Submit

FICTION

The Shadow Booth is OPEN for fiction submissions from now until the end of April. Here are some basic guidelines:

• We are a bi-annual journal of weird and eerie fiction. Do not send us your Western romance (in space). Do not send us your drug addiction memoir. Do not send us your shopping list (unless you're buying some really weird things). Weird. Eerie. Fiction. Please.
• If you want an idea of what we mean by weird and eerie, then read one of our previous volumes. This is the best way to find out what we like! All ebooks are under £5, and like all independent publications, we need your support to keep going. Paperbacks are under £9, and our latest, Vol. 3, has just been published. (Paperbacks, ebooks and subscriptions are available here. Okay, rant over...) If you want further pointers, why not read editor Dan Coxon's article on the Ginger Nuts of Horror website: Face the Strange.
• Submissions should be 1,000 - 8,000 words long. We won't quibble over a word or two, but otherwise those limits are fixed.
• We would particularly like to read stories by BAME writers, and by women writing within the weird/eerie horror scene. In our experience, these tend to be underrepresented within the genre. Having said that, if you fall into neither of these groups, we want to read your work too - all stories will be considered on an equal basis once they have been submitted.
• Please only submit one story during the submissions period. Any further submissions during this period will be rejected. (We would say 'send us your best', but you know that already...)
• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if your story is accepted elsewhere. It's just common courtesy.
• Email your submission to submissions@theshadowbooth.com, with the word SUBMISSION as the first word of the Subject line. It's also helpful if you include the story title.
• Manuscripts should be submitted as a Word file attached to the email wherever possible. We'll do our best to read .rtf files and PDFs, but we make no promises. DO NOT paste your story into the body of the email.
• This submissions period is for Vols. 4 and 5, to be published in October 2019 and April 2020.
• The important part: The Shadow Booth is a paying market, paying 1.5p per word. That works out as £15 per 1,000 words, if it's simpler. While payments can be made to overseas writers (and we actively encourage writers from overseas to submit), payment is simplified if you have a Paypal account.

Submissions will close at midnight on 30th April 2019, and we'll be reading submissions as they're sent - but we will read all submissions sent during this open period. Any questions, come bother us on Twitter. Send us your strangest, most unsettling tales, the stories you had to write but gave up on finding a home for. Send us your weird hauntings, your eerie fever dreams. Send us your words.

NON-FICTION

We are currently looking for non-fiction pieces for the Shadow Booth website. We're open to anything about the weird and eerie in fiction, from book reviews to short essays. We'd also be open to pieces about folklore, as it relates to the weird, and folk horror. We are not open to submissions of film essays or reviews - the written word only, please. In the first instance, please email nonfiction@theshadowbooth.com with a short pitch for your article and a brief bio. There is no payment for online publication.