QUICK AND DIRTY
Send your submission in the body of a plain text email message to our submissions wrangler (who is not the same person as our editor in chief). Send submissions to submit [at] daikaijuzine [dot] com. Include the word “Submission” and the title of your submission in your subject line; otherwise, your submission may not make it to our editors. Submissions sent to any other Daikaijuzine address will not be considered.
NOTE: SUBMISSIONS SENT AS EMAIL ATTACHMENTS OR LEFT AS COMMENTS ON OUR SITE WILL BE DELETED UNREAD AND WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED. Or possibly rejected out of hand, depending on our submissions wrangler’s mood.
WHAT WE WANT
We are eager to accept submissions by new and unpublished writers as well as previously published writers.
Fiction
Length: 1,000 to 6,000 words
Daikaijuzine seeks diversity in content and storytelling. We publish primarily speculative fiction, from horror to hard science fiction to high fantasy to mysteries to magical realism to mainstream, but we have room for other types of fiction as well. If superheroes or zombies or giant monsters are your thing, that’s fine too. We want stories that are well told, with strong characters and storylines, demonstrate respect for the reader and the language, and which are fun to read. Challenge us. Stretch our horizons. Make us think. At the very least, give us a good laugh.
Flash Fiction
Length: Up to 1,000 words
Guidelines for fiction, above, also apply to flash fiction. Flash fiction should be up to 1,000 words. More than that, and we call it a short story.
Nonfiction
Length: 1,000 to 6,000 words
We are interested in articles of interest to the speculative fiction community, such as interviews, biographical pieces, reviews, and whatever else you might take a fancy to (we plan to have regular columns on how military history could play a role in writing fantasy, as well as a column about science fiction and philosophy). We currently have no specific guidelines. If you think we might be interested, send it to us, and let our nonfiction editor take a look at it. If you’re not sure, send a note to the editor in chief. We’re interested in history, science, natural history, philosophy, anything. We’re not a peer-reviewed journal, so bear that in mind if you’re trying to get famous and win some research grants here.
Nonfiction pieces should cite their references according to the MLA guidelines as shown on this webpage at Princeton University.
Poetry
Poems should be no more than a page. Subject matter is open, and you may submit up to five poems per submission.
Artwork, Audio, and Other Media
For artwork, music, audio recordings, and other media, please query with the editor first.
We at Daikaijuzine share the sentiments of the following:
- Strange Horizons: “Stories We’ve Seen Too Often“.
- Strange Horizons: “Horror Stories We’ve Seen Too Often“.
- Also check out the “Turkey City Lexicon” at the website of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, for their list of tropes, plots, writing styles, and other sins which should be avoided. You may spot an error or two on the site, but the principles are quite sound.
And please do not send us fan fiction or stories using copyrighted characters or settings. No really. You’ll find that there are folks — such as J. K. Rowling’s legal team, the folks at Paramount, or Stan Lee — who are very insistent about this sort of thing. There are no exceptions; no flash fiction, no poetry, no parodies that explicitly name copyrighted characters, nothing. We’re certainly aware of fair use clauses in US copyright law, but we choose not to risk crossing that line.
We plan on purchasing five to ten stories and articles each quarter.
- We are happy to receive stories, poems, and articles which have already been published elsewhere.
- Simultaneous submissions must be indicated as such in a cover letter.
- For longer pieces, between 1,000 and 6,000 words, we will accept only one submission at a time. For poems, reviews, and short articles less than 1,000 words, we will accept up to five submissions at a time. This does NOT mean, however, that you should send one story between 1,000 and 6,000 words AND five poems. It’s gotta be EITHER one longer piece, OR up to five shorter pieces.
At best, manuscripts which don’t follow these guidelines will be rejected forthright by our Left Minister of the Honorable Slush. At worst, they will be passed around the editorial staff and laughed at resoundingly.
We pay $5.00 for each short story or article published, and $1.00 for each poem or piece of flash fiction (up to 1,000 words) published. Payment is through PayPal exclusively, unless other arrangements are made. Payments left unclaimed after one month will be rerouted to pay for hosting and other costs.
We purchase Nonexclusive One-Time Electronic (World Wide Web) Publishing Rights, which means that will publish your work once on our website, which is distributed via an RSS feed. All other rights, including the right to reprint material published on Daikaijuzine, revert to the author immediately after publication. All works published on Daikaijuzine are archived indefinitely, though may be removed at the author’s request.
Daikaijuzine is published in the United States, and abides by US Copyright Law. Some content may be released under a Creative Commons license. Such content will be clearly marked, and will never include articles or stories submitted for publication unless requested by the author.
Your submission should be in the body of an email message. In your message, make sure you include your name, your address, your email address, the title of your story, your pen name (if you use one), and your word count. When pasting in the content of your manuscript, please leave a single blank line in between each paragraph of your story. Make sure you put the word “Submission”, followed by the title of your submission in the subject line, e.g., “Submission: The Fox’s Wedding”. Otherwise your submission runs the risk of being dumped by our spam filters, and we may not even know you’ve submitted something. Indicate italics by enclosing the phrase to be italicizes in underscores, _like this_. Likewise, indicate bold text by enclosing the phrase with asterisks, *like this*.
For example:
Providence, Rhode Island
dagon@lovecraft.comDear Editor:
I am including my short story, “The Call of Cthulhu”, for your consideration. My fiction has previously been published in Weird Tales and in a number of other venues.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
THE CALL OF CTHULHU
by H. P. Lovecraft
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things – in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too intented to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.
