As of August 1st, 2014, Pavor Nocturnus is CLOSED to submissions. Please check back on our website for future submission opportunities!

These are our (flourish of dramatic music) submissions guidelines. READ THEM CAREFULLY.

***We only accept electronic submissions.

We ask for *first print* rights to your story and electronic rights, exclusive for 6 months from the date of publication. If you have any questions about rights, please ask! They’re important! If you’re a first-timer and need a real-world explanation of what rights we’re asking for and what they all mean, go here.***

- We accept RTF, DOC, and DOCX formats.
- All manuscripts should be double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font (you all have it right there on your little computer, don’t worry.)
- Contact information in the top left corner, word count in the top right–we repeat, word count. It’s very important.
- For a really great visual guide on how to properly format a submission, go here.

- Simultaneous submissions are okay as long as you let us know immediately if your work is accepted somewhere else … and please do so. It’s a professional courtesy, and it can’t be any easier with Submittable; they have a special ‘withdraw’ button. You don’t even have to talk to us!

- Multiple submissions are okay as long as you remember to give us your best; flooding our submissions manager with 20 average stories does not better your chances of being published, it just makes you look a little desperate. Now, if you flood our submissions manager with 20 amazing stories, then you look like a novelist. Or a psycho. Or both.

Short Story Guidelines:

We accept short stories between 1000 and 7500 words. If you want to query for anything over 7500 words, you’re welcome to do so, but you’d better make it damn good. If the beginning sucks, we’re sure as hell not going to invest ourselves in a long-ass story like that!

We’re looking for horror stories that will make us dump our pants … in the absence of that, give us a story that we’ll remember! Listen, folks, horror isn’t always about jumping, screaming, shitting our pants, and running. Sometimes horror gets in slow, slips under your skin, and festers like an infection. Sometimes you don’t even realize it’s horror until sometime late in the night when you’ve been tossing and turning in your bed, and you just can’t get the images you read out of your sweaty noggin.

Writers: PLEASE note when you submit whether your story is previously published in print or not. If it is a reprint, you may still be considered for our Featured Authors space on the website, but you cannot be published in the anthology.

Poetry Guidelines:

We here at Pavor Nocturnus don’t know a whole lot about poetry, we’ll admit it. If you’d like to submit a poem feel free, but don’t tinkle your pants waiting for publication. There are lots of great poetry publications out there who know WAY more than we do about it. If we see something that catches our eye, we’re likely to use it as a kind of introductory passage to the magazine. You’ll receive all the same benefits as our prose authors.

Artwork:

We’re looking for strong, horror-themed artwork. We’ll be publishing a full-color cover with black & white interior art. All images should be submitted to us with a high resolution of at least 300dpi. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of screwing around with your color settings as necessary, although if you feel so inclined to send us both a RGB and CMYK copy of your file, you’d be a real dear. We accept TIF, JPG, and EPS file formats. We ask for non-exclusive print and electronic rights from our artists, who will also be featured and highly promoted on our website.

Rights (for a simplified explanation, go here):

Anthology published authors (no reprints): We ask for first electronic rights and first print rights to your work, exclusive for six months from the date of publication. After that time, rights revert back to author and you can do whatever the hell you want with it.

Website featured authors (reprints welcome): We ask for non-exclusive rights to your work. If at any time you wish to have your work removed from our website in order to honor an exclusivity agreement with another publication, contact us.

Payment:

Unfortunately, at this time we are an unpaid publication–yes, we hope to make enough money to change that in the future, but right now our funding source is pretty much one dude, and he ain’t even close to rich.

We do have some benefits for publication, however:

Anthology published authors: You will receive one contributor’s copy each of the print and electronic magazine, plus heavily discounted prices on additional copies. You will also receive an invitation for a full-page ad space in any upcoming issue of your choice.

Website featured authors: You will receive one contributor’s copy of the electronic issue of your choice, plus heavily discounted additional copies of the same print and electronic issues. You will also receive an invitation for a quarter-page ad space in any upcoming issue of your choice.

Anthology published artists: You will receive the same benefits as the published authors.