Reprint Issue
Are you by any chance looking for someplace to send a story that you’ve already had published? We may be able to help with that. Psychopomp Magazine has decided that for the month of February, we’ll be reading works of fiction in order to consider them for reprinting in March.
The Details
This public domain image shows occultists Edward Kelley and John Dee invoking a spirit in a graveyard. Are we comparing your story to the ghost of a dead person? Only in the best way.
Why is PM doing this? Normally, like so many other literary magazines, we do prefer submissions of work not previously published. However, we’re writers as well as editors, and we know that sometimes writers would really like to have something reprinted for good reason (perhaps to provide the story in another format than its original release, or maybe because the place where it was previously archived is now defunct, etc.). There aren’t nearly as many publications looking for previously published work as there are interested in unpublished work, though. Yet we’re confident that there are lots of great stories out there that writers might like to see republished.
How do I submit? Come February, you’ll be able to submit via Submittable. We’ll put the link on our website and social media once it is live, and it’ll have its own category separate from our regular open fiction call. And no, there won’t be a reading fee. Except for the one detail of this being for reprints, the category will have pretty similar guidelines to those for our regular submissions.
Is this part of the regular issue or a separate issue or what? We’ll release our regular Spring Issue in April as planned. Stories accepted for this call won’t be a part of that. Instead, we’d like to publish these stories in the month of March directly on our website. Consider it a way of welcoming spring to the northern hemisphere or something. A season of revitalization and all that.
Is any previously published story eligible? Not *any* story. Any story not currently
available online is eligible. If your story has only ever appeared in print or if it was published online but is no longer available in a publication’s archives for one reason or another, it is eligible. If it’s currently elsewhere on the web for public viewing, that’s something we won’t consider. We’d like to give the opportunity to work that currently can’t be read online, so that we can (re)introduce it to a readership that can’t see it otherwise.
Is this the only time you’ll do this? We don’t know. We’ve never done it before. It would be fun to do an annual thing. Or a biannual thing. It really depends on how much we get during this inaugural event, so send us your stuff!
When is the deadline to submit? By the end of February. The earlier in the month the better, though. For obvious reasons a story sent to us on February 29th probably won’t be published on March 1st. We’d ideally like to release a few here and there over the weeks of March, so in a way submitting earlier gets you a jump-start on being considered for the whole month instead of just the tail end.
That should cover most questions people are likely to have, but if you think of something else that isn’t on here, please feel free to e-mail us about it at psychopompmag [at] gmail [dot] com.