Submission Guidelines

We are currently closed to submissions while we work through our backlog. We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience!

Please refer to the following guidelines for submitting material for our review. We cannot consider any submission that does not conform to these guidelines. Guidelines for specific types of submissions are listed below:

General Submission Guidelines

Some common guidelines apply to all types of submissions:

  • All written submissions should be in standard manuscript format.
  • Please submit in either MS Word DOC or RTF format.
  • We also accept plain text submissions, provided they are presented legibly with proper paragraph spacing and indentation (i.e. make your plain text submissions look as much like the standard manuscript format as possible.)
  • Please use underscores (_) around italicized text in plain text manuscripts, as in _the following text should be italicized_.
  • Unless otherwise indicated below, please submit only ONE work at a time for consideration. Once we have either accepted or rejected that piece, you are of course welcome to submit additional works. However, we will only consider the first work submitted in the event of multiple simultaneous submissions from one author.
  • Please do not resubmit a work that has been rejected without solicitation.
  • Like most publishers, we don’t accept “simultaneous” submissions — that is, we greatly prefer that you not submit a piece to us and to another publisher at the same time. This gets messy if two or more parties accept your work at once.
  • If you would like to withdraw your submission from consideration prior to 60 days, please contact the administrator at aflyinamber@gmail.com.

Short Fiction

  • Make sure to read out General Submission Guidelines above before submitting.
  • Short fiction should be between 1,000 and 10,000 words. Due to resource constraints, we cannot consider unsolicited pieces that go beyond this word limit.
  • We are looking for good fiction in any genre — we’re more interested in the quality of the story itself than in the shelf you’d find it on. Short fiction of any genre should say something unique — we want to see something special, something we haven’t seen before.
  • Because we will also be publishing work for young readers and by young writers, we cannot accept pieces that contain excessive and/or gratuitous sex, violence and profanity. The inclusion of such adult elements and themes won’t immediately disqualify a piece as long as they are tastefully done and appropriate to the story. Such justifications aside, however, we will not accept anything we feel is inappropriate for our readers.
  • Please submit short fiction using our Fiction Submission Form.

Flash Fiction

  • Make sure to read out General Submission Guidelines above before submitting.
  • We are accepting flash fiction (under 1000 words) in any genre. However, we are picky when it comes to this style. Good flash is hard to write — harder, in some ways, than traditional short story formats.
  • Successful flash for us must tell a complete story. It should leave an impression out of proportion with the number of words it uses.
  • Please submit flash fiction using our Fiction Submission Form.
  • Because of it shorter form, we are willing to consider up to three separate flash submissions from one author at one time. This is an exception to the “one submission per author” rule listed above. However, we will not consider more than three submissions from one author at one time.

Non Fiction

  • Make sure to read out General Submission Guidelines above before submitting.
  • We are interested in non fiction essays and articles on a range of subjects, but holding to the same standards as the fiction we publish. We want to see something new and different. Blogs these days are a dime a dozen, and we don’t want to just rehash the argument of the day. We’re looking for unique insight into unique issues. We’re looking for articles that make us feel or think in ways we haven’t before.
  • Non fiction should be appropriate for a wide range of readers, young and old. Just as with fiction, we will not publish any piece we feel is inappropriate or in poor taste.
  • Please submit non fiction using our Fiction Submission Form. (Yes, we know it’s weird. But David is lazy, and until we can get him to cough up something more fitting….)

Artwork

  • Make sure to read out General Submission Guidelines above before submitting.
  • Artwork should be submitted in a digital format. We will not accept artwork by mail and scan it in.
  • Artwork may have any subject, but must be tasteful. Nudity is not necessarily going to disqualify a piece, but must be artistically appropriate.
  • We will accept photography with artwork.
  • Please submit all artwork in JPG or PNG format. If you wish to submit artwork that is larger than 1 MB is size, please compress the file using a standard Windows ZIP compression utility. (For those of you using an non-Windows OS, we also happily accept gzip (.gz), bzip2 (.bz2) or compressed tar archive (.tgz) files.
  • Please submit artwork using our Artwork Submission Form.
  • We will consider up to three works of art submitted by a single author at one time. This is an exception to the “one submission per author/artist” rule in our general guidelines. However, we will not consider more than three submissions from one artist at one time.

Featured Artwork / Story

Each issue, the Editors will choose one piece of artwork and/or one written submission as our Featured Artwork/Story. Features can be chosen from any fiction genre. It represents the best of the best, in our view.

Guidelines for Young Authors

A Fly in Amber invites submissions by young authors and artists under the age of 18. Make sure you have parental permission to submit works to our website — we will need to work with them as well as you in the event your piece is accepted. Please indicate that you are a young author by checking the appropriate box on the submission form.

Response Time, Rights Selling and Payment Rates

  • A Fly in Amber buys First Exclusive Electronic Rights to all works we accept for a period of six months. After that, any and all rights revert to the author. We ask, though we do not require, that you allow us to maintain a copy of your piece in our archives. However, you may request that we remove your work from our site at any time after our initial six month period expires.
  • We pay a flat rate of $10 per piece. Artwork pays $20 per piece. Works selected as our features receive an additional $10 “prize payment.” Payment method, as well as any additional per-submission considerations, will be negotiated at the time of acceptance.
  • Make sure to provide current contact information with your submission, as this is our only means of getting in touch with you should we accept your piece for publication.
  • We strive to give every submission a response within 60 days of receipt. If it’s been more than 60 days since you submitted your piece and you have not heard back from us, please send us a query at aflyinamber@gmail.com. In all probability, the absence of a response indicates that something went wrong with our response email — perhaps we filed the wrong address or otherwise could not deliver to the address you provided.