Deadline: April 15, 2010.

Being a fledgling young thing still testing the limits of our growing body, we can’t afford to be too prescriptivist in our submissions guidelines—and neither can we expect you to anticipate what sort of creature we’ll turn into. In terms of tone and style, we’re remarkably open. We’ll read whatever format and genre you think we’ll fancy. That said, some ground-rules:

Fiction and literary non-fiction would be best. Scripts, poetry, recipes and memoirs may well be read and considered, but we can make no promises that we’ll get back to you, or know what to do with them.
Pieces between 1000–2500 words would be best. 1500 words would be ideal. There’s some leeway, but expect anything above about 3500 words to be ignored outright.
While every issue will have a theme, writing to theme isn’t as important as writing well. If you have a good story you think we’ll love but it doesn’t fit the theme, send it anyway.
As mentioned above, we won’t discriminate about genre pieces, but that doesn’t really mean we want to read about your down-and-out detective investigating some poor dame’s case. Put him in a diving suit off the coast of the Antarctic and we might give a damn.
Send us something you’re proud of, and that you think we’ll love.

The Famous Submission Guidelines

Are as follows:

Send us one story at a time, and wait for us to get back to you before sending another.
Simultaneous submissions are fine—that is, we don’t care if you send your story to us and then to Voiceworks, McSweeney’s and The New Yorker. They might care, though, so check their guidelines first. Just let us know if they pick it up before we have a chance to, and vice-versa.
Times New Roman, 12pt, double-spaced, .doc or .rtf file.

Got all that? Good.

Before you get all excited about sending us your epic poetry about sharehouse politics, read these points about your rights, our rights, and what we can both expect to get out of your being published.

We require first- and one-time non-exclusive publishing rights to your story on acceptance. What this means is that we will not consider work that has previously been published elsewhere, whether it be in a print publication or an internet site.
Your blog counts as an internet site.
It also does mean that once you’ve been published here, you’re free to do whatever you’d like with your story. It’s still yours, after all! We only ask that you don’t put it anywhere while it’s still featured here. Wait until we get to the next issue and then post it to your twitter or whatever.
You don’t have to, but we’d really, really appreciate if you give us a shout-out if your piece is later published elsewhere.

Submit!

Email editor@sevenletterwords.com.au with your story as an attachment. We’ll read it over coffee, and then over beer, and let you know what we think, but don’t wait around for a response.

Payment

I’ve got bupkis, baby. Maybe there’ll be money in this game yet. But I’m running this thing out of my own pocket for the love of writing and the love of publishing new and emerging voices, and while I’d love to be in a position to pay contributors, it simply isn’t feasible at this point. Seven Letter Words has every intention of one day being able to pay its contributors for their content, but that will never happen if we don’t start small and nimble and thrifty.

Thanks for your interest!