Submissions

Page Contents:

  • Update about Outsiders Submissions
  • Current Submission Call
  • Submitting Arcs for Review
  • FAQs About Submissions
  • Submission Calls That Have Expired
  • Common Submission Errors

Outsiders Submissions Update

Click here for an update about submissions to our Outsiders theme submission call.

Current Submission Call

There are no open submission calls at this time. The summer submission call closed June 22, 2022. Submissions received after this date will be deleted unread.

Submitting Arcs for Reviews

Follow the guidelines posted here.

This note applies to all submission calls. All correspondence about your submission should be sent as a response to your submission unless editors initiate a separate communication. This includes withdrawals. Please do not send withdrawals to a different email address.

FAQs About Submissions:

  1. Each submission call has its own guidelines that should be followed.
  2. Flash fiction stories are defined as stories 999 words or less. Some sub calls may prefer shorter submissions, but submissions may be up to 999 words. A stated preference does not exclude stories that fall outside the preferred word count. Short stories are stories 1,000-7,499 words in length.
  3. Please do not respond to rejections.

Submission Calls That Have Expired

Submissions for our summer sub call closed June 22, 2022. Submissions received after June 22, 2022 will not be reviewed and the editor will not respond to these submissions. Valid submissions are currently being processed. All decisions should be made no later than July 31, 2022. We ask writers to wait until August, 2022 to query about the status of their submission if they have not heard from the editor by then.

Submissions for The Dead Inside closed August 2, 2021. Submissions received after August 2, 2021 will not be reviewed. Editors will not respond to these submissions. All authors that followed the submission guidelines have received an acceptance or rejection. The Dead Inside will be published March, 2022.

Submissions for Deadly Love closed July 9, 2021. Submissions received after July 9, 2021 will not be reviewed. Editors will not respond to these submissions. All authors that followed the submission guidelines have received an acceptance or rejection. Deadly Love is available for sale now.

Dark Dispatch is not responsible for outdated information on secondary sites posting submission calls. Authors should always check the publication’s submission calls before deferring to a secondary source.

Common Submission Errors

Submitting multiple stories and/or poems in the same email

Submitting material after the submission window has closed

Submitting RTFs or PDFs or material in the body of an email — Editors will not review any submissions sent in these formats. Dark Dispatch accepts .doc and .docx files. We will not process any PDF or RTF or transferred file submissions (don’t share a file with us). We will no longer engage in correspondence about submissions containing these types of files. They will not be processed or treated as a valid submission. Thank you for referring to the appropriate submission guidelines pages and following the posted guidelines.

Omitting requested content — seriously, we ask for a Paypal address to confirm you have one and understand we pay via Paypal only. Despite this, we’ve still had writers who’ve tried to get us to venmo them money after acceptance. We don’t venmo or send checks or anything else. Paypal maintains records for tax purposes, which we need. If Paypal doesn’t work for you, we respect that, but you should not submit material to us unless we add another payment option. (Which we have no plans to do at this time.) So, real talk. If you don’t include the Paypal address, we may still review your submission. However, if it comes down to your story and another story, and that writer included their Paypal address and you didn’t, you know how this is going to go. Deadly Love received well over 400 submissions and The Dead Inside received well over 600 submissions. While the material published is outstanding, there were about a dozen close contenders for both publications. If you’re prepared to take the chance that your work can beat out hundreds of other submissions even without including the requested information, that’s your call. But I wouldn’t take those odds.