We have four reading periods throughout the year. They are:

Submissions are only accepted during our reading periods.

Story Submission Guidelines

- We are currently accepting submissions of quality science fiction and fantasy writing of 500 to 6,000 words. We are willing to include genre hybrids (a fantasy mystery, space comedy, or technological horror, for example) but stories must have a strong sciece-fiction or fantasy element. We want well-written stories that entertain - stories that the reader cannot stop reading until the story is finished. Don't be afraid to submit fantasy or sword-and-sorcery stories just because the name of the magazine "sounds sci-fi". We find that most of what we like has been more character-based.
- Pay is 1.2 cents per word plus a single copy of the issue containing the published story for accepted work. This is for "first North American serial rights" and "world electronic rights".
- Accepted submissions may be published in any issue within 1 year of acceptance. If the story is not published, the author is still entitled to payment (payment upon acceptance).
- Writer retains full copyright but may not re-publish story within 1 year of publication. Keep in mind that this may tie up a story for as long as 2 years if a story is not published until the 12th month after acceptance.
- Zeta Centauri, Inc. reserves the right to re-publish the story in a "best of" anthology at any time. We will pay the author 50% of what we paid for the original submission. This is what you would call "an option on anthology rights".
- Please no simultaneous submissions.
- Please no reprints - we are only interested in work that has not yet been published.
- Please send complete stories - no partial submissions.
- No query is necessary. If you think your story meets our requirements, just send it. Queries just slow things down.
- Please be sure to include a valid return address, email address, and phone number. We prefer e-mail correspondence and that is the first method of contact we will try.
- Please no more than one submission per writer at one time.
- Stories should be edited for grammar and spelling. Even so, occasionally something slips by the spellchecker. We reserve the right to correct obvious errors, but please don't make us need to.
- It is recommended that you study the magazine before submitting.
- We accept electronic submissions ONLY. Please no submissions via postal mail.
- We can accept just about any file format - RTF, TXT, DOC, SXW, etc. If you can open the file in Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org, we can read it. We cannot open Microsoft Works .WPS documents, so you will have to save your document as an RTF or TXT file to submit.
- Our response time is currently approximately 3 months. This may fluctuate based on volume, but we will do our best to reply within three weeks. If you do not hear from us after three weeks, feel free to ask whether we have had a chance to review your submission. We do keep a log of every submission and do not delete received email. You are welcome to report our response times to Duotrope and/or the Black Hole.
- Feel free to include a short bio in your submission (not required, and we prefer them 75 words or less). We like double-spaced manuscripts (not required) and like to see full contact information and word count at the top of an attached document (also not required). None of these things will affect your chance of acceptance. They're just nice things to do that make our lives a little easier, and luckily most of you already do so.
- Under no circumstances will we consider a story more than once. This includes alternate versions of the same story.

Note: For submitters outside the United States, please submit material only if you are able to receive Paypal payments, as that is the only way we can pay non-U.S. contributors.

For those of you who want to know exactly what both parties agree to when a work is purchased, you can view a PDF version of our standard contract.

Upcoming Themed Issues:

Sight, Vision, and Optics - Issue 3 (Fall 2007). Submission deadline 7/1/2007.

What We Don't Want

Please do not send us:

- Stories that have been previously published or posted on the internet.
- Stories that have been previously published in English or in North America (we do, however, accept translations of stories previously published in another language). Under no circumstances will be publish a reprint.
- Random, disjointed 'acid-trip' type stories. A spirit journey is rarely interesting reading.
- Stories revolving around religious content. No heaven-and-hell stories.
- Poetry.

Things you can send, but we are very unlikely to want unless they're incredibly good (so you're better off not even trying):

- "Twisted fairy tales" - continuations or permutations of common fairy tales. You know, Little Red Riding Robot, Alice in Gondwanaland, etc.
- Contemporary fiction with only a slight fantasy or science fiction element. This especially includes anything where any fantastic/sci-fi elements were thrown in as an afterthought in the hopes that it would make the story eligible for inclusion in a sci-fi/fantasy publication.
- "Waking up from a dream" stories.
- Stories containing excessive misogyny. Battle-of-the-sexes stories have gotten pretty old too (and we're not sure that anyone actually likes to read them).
- Anything with a prophet whose coming has been foretold. This includes characters with prophetic birthmarks.

Artwork Submission Guidelines

All of our artwork is on spec and tailored to the stories included in an issue. We will be printing artwork on both the front and back covers, usually tailored to one specific tale, though we may choose front and back covers from different tales. We rarely choose 2-D digital work, leaning more toward analog or 3-D digital pieces.

Pay is as follows:

Color Front Color Cover Artwork: $60 (Increasing to $72 starting with issue 4, Winter 2007)
Front Plus Back Cover Artwork: $90 (Increasing to $108 starting with issue 4, Winter 2007)
Black-and-white story Illustrations: $10 (Increasing to $12 starting with issue 4, Winter 2007)

- We have a much greater need for B/W story illustrations. Each issue has about 10 stories to illustrate and only one cover.
- Publishing terms are the same as above (may be published within 1 year, option on anthology rights for 50%).
- Please send a link to a website containing your portfolio or email some sample artwork in JPEG, TIFF, PNG, or GIF format. If the style fits our publication we will give you access to our artwork request postings and you will be able to select which request(s) you want to fill. We can receive files up to 10 megabytes in size by email and attachments up to 1 megabyte in size through our submission form.
- Please note that we do not publish anything resembing the ever-so-popular "pinup girl" style of fantasy artwork.

Submitting

When you are ready to submit, click HERE to go to our web submission form.

We do not accept postal mail submissions. Submissions sent via postal mail will be placed in the nearest waste receptacle, unread.

Check the top of this page for our submission periods. Works submitted outside those dates will not be read.

Note: If you use email/spam filtering we strongly recommend that you add our email address to your whitelist (always allow list) to be sure that you receive our reply. We personally feel that spam filters cause more harm than good due to the inaccuracies involved (i.e. lost messages), but to each his/her own.

Advertising

For advertising, visit this page.

On occasion, we may provide a reason for declining a particular submission. Please take it in the spirit in which it is intended - we love to read great fiction and the more great fiction there is in the world, the happier we are.

We reserve the right to say that we are not interested in a story without giving a specific reason, and as a general policy we will not respond to questions about why a story was rejected.

We are not in the business of teaching people to write. Every minute we spend explaining or debating the finer points of what does or does not work about a story is a minute we're not spending on reading new submissions or otherwise working on the magazine. Because this is an understaffed operation, we will tend to send a fairly high percentage of form rejections. We would love to be able to write detailed reply letters to everyone, but we'd never finish an issue if we did.

If your story was rejected, there are three productive things we suggest you do:
1) Hone your craft.
2) Submit it to another magazine.
3) Write another story and submit it to us.

Even the best are sometimes rejected. Don't take it personally.

Last updated 4-1-2007.