Market for short-story humor?

Hunt & Peck

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I guess the first question is how many words constitutes a short-story?

Then, is there a market for short-story humor? Are they sold to websites? Magazines? About the only thing I can think of is maybe Reader's Digest, if that's even still around.

I have a short-story...non-fiction, but still worth a laugh. I think others would enjoy it, but I haven't a clue what to do with it. If I could get some coin for it, great, but even if it were to be published for free, I suppose it may still be worth it so it can be counted as "published work" when trying to line up more published work, ya know?
 

Maggie Maxwell

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It varies from market to market what they're specifically looking for, but by standard guidelines, under 1,000 words is "flash fiction" which a short story will range from 1,001 to 7,500. Go check out the Submission Grinder. It's a great site for finding markets to sub shorts to.
 

Hunt & Peck

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Would certainly be over 1k words. Perhaps I'll type it up so I can at least put it on paper and get a word count...wouldn't take long since it's non-fiction and I know everything that occurred. I'll see if I can get a few people to give it a read to see if it's even worth pursuing.

Thanks for the link...I checked it out and I get some positive feedback on the story, I'll see about trying to get it published.
 

regdog

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You can also check Paying Markets here at AW to see what humor opportunities there are.
 

Hunt & Peck

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Got the story typed up and it came in at 1069 words with no title. Is the "flash" category strict about the sub-1001 word count, or can this still be considered flash? Also, is there even such a thing as non-fiction flash? Does humor even matter if it's fiction or non-fiction?
 

LoaderBot

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Considering that there usually aren't any "humor" departments in book stores or related we sites, I'd say that it matters whether your work is fiction or not. Simply because it will be categorized accordingly regardless of it being humorous or not. For example, " A hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" is considered sci-fi, or at the most, "humorous sci-fi"
 

Sagml John

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I'm in the same boat with a short story I'm editing. I don't know if your story will fit their guidelines, but I found the following websites that publish humor, the first two nominal pay and the third free:


https://vanityprojection.net/
https://www.fabulaargentea.com/index.php/submissions/
https://medium.com/pickle-fork

Thanks, Aheuett. Good sites -- and promising. I inadvertently inject humor in my flash and shorts which renders them devoid of artistic merit. Even my scariest ghost story needed a rim-shot at the end (feed back: "Made me laugh, but..." don't let the door hit you in the butt.)
 

porlock

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Appreciate the info; I have a humorous mystery flash fiction I'm working on. Different sites have different rules, you just have to keep googling.