The Shadow Booth is open for FICTION SUBMISSIONS for the entirety of March 2018. Note: we are open all the time for non-fiction for the website, but the fiction submissions period will open on 1st March and end at midnight on 31st March 2018.

The Shadow Booth is a new journal of weird and eerie fiction, launched in December 2017. Volume 1 included stories by Alison Moore, Paul Tremblay, Gary Budden, Malcolm Devlin and many more. It is currently still available as a mass market paperback (or ebook) via the Shadow Book store.

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 The Shadow Booth: Vol. 1. This is the best way to find out what we like! The ebook is only £5, and like all independent publications, we need your support to keep going. (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 2,000 – 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…)
• The only exception to this is flash fiction: if you want to submit 2-3 pieces of flash fiction up to 500 words each, please do. These will count as one submission, as long as they are submitted together in a single email.
• 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 Vol. 2, to be published this summer. However, if we fill Vol. 2 and we love your story, we reserve the right to accept pieces for Vol. 3 (due end of the year) as well.
• 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 31st March 2018. You can find out more on the Shadow Booth website.