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Scape e-zine will begin publication in 2011.
Please read our below submissions guidelines in full before submitting. They contain information about rights, payment, document types and where to submit. This information is also repeated and expanded upon at the Scape blog.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
Simply put, Scape is a speculative fiction e-zine with a young adult (YA) focus.
‘Scape’ for us means a lot of things. DreamScape, spaceScape, cityScape, mindScape, eScape…
All Scape fiction and poetry must contain a speculative component. Urban fantasy, magical realism, hard sci-fi, cyberpunk, alternate history, supernatural, myth and legend, post-apocalyptic, dark, light and all shades in between. If you can imagine it, we’ll consider it. That being said, to catch our attention you’re going to need to do something new and fresh if your story features well-worn ideas such as vampires or time travel.
Scape's YA focus doesn’t mean we want ‘dumbed down’ or ‘censored’ stories. Quite the opposite. YA for us is broadly defined. It means fiction that is relevant, meaningful and of particular interest to young people. We're not putting a specific age bracket on 'young people' and we aim for our publication to appeal to the 'young' and 'young at heart' alike. Obviously, we won’t publish stories containing gratuitous violence and/or sexual content. Equally, we are not a children's literature outlet. We recognise that many themes relevant to young adults will acknowledge sexuality or aggression. We won’t discount stories with these themes as long as they are well written and the sensitive issues are dealt with intelligently.
We’re rather partial to two things:
- Stories that make us think. Not stories that slap us in the face with a preachy message, but stories with subtext. Tales that we want to read twice or more to really figure out. Characters and situations that prompt us to question ourselves. Stories with something to say.
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Unusual settings: new worlds, fresh takes on the future, geographic and cultural contexts that aren’t often featured in fantasy and sci fi (eg. Asia, Africa, Australia)
So, prepare to give us edgy settings, 3D characters and plots that push the envelope.
THE SPECIFICS:
We consider the following (word limits are strict):
- Short stories: Up to 8,000 words (no minimum word count)
- Poetry: Up to 100 lines
- Non fiction: Reviews, articles and other relevant non-fiction up to 1,500 words.
- Art: We are looking for art across varied media for cover art and to illustrate our stories. Please query first, preferably with a link to your website or web gallery, or you may send a maxium of three (3) images in .gif or .jpg format.
- Book Reviews: If you wish to submit a book for us to review, please query first, with ‘REVIEW REQUEST’ in the subject line. Please include author and publisher details in your query. If we are happy to proceed, we will provide you with a mailing address to where a review copy of the work can be posted.
All submissions must be your original work.
We do not accept fan-fiction or any works that are derivative in nature.
PAYMENT:
- For short stories, we pay 1 cent U.S. per word (up to a maximum of $25) for short stories only. Payment for short stories is on publication and will be made via PayPal.
- For art, poetry and non-fiction, compensation is exposure only (we will feature your work and provide a bio and link to any online presence you may have, but there will be no financial payment).
- We hope to increase our rates in the future. Why? See the About Scape page for more info.
RIGHTS:
- For short stories, we claim first-printing world exclusive electronic rights for 90 days from publication. After the 90 days, you are free to sell your work elsewhere. We hope you will allow us to continue to display your work on the website, but this is not a requirement. You have the right to request your work to be removed from our site after 90 days.
- For art, poetry and non-fiction, we ask for non-exclusive electronic rights for at least 90 days. This means you are able to sell your work elsewhere at any time, as long as the buyer knows it is non-exclusive. After the 90 days, your work will be displayed online in our archives unless you request it to be removed.
SUBMISSIONS DETAILS:
- Our maximum response time is 60 days, though it is usually less. Please query if you haven’t heard from us after 60 days from making your submission. We do our best but e-mails can sometimes go astray. Please consider reporting your response times to Duotrope, Ralan, or the Submitting to the Black Hole website.
- We will copyedit your work for presentation on Scape.
- Sorry, no multiple submissions. That is, please send only one story or poem at once – make it your best.
- Sorry, no simultaneous submissions. If you have already submitted your work elsewhere, please wait until you hear back from them before submitting to us.
- We will consider serialized stories but each instalment will be assessed on its own merits and must be no more than 8,000 words. Please query before submitting serialised stories.
- All text submissions should be made in standard manuscript format, but we don’t mind if you use Times or Arial as a font. If you don’t know what SMF is, check out this example.
- E-mail your submissions here (submissions [at] scapezine.com) as an .rtf , .doc or .docx attachment. Art should be sent as a .gif or .jpg. We do not accept snail mail submissions.
- We regret that we cannot provide individual feedback/comments on all submissions. If we do not accept your work, it just means that it wasn’t appropriate for us at that particular time. Please feel free to make other submissions in the future.
- Any submissions not adhering to the above guidelines will be deleted without response.
- Please consider submitting your response experience to the following sites:
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