Submission guidelines
The Experimental Review publishes fiction and nonfiction, with a goal of finding out whether AI can produce good writing, or whether it best used to assist human writers. We may find out that it's best left out of writing altogether. The only way to find out, of course, is to test.
So that's the experiment. We want good writing however it was made, and we want to know how it was made so we can answer the question.
Please read these guidelines before you submit. The form asks you to confirm you have.
Here's the full version.
Fiction and nonfiction up to 7,500 words, in any genre and any style. Short and very short work is especially welcome.
We don't publish poetry at the moment.
We're big fans of speculative fiction but we're not limiting ourselves to a single genre. Go nuts.
We would prefer work that hasn't been published before but we're not going to worry too much about that. We are asking for one time publishing rights and not first rights.
Fees and payment are based on length:
| Category | Length | Reading fee | We pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Micro Fiction | up to 300 words | $3.00 | $5.00 |
| Micro Nonfiction | up to 300 words | $3.00 | $5.00 |
| Flash Fiction | up to 1,000 words | $4.00 | $20.00 |
| Flash Nonfiction | up to 1,000 words | $4.00 | $20.00 |
| Short Fiction | up to 3,000 words | $5.00 | $25.00 |
| Nonfiction | up to 3,000 words | $5.00 | $25.00 |
| Short Fiction, long | up to 7,500 words | $10.00 | $25.00 |
| Nonfiction, long | up to 7,500 words | $10.00 | $25.00 |
If we accept your piece, we refund your reading fee in full and pay you the amount above when the issue it's in is published. We will also refund your fee if we hold the piece for revisions, regardless of whether we accept the piece. The fee isn't refunded if we decline the piece or you withdraw it.
.docx or PDF of up to 10MB.
Pasting gives the most exact count. If your piece depends on formatting, like italics,
section breaks or an unusual layout, upload a .docx so we see it as you
intended.This is where most magazines tell you AI assistance is prohibited because they want to support human writers. We also want to support human writers, but we're doing it by measuring how much AI can actually do. We believe that AI has its place, and our hypothesis it's in helping writers to be more productive, and not in actually doing the writing. But we need to find that out for sure. So please be honest.
Every submission includes a short disclosure of how AI was involved, from "not at all" through spell-checking, polishing and outlining to "all writing".
Both are fine. Your piece can be out with other magazines while we read it, and you can have more than one piece with us at a time. If a piece is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw it from us right away. To withdraw, reply to your confirmation email with your reference code and let us know.
Our aim is to give you an answer within four weeks. Your confirmation email and your submission's status page show the date we're aiming for. The answer will be yes, no, or a request to revise.
If we ask for a revision, we'll work with you via email. We may ask for more than one round.
We sometimes close to new submissions when our reading queue is full, so that we can keep the four-week promise. Work that's already with us is read as normal. We are limiting the size of the queue to 150 pieces. When it reaches that limit, we'll close submissions until we can get it back down under 50, and then we'll open up again.
If we haven't answered your question, please feel free to send an email to submissions@experimentalreview.com.