Page Forty-Seven Short Story Submission Page

Length: Short story submissions up to 10,000 characters (approx. 8.5 pages)
Payment: $25-$75 flat fee on acceptance
Genre: Fiction
Stories published: up to 24/yr.
Rights bought: Electronic only (you retain all print rights)
Simultaneous Submissions: Yes
Response time: One week
Special Instructions: Please read the guidelines below before submitting

Page Forty-Seven online anthology accepts short story submissions from new and established writers.

If you are a new writer, we are particularly interested in helping you establish yourself as a writer by providing an early publication credit, possibly your first.

Before you submit a short story to this site, or simply for good reading, please review the stories we've already published in Page Forty-Seven Online Anthology.

If your short story submission is of publishable quality, and if we wish to feature your work, you will hear from us within one week.

If you do not hear from us within a week, you may assume that we cannot use the work at this time. Please do not email to ask why you have not heard from us.

We would like to respond to every submission with a personal note, but unfortunately it is all we can do to read the submissions in a timely fashion. When a story is not quite ready, but catches our attention because of its originality and potential, we may contact you to let you know that we would like to see it after revisions, but this contact is at our discretion.

This is an adjudicated publication, where your work is selected and published on the basis of merit. This site is visited by print publishers looking for quality short fiction, and at least one story ("Woman Under the Thames"), has been reprinted after publication here. If we hear from someone interested in your work, we will let you know. If you have a web site, feel free to include it in your byline so others may contact you directly. To protect you from spammers, we do not publish email addresses.

In any short story competition or publishing environment, good writing is always refused along with bad. The same is true here. We have a small budget and particular tastes. We can only purchase a fraction of the stories we receive, a few stories a year, and we're looking for something out of the ordinary. We particularly welcome short humourous pieces, such as "Death by Scrabble." Please read the published stories before you submit, read about submission etiquette, and use the editing checklist .

Never allow yourself to be discouraged by rejection. It's possible the magazine or journal published a story similar to yours in the last issue, or a few months back. Maybe they have exhausted their current budget, or the subject of your story does not fit with an overall theme the editor desires. Perhaps the manuscript quality was extra high the month you submitted, and your short story submission had to compete with others by well known and established writers. There are many reasons why your story may be rejected.

Persevere. Try another publication or submit a different story. However...

Here, you have an edge. We actively solicit new and unpublished writers and welcome your short story submissions.

All payments are made electronically, via PayPal or Hyperwallet. If you do not have an electronic account, please be prepared to open one upon acceptance of your story. As noted above, if we wish to purchase your story, you will hear from us within one week.

The short story submission form does not recognize indented paragraphs. Please format your story with spaces between paragraphs, not indentations, and submit in plain text only (no curly quotation marks, commas, apostrophes) to prevent question marks and other symbols in the text.
If you see these marks in your story after submission, simply correct your text and resubmit.

Please use the information and tips found on this site to do a final edit of your work, and then submit your story below. Use this link for more advice on what to check before you send us your short story submission. Many otherwise good stories are rejected for overuse of adverbs and participial phrases, improper understanding of dialogue conventions, lack of good editing, etc.

Checklist:

Have you read the published stories to see if your work is a good fit?
Have you edited carefully?
Have you included a paragraph at the end of your story that answers the following questions:

Have you been published yet?
How did you find this site?
What is the email address to which we should send payment?

All short story submissions posted on this page confirm the author's copyright and may NOT be reproduced for any reason without permission from the author.

Enter Short Fiction Submissions Here

Submit Your Short Fiction Here (Max 10,000 characters, incl. spaces)

Enter Your Title

Paste Your Story Here [ ? ]

Author Information (optional)

To receive credit as the author, enter your information below.

Your Name	(first or full name)
Your Location	(ex. City, State, Country)

Submit Your Contribution

Check box to agree to these submission guidelines.

(You can preview and edit on the next page)

Your Creative Writing Submissions

Click below or see above on the right hand side to read stories recently published...

Cartwheels Would there be a thud when she hit the tile, or would Sheila hear the skull crack?

She shudders and clutches Emma more tightly. Thirteen beige Berber ...

The Verdana Obit "It's like that old joke," Goudy said. "The one that old guy used to tell. Who was it? Youngman? Dangerfield?"

"This isn't funny Goudy."

"The ...

Only Five Minutes He hated shopping. Who cared about new kitchen plates anyway? Their blue plates were too cold, his mother said. They no longer fit with the rest of the ...

Why Not A Duck? "Holiday Help Line, this is Matthew. How can I help you?"

"I'm going to slit my wrists," she says. "I hate Thanksgiving. I hate that the Christmas decorations ...

Death by Scrabble It's a hot day and I hate my wife.

We're playing Scrabble. That's how bad it is. I'm 42 years old, it's a blistering hot Sunday afternoon and all I ...

To Be Longing For A librarian once told me, "To forget a book is forgivable, but to forget the words is a travesty." I am returning a book late, and I haven't finished reading ...

A Rose In The Morning I turned on the lights, couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Take it,” Lowry insisted, proffering what he’d made in the dark.

I couldn’t. Couldn’t move, couldn’...

Evolution of a Pantry It started as a nursery painted an any-baby yellow, festooned with a happy-fish mobile over a crib that met all current safety standards.

‘It’ll be ...

Laundry Day The day after you left I crawled into the dryer. All I could think about was the big pile of dirty clothes you left behind and how, when you came back ...

A Thousand Tricks (an excerpt from the prologue of a novel-in-progress) The Sahara Desert, Morocco - 1973

The bus weaves south from Marrakesh through Taroudannt, slowing as it climbs the dizzying highway of the High Atlas....

Silk I was a foodie. I cooked and served foods that had flavors and tastes enough to tantalize and satiate even the most finicky taste buds. I ran a small and ...

Death Comes for Simon The strip mall closed down for the evening; large, backlit signs flickered out and weary employees sparked matches to light cigarettes on the way to their ...

She Screamed She screamed and she screamed. She fell back, her body limp and tingling.

He rolled over, still holding her waist, and grinned. “You’re welcome.”

She ...

A Day at the Flea Market Irene moved a glass figurine from the front of her display table to a safer spot in the center, to rescue it from destruction by the two little brats who ...

The Witch's Mark Barnesville was a scab on the desert. Locusts had decimated it once by the look of the beat-down shrubs and the sorry way the weeds lay in the pavement ...

Every Thursday It wasn’t that long ago that she had cleaned the grout on the kitchen floor, but already it looked dirtier than ever. She wracked her brain in an effort ...

The Trashman Cometh On Mondays, retiree William Bagley would move a kitchen stool to the living room window. From there he would watch as the trash truck stopped at the curb....

If He Should Gather His Breath The boy woke. His head rested on a thick cushion of moss that covered huge tree roots. He felt the sun through still-closed eyes, felt the warm breeze ...

The Universal Language of Women My husband and I stayed with Samarah’s Moroccan family on the invitation of her husband, Hamid. We met him on the train, which chugged and spittered along ...

The Woman Under the Thames Francine marched past the grocers on Spa Road, past the station, toward the River Thames. Spring had arrived, but wasn't evident by looking around. A stiff ...

A DIFFERENT WAXING She pursed her lips and flicked a sidelong glance at my daughter. If I were a mind reader, I would have seen one word flash across the girl’s forehead…...

Daddy (Flash Fiction) “Help!” A man stumbled from the lake – soaked and out of breath. “My little girl is still in the car. Please help.”

Witnesses stormed forward as the ...

love (lower case)
I.

"I really hope we can still be friends," you say.

II.

Scrolling back through the worst moments of your life, this is at the top. Up there ...

Polio Cats A rare smile crossed Ben’s lips as he remembered leaving Poland with the stolen money from Slavatizki’s hidden stash. One night last year, after a cow ...

Thief Among Thieves All recently immigrated Polish Jews felt somewhat paranoid, and Bumirn Slavatizki was no exception. He stormed into the country with teeth clenched and ...

HIS LIFE The world didn’t seem any different to him when he woke. He got up, dressed and made it out the door as usual, but on the bus the thought stuck him that ...

Between Love and Need Love has never satisfied anyone. It has never secured anything more than a fleeting moment of joy that leaves the rest of life an unbearably long epilogue....