I love the idea of this mini-litmag on a postcard and the challenge of staying under 150 words. Also, they have online workshops where they will help you edit your work before you even submit. This one is definitely worth sharing.
Here are their submission guidelines:
We accept fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry, and book reviews year-round. Graphic fiction/non-fiction also welcome, but it must fit on a postcard. We publish only one (1!) piece in print form each month– we publish 1-4 pieces in our online issue.
We accept work on a rolling basis–you can expect to hear from us within a month to six weeks, if we’re on schedule, which we are about 50% of the time. We do pay for pieces published on postcards (more details on this below).
- ALL PROSE: <150 words. We’re not going to count them, but…we mean it.
- ALL POETRY: <10 lines (if it’s more, be open to “creative reformatting”), but still <150 words. Remember, it has to fit on a postcard!
- BOOK REVIEWS: These will be published online, or on the back of a postcard when possible. Still <150 words. Must be of a recently published book (within the last year). The book must be published by an independent or small press. You are welcome to query before submitting if you would like our feedback on the book you are reviewing. If you would like your book reviewed by us, please send a query letter to info@hootreview.com.
You may submit as many works as you like, but two per submission. All work must be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are, of course, allowed–but please let us know if your work is placed elsewhere.
We will read all types of work. However, we especially like work that is audacious, surprising and zesty. Furthermore, we want this postcard to be shareable. As you’re submitting, remember the Refrigerator Rule. Ask yourself: “Would someone want this hanging on their fridge?” Work that’s about the depressingness of gloomy alcohol clinking on the bottom of a shadowy glass in the gloaming after a father’s death wouldn’t work as well hanging from a fridge or tucked playfully in someone’s lunchbag.
That said, if you’ve got some melancholy work that is surprising and zesty and GOOD then we would be very excited to check it out.
See our “ISSUES” page to read samples of the work we have published in the past.
We will also read your work, and give you detailed feedback, BEFORE you submit. (We must be crazy.) Bring your piece to our super friendly online workshop, held every other Wednesday.
Depending on how generous we’re feeling, we also often give feedback with our rejections, especially if it is requested.
Note: We do not solicit work — and we read all of our submissions blindly (we don’t look at cover letters until we decide to accept/reject). Every submission we receive is given the same consideration, and is read by at least two, but up to four people, and often out loud (while we consume delicious items, like raspberry tart and/or dumplings.)
COSTS & PAYMENT:
To use our online submission manager, it costs $2 to submit up to two pieces of work. We also accept submissions by regular mail, for no fee. All pieces are considered for both our print (postcard) and our online issues, unless you specify otherwise.
You may submit as many pieces as you like, but you will need to pay the $2 submission fee for every two submissions (your two pieces must be in the same document, or Submittable will charge you twice!)- or, if you submit by mail, you must mail every two pieces separately, with their own return envelope (you mustinclude a SASE for a response.)
As for payment– it is sort of like we hold a mini-contest every month (but it’s not exactly a contest, as our submissions are rolling). The author we publish on a postcard receives 30% of all the submission money (after Submittable takes its 52% cut) for that month, from the 20th of the month two months prior publication, to the 20th of the month one month prior (guaranteed minimum of $10!), along with five copies of that month’s issue. For example, if we publish you in October, you get 30% of the money we received between August 20th and September 20th.
Authors published in our online issue do not receive monetary compensation at this time, but will receive five copies of the corresponding month’s postcard.
OTHER STUFF
- You have to be okay with having your work ‘creatively’ formatted—so that it will both look cool and fit on a postcard. Which means—we might paint the words on some wood and photograph them, or photo-edit the words onto an interesting-yet-appropriate thing, like a medicine bottle label, or a paper napkin, etc. If you are submitting a poem, this sometimes means we have to change line breaks…though we try not to do this, and we always do it tastefully (at least, we think so.) Do not submit your work if you are not okay with this.
- We are often asked about what informs our decision regarding publishing a piece on a postcard versus publishing it in our online issue. Choosing pieces for postcards vs. online is not a matter of “which ones we like best.” We love all of the pieces we publish. Factors include- what pieces we have for other months (we try to balance poems and prose, as well as keep style and content varied from postcard to postcard), appropriateness for sharing (see the Refrigerator Rule above), and illustration potential (both imagery and length of the piece factor here, as longer pieces are much harder to work with.)
READY TO SUBMIT?
Click here to go to our online submission manager.