Submissions
The current reading period has ended. Please check for updates regarding future reading periods.
Send all submissions to info@pachinkomag.com
You will receive an intial e-mail to acknowledge that we’ve received your work, but please allow 6-8 weeks for a full response.
Even If you submitted work for the last issue, please read the following carefully because the guidelines have changed significantly.
A general note about what and what not to submit
This may sound like it only applies to fiction, but it applies to all categories in a general sense. Although there’s only been one issue of Pachinko! so far, it’s a near certainty that there will never be a themed issue. Keep this in mind. The right material for the magazine is not about a particular subject, told from a certain point of view nor does it represent a particular culture or ideology. If you have something you know is really good, but you don’t see any stories that, like yours, are set in (noun), are told by a (noun) in a (noun) who always (verb)s before (subject pronoun) (verb)s, it could may very well be a good fit, so submit it.* This is partly an aesthetic choice. It’s related to the editor’s own attentional issues.
If you have something with potential but sense it isn’t quite there yet, keep working on it. Don’t submit it if it’s not ready.**
And please do not submit op-eds, political screeds, religious material, celebrity gossip, a copy of your Twitter feed, your picks for this year’s NFC champs, your Facebook status, product endorsements or an analysis of your relationship problems.
Maximum number of submissions per category
One
Do not submit previously published work in any category unless the work in quesiton only appears on your personal blog, web site or online portfolio, but preferably it doesn’t.
Fiction
NEW Format/Blind Submissions Policy
Submit your stories as Microsoft Word documents or PDFs and do not include your name anywhere in the name of the file or in the document itself. Just include the title of the work and the word ‘fiction’, i.e. ‘The Red House.fiction.doc’; ‘Donuts in My Basement.fiction.pdf.’
Lines should be single-spaced. Use 12-point type and a font most people with 20/20 vision or close would find legible.
Word limit: 250-3,000
Novel excerpts: are okay, but they need to be relatively self-contained.
Do not submit genre fiction. Stories that take place in a mystical realm with elves or in a distant galaxy or in pre-Industrial Revolution England or an old Western town filled with gunslingers, or in Fabio’s whirlpool, the Batcave or Philip Marlowe’s favorite bar are absolutely acceptable if not encouraged—but only if they’re original, have multidimensional characters in unusual situations, a rich narrative and dialogue, a strong sense of place, and are written in a way the reader hasn’t already experienced 16,000 times. Avoid “punch line” endings. If nothing else there needs to be an absence of melodrama and cliché.
NEW Nonfiction submissions – pitch it to us first
We’re still looking for first-person essays, narrative nonfiction and people (writers mostly) to interview. (In most cases interviews will be conducted by Pachinko! staff, but we’re not closed to the idea of having contributors interview people either.) But instead of submitting anything, first tell us what you have in mind (even if it’s already done). We’ll let you know if it might be for us. If it is, we’ll ask you if we can check it out. The word limit varies but is roughly 1,000-3,000 words.
Visual Art
Photography - 1-6 images. Send as jpegs. Submissions can be stand-alones or photo essays with or without accompanying text.
Comics – strips and single images are fine. Send as PDF or jpegs.
Illustrations – if you are submitting an illustration or other graphic you’d like us to feature, please send it as a PDF or a jpeg.
If you are interested in illustrating one or more of the stories in the issue, we’re definitely looking, but please make that clear in your e-mail and provide a link to your portfolio or published work, or attach samples as jpegs or PDFs.
Short Videos – We’re still experimenting with this. Send us whatever you have in mind, however you’d like, adhering to the general guideline that whatever it is not be published already. Send videos as compressed files and make them no longer than 5-10 minutes.
Multiple Submissions
It seems kind of silly that any publication would tell you to submit your work to them only, especially when there’s no guarantee they’re going to accept it. If a publication does tell you that this is its policy, ignore them and play the numbers like everybody else.
But if the same work you’ve submitted to Pachinko! is accepted elsewhere and you’d like to withdraw it from consideration for our upcoming issue, please let us know right away.
Publishing Rights
Pachinko! reserves first Internet rights to all materials that it publishes. All contributors receive and sign a written agreement that reflects this policy.
Payment
All we can offer contributors at this point is exposure.
*That said, while what you may submit is wide open, please do not submit poetry. Or stories about the travails of being in a writer’s workshop—unless you and your most trusted readers are convinced it’s really that good. No offense, but it probably isn’t.)
**This doesn’t mean hit spell-check and if there are no typos or grammatical errors then it’s all good. It means you and whomever you trust to give you an honest opinion, can’t see how it could be any better than it already is. (This may sound condescending, but—Yeah, this may sound condescending.)
