Paying Market: Lightspeed

08 April 2010
Paying Market: Lightspeed
Guidelines for Original Fiction

Lightspeed is now open for submissions, with a link to our online submission system.

Lightspeed is seeking original science fiction stories of 1000-7500 words. Stories of 5000 words or less are preferred. We pay 5¢/word for original fiction, on acceptance. To see which rights we're seeking, please view our contract template for original fiction.

All types of science fiction are welcome, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject should be considered off-limits, and we encourage writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

We believe that the science fiction genre's diversity is its greatest strength, and we wish that viewpoint to be reflected in our story content and our submission queues; we welcome submissions from writers of every race, religion, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation.

Summary
Stories should be science fiction between 1000 and 7500 words long. Stories of 5000 words or less are preferred.

Payment for original fiction is 5¢/word, on acceptance. To see which rights we're seeking, please view our contract template for original fiction.

Payment for reprinted fiction is 1¢/word, on acceptance. To see which rights we're seeking, please view our contract template for reprinted fiction.

Response time: Most rejections will be sent out in 48 hours or less, while stories being seriously considered may be held for up to two weeks.

Submission Procedures
All fiction submissions must be submitted through our online submission system.

Our submissions form asks for your name, email address, cover letter, story title, and story. Your cover letter should contain the length of your story, your publishing history, and any other relevant information (e.g, if you send us a hard sf story about black hole clusters and your doctoral dissertation was on black hole clusters, mention that). All stories should be in standard manuscript format and can be submitted in either .RTF or .DOC format. If you are unable to use our online submission system, please e-mail your story as an attachment to john@lightspeedmagazine.com. All questions about fiction and fiction related e-mails should go to submissions@lightspeedmagazine.com.

NOTE: Be sure to add submissions@lightspeedmagazine.com to your address book (or your email client's spam white list), and check your spam folder before querying if we have received your story.

(More information HERE.)
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