the not insignificant number of submissions whose authors have passed away while awaiting our response. We prefer these to count as rejections to heighten our aura of exclusivity.

Please let us know if we have any formatting policies in common with any other publication you have submitted to. If we do that is a mistake and not intended and we would like to know about it.

We allow simultaneous submissions. They must be demonstrably simultaneous in the precise dictionary sense of the word. Words matter. Be prepared to prove any simultaneous submission was transmitted at exactly the same time to the tenth decimal point of a second using the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. We understand this may require employing multiple computers and hiring a staff.

Did we mention how busy we are?

We do not have a limit on words. We do however have a strict limit on letters. Any piece containing the letter g will be deleted unread.

While there is not a strict word limit, we have tended to accept mostly pieces of fewer than 1000 words.

If you are forced to prune, please do not invoke William Styron in describing your ordeal. These words are not your children and, trust us, can be sacrificed quite painlessly. If in doubt, consider deleting every third word, or in the alternative all adverbs. We also will reject excessive hyphenating or using combo words like itwasadarkandstormynight that look like the name of a Kentucky Derby Winner.

All submissions must be made via email. Physical deliveries will be destroyed unread with the exception of carrier pigeons who will be allowed to return albeit unfed. Note, we will NOT feed your bird.

Please get our name and email address correct. After the trademark injunction we can no longer deny we came up with our name using a Mad Libs approach of combining a quirky descriptor with an obscure mammal. Please do not confuse us with other similarly named publications including Queasy Capybara, Moped Ocelot or Dyspeptic Lemur whom we view as less than peers.

We are very particular about font. We allow Times New Roman which sounds like a newspaper a gladiator would read. In a pinch we will permit Calibri which is a word that makes our thoughts wander to lost nights drinking Strega on the Italian Riviera.

We allow multiple submissions but they must be an even number. And not from the same author.

Please do not submit your work single-spaced thinking that will leave us no room for snarky internal comments; we have plenty of post-its that work fine for these purposes even when there is no room on the page.

Please do not submit previously published work. Especially if written by someone else. Last year to our great embarrassment we declined “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson although we did thank her for the chance to read her work and wished her luck placing it elsewhere.

Please provide a print-ready biography in the third person. This should give you a rare ego boost and the chance to talk about yourself in the third person like Julius Caesar or Elmo.

Please feel free to list any relevant educational degrees. We accept anything at all, from a BFA all the way to an MFA.

In your biography please do not cite every past publication. For avoidance of doubt, that witty bon mot you wrote in Bob Bottner’s yearbook in 12^th grade does not count as a publication credit.

And for the love of God if we have published you before, please move us to the front of your list of credits, alphabetical order be damned. We notice this kind of thing; we are professional proofreaders after all.

Trigger warnings are very important. Please let us know clearly if there is a plot so we will not be startled or disturbed. It is especially important that you flag any twist or surprise ending to give us time to decide whether to label it merely trite or fully jejune.

There is no need to keep your name off of your file name or the body of your story. Nobody here knows who you are.

We are proud to announce we have begun paying $25 for each accepted story. Please ensure your Venmo is set to public so news of your triumph is shared with your landscaper and hairdresser.

If your work is accepted, please wait six months to resubmit. If your work is declined, you might be tempted to think we are trying to tell you please for the love of God take the hint, your brother was right when he said, “There is nothing wrong with getting a real job, unpaid writer is not a job it’s like me saying I’m a political analyst, you are not better than me!”

But that is not at all the case. A rejection means only that your piece simply is not a good fit for our very specific current need. We prefer extra-large.

A rejection also might mean it’s not you, it’s us, we’re moving too fast, or that we just need to take a little time to focus on ourselves.

In any event we would love for you to submit again.

Be assured we read each piece carefully, word by word. Yes, we realize that doing anything less than that is not actually reading at all as defined by Webster, but it sounds reassuring.

Finally, remember these are only guidelines. Not formal rules. Please feel to ignore any or all of these suggestions. Rejection is good for the soul.

---