Submission Guidelines

As of 3/25/2008, we are no longer accepting submissions for stories of fewer than 500 words. All submissions must be between 500 and 1,100 words. (Stories of greater than 1000 words, if accepted, will be edited to 1,000 words.)

Also as of 3/25/2008, we will be paying a flat $50 for all stories. Since the stories we publish will range from 500-1,000 words, this implies a per-word rate of five to ten cents.

We publish stories from 500 to 1,000 words in length. We look for previously unpublished material, with the exception of our Classic Flash selections. (Classic Flash stories are old: the copyright must have expired on them. If you would like to recommend one, please email the editor.)

They’re very short, but they are still stories. That means the best ones have common characteristics.

Strong, interesting characters. Even in flash fiction, we want to care about the characters.

Plots. A goal, a conflict, a change, a realization, a death, a birth, an “a-ha!” moment—something that happens, something that matters, even if it only happens in the mind of the reader.

Settings. Settings are important; that said, it’s less important than the characters and plot, so we will accept stories with mundane or undescribed settings as long as the characters and plots are compelling.

You can read more about this aspect of what we’re interested in here.

We’re not that concerned about genre. Many of us, including the editor, have a fondness for science fiction and fantasy, but great flash stories aren’t always easily classified. If you wrote it, and you love it, then submit it.

We want our publication to be accessible to all ages, so please, no erotica, porn, or superfluous graphic sex or violence.

We only publish stories consisting of 500-1,000 words. We know that writing flash is hard; authors can submit stories of up to 1,100 words. If we are amazed by the story, we’ll work with the author to cut the extra words. (We will probably use Jake’s cutting blog to show how these stories were cut, as a good exercise in writing concise prose.) If we can’t cut it to 1,000 words, we won’t publish the story.

Submissions with fewer than 500 or more than 1,100 words will be deleted unread and without acknowledgment.

At the moment, we only accept submissions by email. We accept Microsoft Word, rich text, and plain text attachments, as well as plain text in the body of an email.

Fonts, margins, and other formatting don’t matter and won’t be noticed, for better or for worse; your submission will be automatically reformatted upon opening. Only boldface, italics, and underlining will remain.

Please include contact information, either in your attached story or in your email. At a bare minimum we need your name and a phone number — sometimes email addresses change or our email may get caught in a spam filter.

Please include the genre of your work. This will change which readers get a first look at your story. (You don’t want someone who dislikes Westerns to read your Western flash. It won’t get a fair shake.) If you aren't sure about your submission, please visit our genre classification page.

We accept multiple submissions (more than one story from you to us). We do not want simultaneous submissions (a story sent to us and other publications at the same time). We do not accept previously published works, unless the copyright has expired (for our “Classic Flash” series).

Send your stories to submissions@flashfictiononline.com. You will receive an autoresponse that will assure you that we've received it. If you do not receive the autoresponse within a few minutes, please send your submission to Jake’s alter ego’s email, oliverhouse@gmail.com.

Our response times currently range from 3–8 weeks.

A sample contract is here (PDF format).

We pay fifty dollars ($50) per story. This payment provides us with first electronic rights, including HTML, PDF, plain text, and MP3 (audio) formats. Distribution will be through this Web site and a variety of other electronic means — as of this writing, we expect podcast, email, and RSS. This only means that we can publish in those formats; once we publish in one format, the author can do what she wants. For example, if we publish in HTML only, and later the author wants to publish a PDF, she maintains that right. We still have the right to create a PDF ourselves, but we have no right to stop the author from republishing.

This payment also provides us with a non-exclusive one-time right to publish the stories in a hard copy anthology. No timelines have been identified for this project.

All other rights for the work remain with the author.