Uncanny
This science fiction and fantasy magazine is open for a week in May for short fiction submissions, and for a fortnight for novella submissions. “We want  intricate, experimental stories … with gorgeous prose, verve, and imagination that elicit strong emotions and challenge beliefs.”
Deadline: 7 May for short fiction, 15 May 2023 for novellas
Length: 750-10,000 words for short fiction, 17,500-40,000 words for novellas
Pay: $0.10/word
Details here and here.

Old Pal
They accept poetry, fiction, criticism, excerpts, audio, mixed media, and various mediums of art.
Deadline: 20 May 2023
Length: up to 10 pages of poetry, up to 15 pages of prose
Pay: $50
Details here.

Escape Pod
This is the science fiction online magazine and podcast. “We are fairly flexible on what counts as science (superheroes! steampunk! space opera! time travel!) and are interested in exploring the range of the genre. We want stories that center science, technology, future projections, and/or alternate history, and how any or all of these things impact individuals and society.
Escape Pod leans in the direction of escapism, hopepunk and optimism rather than grimdark and gloom.” They have extensive guidelines. They also accept reprints. Escape Pod is from the Escape Artists suite of magazines (see links on the top of the page for their other magazines, and see individual schedules for open and forthcoming submission periods).
Deadline: 31 May 2023
Length: 1,500-6,000 words for short fiction, longer for reprints
Pay: $0.08/word for original stories, $100 for reprints
Details here (guidelines overview), here (detailed guidelines), here (submission portal), and here (schedule).

Reader Beware
They are reading submissions for their third issue. Their guidelines say, “we want to see pulp horror of all kinds – think Friday the Thirteenth, Psycho Goreman, and Glorious. Think Junji Ito, Grady Hendrix, and Eric LaRocca. We want your creepy gorefests!  Don’t be afraid to get explicit with it, just don’t send us anything too mean-spirited. Gore is great, peril and torment are great–continuing the horror tradition of fetishistically brutalizing women is not.” They also accept poetry and comics.
Deadline: 31 May 2023
Length: Up to 5,000 words for fiction, up to 3 pages for poetry
Pay: $0.01/word for fiction, $0.05/line for poetry, $5/page for comics
Details here.

Contemporary Verse 2
This is a quarterly literary journal that publishes poetry and critical writing about poetry, including interviews, articles, essays, and reviews.
Deadline: 31 May 2023
Length: Varies
Pay: $30 per poem, $40-150 for prose
Details here and here.

Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.

Tin House is an established and respected small press. They used to be responsible for one of the most respected and established literary journals, although that closed a few years ago. They still run residencies, workshops, and bookstore in Portland, Oregon. They still publish a wide variety of respected and admired books, including some bestsellers. They publish fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, and poetry. This includes essay and short story collections, as well as novels. They also are open to graphic nonfiction and graphic novels.

They are not currently open to submissions, but will be open to submissions of debut novels and graphic novels starting Saturday May 6th through 7th. Because this is such a small window of time, we have to review them the ahead of the window.

They have excellent distribution, have published some of my favorite books in the last decade, and publish books with appealing covers. They recently brought on one of my favorite writers, Hanif Abdurraqib, as their Editor-at-Large, and he acquires three nonfiction books  a year for them.

This is what Abdurraqib has said about what he’s searching for:

“My world was built reading writers who wrote, relentlessly, away from the comfortable center and into the so-called ‘margins,’ where one could be a little more free, a little more playful, a lot braver. Punk writers who scrawled things in zines, aspiring rappers who filled notebooks that few people would ever read, and so on. This is the work that renews me and that challenges my own writing.”⁠

Since September 2021, they have started hosting open reading periods again. They host three brief fee-free submission periods a year, in the hopes of finding more previously underrepresented writers including “—but not limited to—those who are Black, Indigenous, POC, disabled, neurodivergent, trans and LGBTQIA+, debuting after 40, and without an MFA.”

In order to submit you must not currently have an agent, and you cannot have previously traditionally published a book in any genre (although chapbooks are permissible).

After taking a year off their reading schedule for 2025 is:

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2022 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.

At the Saltbush Review, they’re looking for writing that’s both rooted and boundaryless: “Like the grey saltbush which blooms by the coast, the journal embraces the liminal, the marginal, and the fluid. … We love works that convey diverse relationships to place and identity and that are not afraid to experiment with boundaries.” You can read past issues of The Saltbush Review online to get a sense of what they publish.

The Saltbush Review was established in 2021, and so far they’ve published two issues. Each online edition features around 40 contributors.

Right now through June 16, the Saltbush Review is seeking submissions for their fourth issue, themed “Fracture.” They’re open to creative interpretations of the theme.

Authors published in the Saltbush Review’s fourth issue will receive payment through grant funding from Arts SA. Authors of fiction and nonfiction will receive AUD$150, and poets and authors of flash fiction will receive AUD$100 per published piece.

Authors of fiction and creative nonfiction may submit one piece, 3,000 words or fewer. The Saltbush Review also likes receiving shorter pieces like flashes, and pieces that blur genre boundaries. Poets may submit one poem.

The Saltbush Review accepts submissions from all authors, all around the world. But they’re especially interested in writing from South Australian authors, emerging authors, and historically underrepresented authors.

The Saltbush Review accepts submissions online, not via email or by post. They accept simultaneous submission but ask that authors withdraw work published elsewhere.

The Saltbush Review only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines in full before submitting.

If you would like to learn more or submit to The Saltbush Review, please visit their website here.

Bio: Ella Peary is the pen name for an author, editor, creative writing mentor, and submission consultant. Over the past five years, she’s written hundreds of articles for Authors Publish, and she’s also served as a copywriter and copy editor for a wide range of organizations and individuals. She is the author of The Quick Start Guide to Flash Fiction. She occasionally teaches a course on flash fiction. You can contact her at ellapeary@gmail.com.

They currently have published seven works of nonfiction, and one work of fiction, and have clear plans to expand into poetry, although please note that their first poetry chapbook contest has a fee attached. None of their other imprints charge a fee at this time and it is not unusual to charge for contests.

Because they are a new press, and lean towards nonfiction, there are a couple of things on the site that are a little unusual, and might qualify as orange flags.

The first is the services section. To be clear they are not actually offering “editing services” at a cost here – which many publishers do, but they are making it clear that they don’t seem to know that the services section usually consists of on a publisher’s website. They actually make it very clear in this section that they are a traditional press and authors are paid varying amounts depending on how much help they need.

The refer to an author writing their own work as the conventional acquisitions channel. If an author needs to partner with an editor at WHP they call this the partnership acquisition channel. Both options involve royalties. This is what they have to say about royalties — “For the conventional acquisitions channel, royalties are set at 15% of net revenue on each print copy sold and 30% of net revenue on each e-copy and audiobook sold. For the partnership acquisitions channel, which is much more expensive for WHP, author royalties are set at 5% of net revenue on each print copy sold and 20% of net revenue on each e-copy and audiobook sold.”

To be clear, off net is not ideal, but is pretty standard for small presses.

Also at the bottom of the Services page there is a little note that says this — “WHP helps authors embarking publishing journeys by curating information about the highest quality services available. For queries about any additional help you need, please contact us using the form on the contact page or by emailing your WHP contact. We can point you in the right direction.” And this is a little unusual.

You can get a good feel for what they publish here.

One of the other warning signs is that their onsite store is broken at the time of updating. But there are many other ways to buy their books and they have links to that.

Generally, though the signs are good. They have an extensive staff page. Their covers are good. Their submission guidelines are clear. All submissions must be made through Submittable.

To learn more, you can go here. Please respect their submission guidelines.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2022 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.

Sometimes it’s easy to send out a one sentence answer, which is often this: “We have never heard of this press before, but we’ll look into them”.

Often the answer is more complex than that, but it is usually for one of the following reasons.

1. They don’t align with our guiding principles

You can read our complete guiding principles here, but the main takeaway is this: We don’t review presses that aren’t traditional publishers. Traditional presses are publishers that pay their authors, not the other way around. We also won’t cover publishers that charge reading fees, which is something that is becoming more and more common. Some presses charge some authors but not others, we do not consider these traditional presses either, unless they have a clear vanity publishing imprint, that they don’t re-direct submissions to. We also only review presses that are open to submissions regardless of the identity of the writer or their geographic location. Although we do cover presses with geographic and other limitations as part of larger focused lists.

2. They haven’t been actively publishing books for a year

This is technically part of our guiding principles but it bears repeating. Most brand new presses don’t make it past the starting stage. I add all new presses I come across to a list, and most never ever publish one book, never mind more. I do make exceptions for imprints of established presses.

3. They’ve behaved in a way that raises major red flags

If I research a press and I discover they’ve promoted hate speech, or been accused of not paying their authors, or any other kind of serious problematic practice, I don’t review.

If a press I’ve reviewed in the past becomes guilty of any of these things, I update the review at the top, to make it clear what has happened.

This article is a good starting place in terms of figuring out what is a warning sign, and what isn’t.

4. They’ve behaved in a way that raises minor red flags

I’ve also not reviewed presses because I’ve heard from authors that they weren’t allowed to promote their own book, and that the press didn’t either, or there just was something about the site that made it hard for me to promote it (like a website with hard to read fonts). You can learn more about evaluating a publisher’s website here.

5. They’ve always been closed to submissions when I’m ready to review them

There are some presses that have really short and/or irregular submission windows and I just keep missing them.

6. I simply haven’t seen them yet.

I’m always happy to see a question about a press I haven’t encountered yet, enter my inbox at support@authorspublish.com.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2022 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.