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Writing Guidelines
Every Day Fiction is looking for very short (flash) fiction, of 1000 words or fewer. There’s no such thing as too short. if you can tell a story in 50 words, have at it!
All fiction genres are acceptable, and stories that don’t fit neatly into any genre are welcome too. While personal experiences and other non-fiction can be great sources of inspiration, please turn them into fiction for us, or send them elsewhere.
Our readership is adult, so children’s stories are unlikely to be accepted unless they are relevant to adults as well. On the other hand, we are not impressed by gratuitous sex and violence, or pointlessly foul language; edgy content should be necessary and appropriate to the plot and characters.
It ought to go without saying that any story submitted to Every Day Fiction must be your own unpublished original creation. If you publish a story on a blog, even your own personal blog, or any website accessible to the general public (i.e., if the story can be found and read online without a password or friend status or other limitation), it is considered published and therefore inappropriate for our market.
Since we do not have the time or resources to manage copyright permissions, please do not send us works with quoted song lyrics. You may use song titles and the names of composers, lyricists, and/or performers, and you may paraphrase or refer to the song lyrics, but we are unable to publish stories with directly quoted song lyrics unless they are in the public domain (written before 1920).
Submission Process
All stories must be submitted through our online form–we cannot accept stories via email or snail mail.
Our target response time is two months, and we will do our best to give you an acceptance or refusal within that time period, or at least provide an update if our decision is delayed.
Multiple Submissions & Simultaneous Submissions
Multiple submissions are acceptable; you may have up to three stories in our submission process at any one time. However, please don’t try to upload more than one story at a time into the submission form–each story must be submitted separately.
Unfortunately, simultaneous submissions are not possible: when you submit using our online form, you must grant us the right to publish your story if we select it for Every Day Fiction, which you cannot do if you have offered that same right elsewhere.
Compensation
We believe in the importance of being paid for your writing, even if it’s only a token amount. At this time, we are able to offer three dollars (USD$3) for each published story, to be paid via PayPal, with the option to donate it back to Every Day Fiction if you are so inclined. In addition, if requested we will set up a free Author Forum for you right here at EDF where you will be able promote your own writing.
More importantly, publication also includes an opportunity to promote your writing beyond Every Day Fiction. We will gladly provide a link to your blog or website, and if you have a book on Amazon, we can link to that as well.
Finally, the author whose story is the top-rated in a given month will be featured in Flash Fiction Chronicles’ monthly Author Interview — a chance for readers to get to know you, and a further opportunity for you to promote your blog or website and any books or other publications you may have out there.
Terms and Agreements
Due to our aggressive publication schedule, you must agree to our terms and agreements as part of the submission process. When you submit your story, a dialog box will pop up containing our contract. You’ll notice that it’s very similar to the standard boilerplate contract available at SFWA.org (that’s where we got it), but we still recommend that you read it carefully. You are then given the option to accept or decline our terms, just as you would when you install software. If you accept, you will be e-mailed to confirm that we’ve received your submission.
We ask for First Rights and specifically First Internet Publication, with an option on First Anthology Rights for 18 months (which, if exercised, nets you another dollar). After publication, the story will remain in our searchable archives unless the author asks us to remove it.
**Though the submission contract asks for your mailing address, we will never send you anything without your permission, nor will we distribute that information to any third-party.
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