General submissions to Androids and Dragons are now CLOSED.
Thank you to all who submitted stories during our March submission period.
General Submissions Guidelines
What we publish:
We accept flash fiction and short stories between 500 and 5,000 words. These are not hard limits, but the more your story is above or below those limits, the harder a sell it will be. Also, if it is significantly longer than 5,000 words, it may take longer than usual to review.
We’ll consider any story with speculative elements, no matter how slight, except for graphic horror and erotica. We are particularly interested in stories featuring anthropomorphic characters such as dragons and other mythical creatures, animal-like aliens, or robots, androids, artificial intelligences, and other sentient machines. Dystopia, military science fiction, or stories that are primarily romances will be a hard sell, but they are not out of the question. If in doubt, submit!
We accept both original stories and reprints. If your story is a reprint, make sure that the rights have reverted to you, and please tell us when and where it has previously appeared (even if it is no longer available). If your story is available for anyone to read online without a subscription, it must have been published at least one year before publication in Androids and Dragons. The one-year requirement does not apply to stories that are not available online at all, stories that are only available in audio format, or stories that can only be read online with a subscription (or are otherwise available only to a limited audience). All things being equal, we may give preference to original stories and stories that are no longer available anywhere, either online or for purchase.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted. This means you may submit your story to Androids and Dragons and to another publication at the same time, but please tell us immediately if your story is accepted elsewhere. We do not consider multiple submissions. Submit only one story at a time. However, when we have submission calls for themed microfiction, you may submit both a general submission and a themed microfiction submission, as these are separate submission processes.
What we offer:
At the moment, we can only offer a token payment of $5 per story by PayPal. Copyright remains with the author at all times, but we ask that you not publish your story online for a period of one month.
How to submit:
Email your story as an attachment to dragons.zine[@]gmail.com (without the brackets, of course). In the subject line, write “ORIGINAL SUBMISSION, Word Count, Title” or “REPRINT SUBMISSION, Word Count, Title.” The story should be a Word document saved as a .doc or .docx or .rft file. We’re not too particular as to format if we can open and read your manuscript and it has all necessary contact information, but a standard Shunn manuscript format or something similar is preferred. If you are not familiar with the Shunn format, you can find more information here.
If you are submitting a reprint, please tell us when and where your story previously appeared in the body of your email. Also, please let us know what name you would like us to call you if it is different from the name on your manuscript. Otherwise, cover letters are optional and should be kept short. Please do not summarize your story! Let the story speak for itself. We’ll ask for an author bio if your story is accepted.
Please note: we will not send an email confirming receipt of your story due to time constraints, but we do aim to review stories as quickly as possible. If you have not received an initial response within two months, feel free to query!