Submission Guidelines
Guidelines
Fiction
We are always seeking quality erotica, up to 8,000 words. We buy first web publishing rights and an option for print anthology and audiobook rights. We want hot fiction that goes beyond a mere sex scene —give us a good story, let us pant with your protagonist. Good writing is important, as is originality. Tender or melancholy stories are fine, but we're also not afraid of stories that push boundaries, that blur the lines of gender, propriety or even consent (though excessively gross or gory pieces are not to our taste). Challenge our assumptions, but make our toes curl while you do it.
Reprints and poetry are OK, but will be a very hard sell. We generally prefer stories between 1500 and 4000 words, so stories shorter or longer than that will have to rock our world. No non-fiction at this time, please. We will consider other genres (such as speculative fiction, mysteries, sword-and-sorcery, even westerns) as long as it's also erotica. What your story must be, above all, is sexy. And good.
Fiction should be pasted into the body of your email and sent to editor H. L. Shaw at fiction-editor@blowfish.com or fiction-editor@fishnetmag.com. Please include Fiction Sub: (STORY TITLE) in the subject line, replacing (STORY TITLE) with the title of your story.
Please send all submissions as plain text emails. Do not send any kind of attachments; those will be rejected unread. Please also make sure that your submission does not contain "curly quotes" or other special characters.
Please also send a short cover letter that mentions the word count of the story enclosed and a couple of any relevant fiction sales (we also welcome first-time authors). We encourage you to send the cover letter as a separate email in case our spam filter catches the story by mistake; if we get just the cover letter, we know something happened and can contact you to fix it.
Please submit one piece per email at a time; no multiple or simultaneous submissions, please.
Your chances of acceptance are greatly increased if your cover letter and submission conform to the standards of good English. Please form proper paragraphs, use proper punctuation and capitalization, and above all, proofread your work. We can tell the difference between errors deliberately inserted for artistic effect and sloppy writing.
We will need your real name, address, and a US social security number (if you have one) before we can pay you. We are happy to run pieces under pseudonyms, if you would prefer. We pay 4 cents per word, on acceptance. Let us know if you have any questions.
Guidelines
Photography
We are always looking for hot photography. Couples, solo, male-female, female-female, male-male . . . we love it all, as long as it is interesting and makes us think while turning us on.
We buy web publication rights for a 90 day run. We generally run a maximum of 10 images per feature, and we feature one photographer in each run.
To submit photography, send a query email to photo-editor@fishnetmag.com with a link to where we can find a portfolio on the web. Be sure to point us at the particular images you are submitting.
Do not send photographs as attachments.
If any kind of sexual activity is involved, we will need copies of proper documentation on the models’ age and identity per 18 USC § 2257 and 18 CFR 75. We may require such documentation for other photographs, depending on content. If you do not have proper age statements and model releases for a photograph (and that means you have a signed statement, backed by ID, that the model was 18 years of age or older at the time of the shoot, and that you the photographer has the rights to publish the images), we can’t use that photo: please don’t even submit it.
We will need your real name, address, and a US social security number (if you have one) before we can pay you. We are happy to run work under pseudonyms, if you would prefer. We pay $10-$20 per image, on acceptance. Let us know if you have any questions.
