SBS Mag

We are currently CLOSED to submissions.  We will be opening them at some point in the future.

Important note: Due to a large volume of submissions that did not follow guidelines, all submissions that obviously do not follow the guidelines below will be deleted, unread, without an email explaining why. We don’t have to time to tell everyone to read the guidelines anymore. If you don’t have the time to read the guidelines, then we don’t have the time to read your submission.

General Guidelines
–Donating Work (for minors)
What are we not looking for?
Fiction Guidelines
Play Guidelines
Poetry Guidelines
Non-fiction Guidelines
Artwork
Payment
Legalities
Contact

–Survival By Storytelling will accept poetry, short fiction, short plays, and non-fiction. Any genre is acceptable.
–All submissions must be sent as .doc or .rtf files to sbsmag@(no spam)yahoo.com (remove the no spam bit). Please pay attention to the guidelines specific to your type of submission for additional formatting guidelines. Do not send your submission in the body of your email.
–You do not need to be a member of YWO to submit, however we highly encourage you to join and become a part of our community to improve your craft.
–You must be 25 years old or younger. This magazine is meant for young writers.
–Please put your YWO username.
–Please provide your age in your cover letter.  We’d also appreciate if you told us whether or not you are a minor in your country of residence. This will not affect our judgment on a manuscript.
– All material submitted must not be online either on YWO or any other website, nor may it have been published in any other magazine, zine, etc. You are perfectly welcome to use YWO to edit your manuscript, but upon submission your work should be removed. We recommend that any stories you are considering submitting should be put in the members only area (same for poetry). Before you submit, ask an Admin or Moderator to remove your work from the site.  Additionally, if your work has been published in an exceedingly small vanue, such as a school newspaper, please query before submitting.  We’re mostly concerned about work formerly published in larger publications.
– You may use a pen name, but we still need your real name for our records. Please make sure that pen names are serious, not ridiculous.
– You may submit up to two poems at a time or one story at a time (or one play). You may not submit a poem and a story. Give us time to read your submission and give you a response before submitting something else. If we accept a story from you, you may submit poetry for our consideration, or vice versa, but you may have no more than one story and two poems in a single issue (this also depends on length)

We understand that for some of you who are underage it might be quite difficult to get a parent or guardian to sign a contract. With that in mind you have the option to “donate” your work to the magazine if it is accepted. This means you are not bound by a contract, but are essentially “giving away” your work to us. The editors of SBS Mag, however, will make this promise:

• Your work will be treated with the same care as stories under contract.
• We will still pay you if you choose to be paid, unless we both go bankrupt or die, in which case you’ll have to bug someone else for money, cause we’ll be dead or living in cardboard boxes.
• We’ll do whatever we can to make everything work out, whatever that might mean.

Spelling errors, grammar errors, poorly plotted stories, excessive gore and violence, Deus ex machina, or stories that don’t go anywhere. We’re not that strict on stories, but we do want to make sure that they are entertaining in some way, or thought provoking.
We don’t want “Roses are red” poems, or stupid poems. Humorous poetry is great, as long as it’s done well and not childishly. No knock-knock jokes.
No reprints. We only want new material.
No simultaneous submissions (meaning you can’t submit to us and someone else at the same time).

–Short stories should be within reasonable limits, but no longer than 20,000 words. We will consider longer lengths, but query first. The sweet spot is in that 3,000-6,000 range, however a good story can be told in short or longer lengths.
–All stories should be double-spaced, in Courier New 12 point font, with the author’s name and contact information in the top right of the first page, with a word count for stories/plays or line count for poetry. On each page following you should put in the header “your name / story or poem title / page number”. We appreciate it when authors follow the guidelines set down by SFWA which can be found here.
– We want well written fiction in any genre. Stories that make us think, scare us, intrigue and interest us, and otherwise entertain us are what we’re looking for.
–When submitting, make sure the subject line of your email says “Fiction Submission: Your story title”. It is imperative that you do this so it ends up in the right folder.

–Plays should be no longer than 20 standard play format pages (which is different for the word count).
–Plays must be in Courier New 12 point font.
–Look at the Fiction Guidelines for more specific wants as far as genre and content.
–When submitting, make sure the subject line of your email says “Play Submission: Your play title”. It is imperative that you do this so it ends up in the right folder.

–Poetry should be no longer than 40 lines.
–Poetry must be in Courier New 12 point font, but does not need to be double-spaced. Use standard manuscript format for every other aspect of your manuscript.
–If you submit something that doesn’t have a definitive form we appreciate it if you somehow mark your lines on every 10th line (this is mostly for 30-40 line poems). This isn’t a requirement, it’s just helpful.
– For poetry we want thought provoking, powerful poems with good imagery. Abstract poetry is perfectly fine with us, provided it’s not too abstract. Rhyme or don’t rhyme, doesn’t matter. If the poem grips us, we’ll take it.
–When submitting, make sure the subject line of your email says “Poetry Submission: Your poem title”. It is imperative that you do this so it ends up in the right folder.

–We accept book reviews, articles, etc. Non-fiction must be of interest to the literature community, but don’t necessarily have to be literary criticism. We like fun articles too, particularly if you’ve got something funny to talk about. The only thing we want is for your article to be related to literature somehow.
–We will also accept articles regarding interesting bits of history or current news, so long as they might be of interest to fellow writers or literature enthusiasts (meaning that they don’t have to be about literature necessarily; and example would be articles about mythology). We don’t want standard articles in this area, however. You should have a distinct voice, but not necessarily an academic voice. Basically, we want stuff that is fun rather than dull and “school” sounding.
–Articles should be no more than 3,000 words long and should conform to the same standard format as fiction.
–Payment is the same as for anything else and rules about violence are loosely applied. Language, however, should be kept PG. If you are opinionated, great, but please don’t be opinionated and filfthy.

We currently are accepting works of art. Short comics–such as single panel or three panel works–are highly appreciated as well as potential art for the cover. We aren’t interested in particularly dirty or violent works. Artwork meant for the cover may be in color, but artwork that would show up inside the magazine, such as comics and the like, must be in black and white. Unfortunately, SBS is not a paying market for artwork at this time, but that may change in the future. You will be appropriately credited for your work and a short bio may be put in the magazine if you wish it.

We pay only in royalties. 2/3 of the profits of every issue go to all the contributors for that issue, and the last 1/3 goes right back to YWO to pay for hosting and other things. Payment will be made via Paypal (done quarterly after publication). You may choose not to receive payment and can instead tell us what to do with your share of the royalties.
Note: Payment guidelines may change in the future. We won’t pay less than a royalty, but we hope that in the future we can offer better payment, possibly a flat rate or even a per word count rate.

We are purchasing first North American and foreign serial rights with an option on anthology rights. It may have other names, but to put it plainly by telling us we can publish your story or poem you are telling us that it is okay for us to put it in one issue of the magazine and only that issue (in print and in the PDF/ebook), which will be accessible to a worldwide audience. We are only allowed to print it in this issue or in a possible anthology, which would bring an additional payment.
All accepted authors must sign a contract, with exception to authors who donate their work. The contract will state basically what is written above: that you are telling us it is okay to print your story or poem in whichever issue is up next or in a future issue (if that is arranged) in print and PDF/ebook, accessible world wide (meaning anyone can buy it around the world).
Minors must have a parent or guardian sign their contract due to the fact that minors cannot legally sign a contract. We readily accept submissions from young folks, just be warned that your parents or your guardian will have to sign before we print anything.
Contracts will be sent via email and can be sent back to us by email (print it, sign it, scan it, email it) or by post (address will be provided upon acceptance). We cannot publish your work until you have signed the contract and returned it to us. This is a legal thing that all magazines and publishers have to do.
By submitting you are agreeing to the following:
–You are the original creator of the material in question.
–You have not lied, to the best of your knowledge, about any of your information. Your name is your real name. Your email is your real email, you are the age you say you are, etc.
–You have not violated any copyrights in your work.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at sbsmag@(no spam)yahoo.com (just remove the no spam bit). Please make the subject Question or Query so we know what it is and don’t mistake it for spam.

Thanks!