Congratulations. You have just found the STUPEFYING STORIES™ Submissions Guidelines and FAQ. You can bookmark this page if you like, but be advised that this web page will go away just as soon as we get the StupefyingStories.com web site up and fully operational.

• Hey! Aren't you the same Bruce Bethke who wrote the original "Cyberpunk?"

Yes, I am, but this is not the time or place to discuss that story and I take no responsibility for whatever ridiculous b.s. it says about me on Wikipedia this week.

If you feel it's important to know more about me personally in order to write for STUPEFYING STORIES™, read the Strange Horizons interview. At least, after you do so, you'll understand why I'm doing STUPEFYING STORIES™, and not Tales of Promiscuous Centaurs Living in Trailer Parks in Alabama™.

• So what exactly is STUPEFYING STORIES™?

Okay, that's enough with the ™.

STUPEFYING STORIES is a monthly, direct-to-ebook-only, original short-story series. Each month, STUPEFYING STORIES strives to bring the freshest new fiction by the brightest new authors directly to your ebook reader, tablet, phone, or other mobile device.

• It's not a magazine?

No, it's not a magazine. It's not a webzine, an e-zine, or any other kind of 'zine. It does not dream of someday growing up to become a Real Magazine. STUPEFYING STORIES is and always will be an ebook-only anthology series.

There is a simple reason for this. A magazine has a very short shelf life. It has its month in the sun, and then it's done. An anthology can be kept available for sale for a much longer time.

Slight correction: However, I've just been informed that under the Hugo Award voting rules, we are properly classified as a "semiprozine." Okay, fine. We're a semiprozine, if that makes you happier.

• And yet you put out a new one every month?

Yes, every month. Which among other things means we do not have "reading periods." We are continuously open for new submissions.

• Monthly. Are you nuts?

Why do you think the company name is Rampant Loon?

• And seriously, STUPEFYING STORIES. Is that the best name you could come up with?

Admittedly, the name began as an inside joke. I first used it in 1987, in "It Came From The Slushpile." The gag was that the original publisher started out with a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a list of superlatives — Amazing, Astounding, Fantastic, Incredible — and worked his down to Stupefying before he found one that wasn't already taken. When we decided to start publishing a fiction magazine anthology series, the choice seemed obvious.

• So, back to fiction. You're buying fiction, then?

Yes. Every month.

• And you pay actual cash money for the stories you buy?

Yes.

• Payable on acceptance?

Dream on. We pay on publication. But, we are making every effort to run this operation in Internet time, so we are striving to have the fastest time-to-market in the business. You can literally submit a story at the beginning of one month and see it published on the first of the next month. Most other publishers are still passing the submitted manuscripts out to their first readers in that amount of time.

Special note to non-U.S. authors: If you don't already have a PayPal account, get one. You would not believe how much that simplifies the process of paying non-U.S. authors.

• Interesting. How much do you pay?

Our current base payment rate is 1-cent/word, or $10 minimum.

• Wow, almost enough for dinner for two at Taco John's. But what if my date wants Potato Olés®?

We are trying something different here. We are entirely self-funded, and neither have nor want any overt advertising or sub rosa sponsorship. Instead, we have put together a ridiculously lean operation, with a very low breakeven point, and our plan is to grow this thing entirely through direct-to-reader sales.

As soon as we hit our first breakeven point, we will raise our word rates, and we will continue to increase our word rates as sales permit. After that, our next goal is to begin paying the staff, as they're all volunteers, now.

Per our current business plan, STUPEFYING STORIES will run in the red for the first year, break even in the second, and the owners won't begin to see a return on their investment until the end of Year 3.

So yeah, right now we're paying 1-cent/word, because that's what we can afford to pay. If you want us to pay more, help us to grow faster.

• Fair enough. Okay, what rights are you buying?

This is an area where conventional book-business contract language has yet to catch up to the technology, and expressions like "First North American Serial Rights" are about to become meaningless. We find it more accurate to use software licensing terminology.

Ergo, we buy a four-year, worldwide, one-time, license to publish your work, in the English language, in electronic format only, embodied in one electronic publication as defined by title, volume, and issue number, associated with the appropriate ISBN registration(s), and to keep that publication in sellable inventory for a period not to exceed three years after the date of initial publication. Further, during that three-year period we reserve the right to port the ebook containing your work to other file formats at our discretion, but such a port does not constitute a new publication, nor does it extend the terms of the license.

(I.e., if we publish an ebook containing your work in .mobi and .epub formats this year, and then next year someone introduces a new ereader that takes the market by storm but only reads, say, .xyz files, we reserve the right to port the entire existing ebook to .xyz format, if doing so seems advisable.)

Beyond that, we retain no other rights. If we wanted to include your work in a a hypothetical BEST OF STUPEFYING STORIES collection, we'd have to negotiate a new contract with you. You are free to sell the reprint rights to your work to another publisher, if you can, or to sell foreign translation rights, or develop derivative works such as a novel or screenplay without let or hindrance from us.

• Speaking of reprints...

At this time, given the quantity and quality of the submissions we are receiving, we are not interested in buying reprint rights. There are some exceptions to this: if your story was previously published in a language other than English, or if Gene Wolfe were to call me tomorrow and say, "Hey, Bruce, I've got this story here that was only published once before, by a little old fanzine from Pasadena," I'd certainly give it a look. But in general: query first.

• What about poetry? Artwork?

In moments of weakness I may buy poetry, but query first.

We do not use interior illustrations, period. We do buy cover artwork, but covers are assigned. If you are interested in becoming one of our cover artists, query first. We have some very specific requirements.

Actually, that was one of the things that astonished us. Once we decided to jettison all the conventions of the print magazine format—e.g., interior illos, filler pieces, book reviews, opinion columns, display advertising, etc., etc.,— we were surprised to discover how little fiction there is most current fiction magazines.

We are all about stories. Anything else is an uphill sell.

• Speaking of stories; exactly what kinds of stories are you buying?

Ah, there's the rub. People assume that because I'm best-known as a science fiction writer, and because the first iteration (this one) of STUPEFYING STORIES was intentionally styled after an old-school digest-sized sci-fi pulp, we are only interested in publishing stories of a science fictional or otherwise fantastic nature.

That assumption is incorrect. We are looking for good stories, period.

However, since that answer never seems to be sufficient, allow me to elaborate. I have sold science fiction to mystery magazines, political satire to horror magazines, and straight-up pirate and vampire stories to self-proclaimed "hard SF" magazines. I honestly cannot see the impermeable genre barriers that others claim to see with such remarkable clarity. Therefore, I refuse to acknowledge them. Tell me a good story, is what I want. Show me a story that grabs my attention, takes me away to an interesting place populated by interesting characters, keeps me turning the pages to find out what happens next, and at the end, leaves me feeling that the time I spent reading this story was time well-spent.

Do that, and you'll make a sale.

• No, seriously, what kind of fiction? Cyberpunk? Steampunk? Dark fantasy?

Oh, for Pete's sake...

Look, if I knew exactly what kind of story I wanted to see, I'd save us both some trouble and write it myself. I am looking for any kind of mind-, imagination-, or heart-stretching story, including, but not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, urban fantasy, horror, mystery, military, edgy mainstream, adventure, humor, comedy, satire, sports, cyberpunk, cipherpunk, khyberpunk, fiberpunk, sabermetricpunk, zymurgipunk (man, I could really go for a tall cold zymurgipunk story right about now), steampunk, pixiepunk, dinopunk, slipstream, hipstream, zipstream, dipstream, dripstream... Okay, I'm just making up nonsense words now.

By my reckoning, I figure we're about ten years overdue for the next big paradigm shift. Somewhere out there, some writer nobody has ever heard of before is working on the story that is going to make everyone who reads it sit up and say, "Wow! I've never read anything like that before! I don't know what the heck to call it, but I want to read more stories like that one!"

My goal—one of my goals, anyway—is to be the editor who finds and publishes that story. I'm perfectly content to let someone else worry about what sort of label should be slapped on it, after it's been published.

• Okay, got it. You're open-minded. Is there anything you don't want to see?

As a matter of fact, yes. We're not too keen on sex-and-sadism stories. We're even less keen on sadism without the sex. As for sex; it'd better have a reason for being in the story, and not be the only reason the story exists. (That is, no stories with the porno movie plot: the story exists only as an excuse to get the characters to the explicit sex scene). Also, if you have Tourette's of the Typewriter and can't get through a page without dropping in a few of George Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say on Television, we're probably not the market for you, as we find that a few carefully chosen earthy Anglo-Saxon expressions go a long way. I've worked alongside longshoremen and teamsters, and for some reason I can't fathom a lot of very well-educated writers seem to feel the need to prove they can outswear the bluest of blue-collar workers.

It's not necessary. Really.

Also, absolutely no more stories about sexually abused children who grow up to become serial killers, serial killers who sexually abuse children, serial killers who prey on adults who sexually abuse children, or any other permutation on these themes. We've seen enough of these stories. We're sick of seeing them. I personally come from the land of Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, and my brother-in-law, the retired cop, still thanks God he was off-duty the day the guys from his precinct were the first ones to go into Dahmer's apartment. Stories involving the sexual abuse of children are just plain revolting to us, and stories centering on serial killers really have to work hard to get our attention.

But other than that, I really can't think of any—oh, wait. No stories about the romantic relationship problems of doctors or lawyers, either. Unless there's something else going on in the story that's actually interesting.

• Gotcha. Now, what about story length?

Remember, we're publishing ebooks, so shorter and tighter is generally better. If you can write flash fiction—and write it well—we're always open for that, but our experience has been that it takes a real gift to tell a complete story in 100 to 1,000 words.

After that, our top limit is generally 5,000 words. We'll go up to 10,000 words, if the story warrants telling in that length, but you're most likely to sell to us if you submit something in the 1,200- to 3,500-word range. It's not that we don't like longer stories. It's just easier to put together an issue if we have a good selection of shorter works to choose from.

• Would you have any interest in serializing my novel?

That's in our plan for Year Two. Give us three months to work the bugs out of our processes, six months to get everything settled down and running smoothly, and then contact us again along about June of 2012. And remember, query first! Don't just pitch your novel in over the transom!

In the meantime, if you're working on a series of related or sequential short stories, that make sense if read standalone but also tell a larger story if read in sequence, we're potentially very interested.

• I've noticed a certain relationship between THE FRIDAY CHALLENGE and STUPEFYING STORIES. Do I have to belong to The Friday Challenge in order to get my stories into Stupefying Stories? If so, how much does it cost to join?

No.

First off, no one "belongs" to The Friday Challenge. There's no registration—well, I guess you have to register to use the new DISQUS commenting system or the Yahoo file-sharing system, but that's DISQUS and Yahoo, not the FC—and no one keeps track of who is "in" or "out." The Friday Challenge is completely ad hoc, and more importantly, absolutely free. Participate when you want to. Don't participate when you don't feel like it. The FC crowd is very relaxed.

The first few issues of STUPEFYING STORIES will have a disproportionate number of stories by Friday Challenge regulars in them because these are the people we know best and contacted first when we decided to do this thing, and in some cases the stories were stories we already knew we liked because we'd seen them as they were workshopped through the FC. But even the first issue had plenty of stories that came in from people we'd never heard of before their stories showed up in our inbox, and we expect that ratio to increase in the future.

• Okay, I'm still with you this far. Now, how do I go about submitting a story to STUPEFYING STORIES?

There currently are three ways to send us a story:

1. Email it to submissions [at] rampantloonmedia [dot] com. This address will be superseded as soon as we get the StupefyingStories.com site up and running, but will remain viable for the foreseeable future.

2. Email it to slushpile [at] thefridaychallenge [dot] com. This address has been phased out. Do not use it. If you got this email address from a website or writer's group, kindly let them know that this address is no longer valid.

3. Mail your printed manuscript (how quaint!) to Rampant Loon Press, P.O. Box 111, Lake Elmo MN 55042.

• Do you have any preferences for manuscript format or file format?

We accept Microsoft Word .doc files (preferably .doc, not .docx), Rich Text .rtf files, Open Office .odt files, or Plain Text .txt files, in roughly that order of preference. Formatting doesn't really matter to us, as if we accept your story that's just more stuff we'll eventually have to strip out. But if you want an example of a well-formatted submission, it's hard to go wrong by following William Shunn's Guide to Proper Manuscript Format.

IMPORTANT NOTE! Make sure your story file includes your name, address, email address, and preferred pen name (if used) in the file, preferably on the first page. We receive a lot of submissions, and cover letters do get separated from manuscripts and sometimes lost. Having to hunt through our email to try find your email address is an easily avoided annoyance. Please help us avoid it.

Personally, we've become big fans of the free, Open Source version of Open Office, LibreOffice, as of all the programs we've tried, LibreOffice seems to do the best job of producing story files that convert cleanly. If you're looking for a program to use for writing and aren't already married to Ms Word, check out LibreOffice.

• Can I send you more than one story?

No more than two at a time, please, or three, if one of them is flash fiction. The next person who upends his trunk and drops all his unsold stories on us in one massive document dump is going to get— oh, I don't know just what, yet, but it's going to be good. In a very bad way.

• What about simultaneous submissions?

Simultaneous submissions are okay, provided you do us the twin courtesies of letting us know that it's a simultaneous sub and of withdrawing it if it gets accepted elsewhere.

• Once I submit a story, how long can I expect to wait for a response?

As I said earlier, we try to run this operation in Internet time; however, given that our submisisons volume is growing exponentially, this has become more of a goal than a guarantee. If you haven't heard from us in a month, it means we like your story and are holding it for another reading. If you haven't heard from us in two months, sending a polite query is not unreasonable.

• How will I know if you decide to accept my story?

If we decide to accept your story, we will email you an acceptance letter with a short questionaire, basically confirming your legal name, address, the title of the story, and the name you want it published under, if different from your legal name. As soon as you return that questionaire to us, we will draft your publication contract and send it to you.

U.S. residents: We will send two (2) copies of the contract to you by mail, along with an SASE. Please sign and date both copies and return them to us. We will then return a countersigned copy to you for your records.

Non-U.S. residents: We will send a PDF copy of the contract to you by email and handle all the signatures, confirmations, and payments electronically.

• I still have more questions. How can I contact you?

Pending the setup of the StupefyingStories.com website, you can use either of the email addresses listed above. Or, you contact me directly at brb [at] rampantloonmedia [dot] com, but do not send submissions to this email address.