Attention! Warning! Peasant Magazine sometimes purchases first world-wide publication rights. You should be aware that if your story is published by Peasant Magazine you will no longer be able to sell first publication rights to another publisher, either on the internet or in print, anywhere in the world. This means you will lose your opportunity to sell your story to paying markets except as a reprint at a drastically lower rate than they would offer for a story that had not been previously published. You should seriously consider offering your work to paying markets before submitting it to Peasant Magazine. We strongly encourage you to do so. You can always submit to Peasant Magazine later for reprinting after you've already been paid by a different magazine. ARCANE TOMES Arcane Tomes / ArcaneTomes.org is an indie fantasy bookstore (of sorts) sponsored by Peasant Magazine and serves to promote Indie Fantasy Books, and also serves to promote Peasant Magazine itself. Joining Arcane Tomes is free and the only requirement is that authors must have self-published at least one book. Literary magazines/journals that publish fantasy stories by indie authors are also acceptable.

Past Issues | Open for Submissions | Submission Guidelines | Deadlines | FAQ | Contact FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Why bother making a free non-profit literary magazine? Because it is needed and necessary. Authors need publications like literary magazines in order to promote their work. In this era in which many authors are being forced to choose between traditional publishing and self-publishing there aren't really any good options for publishing short fiction. The industry needs more literary magazines/journals, especially those that are open to publishing the work of authors who have never published before. The big "successful" literary magazines only publish the works of professional authors, and the smaller (usually unsuccessful) literary magazines often run into money problems and go defunct. Which means that indie authors don't really get the same opportunities because they're trapped in a Catch-22 of how to become successful/professional. Do you accept stories about Dungeons and Dragons characters? If they're original characters (not fanfiction or plagiarized) and the story is well-written, sure. But... Be careful what monsters you use. Certain monsters from D&D (eg. Beholders) are copyrighted. Try to stick to either monsters that are based on folklore or mythology, or create your own monsters. Do you accept stories about LGBTQ+ characters? Sure. We also would like to see more characters that have physical or mental disadvantages. Equal opportunity for everyone. What is your policy on offensive content? We will not publish any work that we deem to be offensive or presents hatred or prejudice directed towards a particular race, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, ability, socioeconomic class, or other social identity or status. Is it okay to include an "author's note" at the end of a story? Sure. But we do recommend keeping it brief. A paragraph or two at most. We reserve the option to not include it in the publication. Do you accept advertising? Nope. Peasant Magazine is advertising free. This way the focus stays on the authors. It has been suggested to us that we should accept advertising, particularly from authors who want to advertise their books. However at this time we have decided to not bother with this extra time requirement. We don't even know what to charge for such a service. Authors who really want to promote their writing in Peasant Magazine should just submit a short story that is suitable and mention their other work in their author biography. This way they get to promote their writing for free. Do you accept retellings of fairy tales or fables? Yes, but isn't every story just a retelling of other stories? For example there's an old Lancelot story that is just a retelling of an even older Siegfried/Sigurd story. Retellings happen all the time. Even Romeo and Juliet is a retelling of a much older Greek tragedy. Do you accept time travel stories from the present (or a contemporary time period) to the past? No, we require that the story take place in a pre-industrial (pre-1750s) culture, and this includes time travel from any point that is post-1750. So if the time traveller was from 1749 that would be okay, but if they're from 1751 then no. That is the cutoff point. Do you accept stories that involve someone from our world (Earth) travelling to another world where magic and monsters exist? Yes and No. If the person is travelling from a historical period prior to 1750, yes. If they are travelling from a time period that is post-1750, then no. Do you accept fantasy or historical fiction stories that use technology that is more modern than 1750? Hard no. Let's use firearms as an example: If a story was set during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) then it wouldn't be acceptable, but if a story was set in 1745 during the Scottish Jacobite Uprisings (featuring Bonnie Prince Charlie) then that would be acceptable. Likewise a fantasy story could therefore use firearms that were available during the Scottish Uprisings, but couldn't use any contemporary firearms that were available during the American Revolutionary War. Likewise various other technological references should all be pre-1750. Thus steam engines could be used for pumping water out of mines, but steam engines for other types of machinery didn't yet exist. Textile machinery like the spinning jenny and water frame wouldn't be invented until 1764 and 1769 respectively. Navigational instruments like the sextant did exist, as did spyglasses, microscopes and telescopes. The printing press existed, but was still relatively unsophisticated. Do you accept excerpts from novels? We will consider excerpts from novels if, and only if, the excerpted chapter can also standalone as a short story. So no cliffhangers tempting people to buy the book. You can have unanswered questions, but we draw the line at cliffhangers. We want standalone stories, or possibly Episodic Stories (see further below). Do you accept prequel stories for novels? Sure, why not! But again the story had better be standalone and not include a cliffhanger. Do you accept Episodic Stories or serials? Serial / Episodic stories will be considered, but the series needs to be already finished and you must submit all of them together. So if your plan is a five part series of short stories then we want to see all five stories completed before we agree to publish them. We don't want you to pull a George R. R. Martin where you write the first five books of a seven book series and then never finish books six and seven. Can we submit multiple stories at once? You can submit multiple stories if you want to, but we have a few rules. If the stories are Episodic then you need to make a note of that in your submission and submit them together. If the stories are Standalone then please only send a maximum of 2 submissions per month. To avoid confusion please submit Standalone stories separately. Do you have a list of short story writing prompts? We do, but to be fair we used ChatGPT to generate the following lists of writing prompts, so take any of those ideas with a grain of salt as ChatGPT tends to output fairly generic ideas, and often repeats itself. 101 Fantasy Short Story Writing Prompts 101 Historical Fantasy Short Story Writing Prompts 101 Historical Fiction Short Story Writing Prompts 101 Dark Fantasy Short Story Writing Prompts Do you have any advice for writers who have never submitted to a magazine before? We do! Please read: Literary Magazine Submitting Tips: Do's and Don'ts Do you accept volunteers? Yes, we need volunteers to help out. We need proofreaders and people who can give us free marketing. Just send us an email to volunteer. What if we have more questions? Just email peasantmagazine@gmail.com and we shall try to answer your question (and possibly add it to our FAQ section). Last Updated: August 28th 2024.

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