publishing short fiction

Not a smart answer but a serious one.

Where do you read short stories?

No, please I am being serious. You need to read a lot of short fiction to find out where is the best home for your story.

Spend a morning in your bookshop looking at all the magazines. Flick through the contents page and see if fiction is published. If so write down the contact details and website url.

Check out the market books and online sources. A search of Absolutewrite.com will give you plenty of market lists for short stories.

Now you have to check the markets out, read the writers' guidelines and the magazines or zines and journals.

Then you will have found several possible homes for your story.

You will find that a story under 1000 words is often called flash or short short fiction and there are markets for it.

For a short story of less than a 1000 words you need to look for markets that publish flash fiction.

Short story

DamaNegra said:

How long (or short) must a short story be to be published? I have a very good short story that I don't think reaches even 1000 words, so I fear it might be too short, but that's not the real issue. How and where do I publish short fiction?

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What you've written isn't a short story, but this doesn't mean it's too short to sell. A short story is 2,000-7,500 words. A short-short is from1,000-2,000 words.

Below 1,000 words you're getting into the area of flash fiction. Many magazines love fiction of this length.

You just have to look at the magazine's guidelines to see what length they want.

DamaNegra said:

That's the problem, I've never seen short stories! That's why I'm clueless as to where and how to publish them. As for the bookshop thing, the nearest bookshop is quite far away and I have no one to take me there, so I can't go and spend a morning there.

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It's awfully hard to write a good short story unless you read hundreds of short stories. But there are thousands of short tsories online. They're all over the place. Look around and read a bunch of them.

I would suggest checking out a literary magazine called Brevity and believe it can be located at Brevity.com. . . though I am not incredibly sure. . . they have some pretty harsh guidelines but they do specialize in publishing works of fiction under 1000 words (I think it is actually more like 750)

Also I believe that if you would like to place a piece on the radio most local NPR stations accept stories that can be read aloud on air (usually by the author) as long as they are regionally relevant, poignant and not too risque. . .

just thoughts

W

Try storypilot.com where you can search markets by story length.

Pam Casto's FlashFictionFlash newsletter lists markets for very short stories. You can subscribe by sending a blank email message to
[email protected]

Check out www.ralan.com He has a pretty comprehensive setup of markets by pay-rate, with links to each one.

Markets

If you go down this board to bad ducky's 'just a neat and handy little list' thread you will find a very good list of American short story magazine markets he posted for us.

Many of the magazines have websites and you can read examples of the short stories they publish online.

...and for Pete's sake, go read some short fiction. not just for research, it'll make you feel warm and fuzzy too. (Unless it's bad, and then you'll feel sweaty and nauseous instead).

Do you have a local Barnes & Noble? Can you get to one? Go find one, ask the nice-yet-out-there staff to point you to the short story magazines, then go read Realms of Fantasy, or The Strange Magazine, or Analog or Asimov or....heck, all of them. That sounds like fun to me.

(...which is probably why I have no social life, really.)

Had I looked under the charming picture of the dog-snout, I would've seen you were in Mexico.

www.abyssandapex.com
(in particular, read the poem, "The Wizard Gets a Haircut")

www.quantummuse.com
(just read)

There. Online short stories.

There are many ezines that publish short fiction online. Try reading a few of those.

Since you've found your way to the web, you've found short stories. If you're looking for short stories that've received critical acclaim, forget about--be your own critic.

To me, flash fiction is 100 words or less.

Birol, yesterday I was in Madame Toussauds' House of Wax in Manhattan and sat with Woody--(my bro-in-law insisted.) He sees some innate, physical likeness--(although he admits that I'm wittier and more cerebral. When he emails them I'll post them. I also posed with Dotty P and Poppa H. Fun place.

I look forward to seeing the pics of you, Rich. Make certain I know where you post them.

There are a lot of markets out there for stories this short, but online magazines are more likely than print to publish a story under 1000 words.

Another good search engine is http://www.duotrope.com/digest/, but always make sure you look at the zines to see if your writing fits.

tammyk,

What a great search engine you've found for us. Includes many publications I wasn't even aware of. Intend to share with all my collegues.

Thanks so much.

DJL

rich said:

Since you've found your way to the web, you've found short stories. If you're looking for short stories that've received critical acclaim, forget about--be your own critic.

To me, flash fiction is 100 words or less.

.

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Once fiction gets to a certain shortness, it's the editor who really puts a name on it. At some magazines, flash fiction is 100 words or less, but at the ones I've written for, anything that short is called "micro fiction."

the debster said:

tammyk,

What a great search engine you've found for us. Includes many publications I wasn't even aware of. Intend to share with all my collegues.

Thanks so much.

DJL

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A friend pointed me toward it a couple months ago and I've been using it ever since. It's a great resource.

Take a look at Flash Me magazine.
They pay too.