5 Awesome Top-Paying Online Fantasy & Sci-Fi Magazines

Since I occasionally write about online magazines, have had short stories published in a few of them, and even run one of my own, I think it’s safe to say that I consider ezines a viable place to submit your genre fiction. There are tons of quality ezines out there, with varying traffic and pay rates, but in this post I wanted to focus on some of the top online places to submit stories to if you’re looking for a nice payday.

This isn’t a “top 5” list and there are definitely other sites paying just as much or more than these, but I’m picking these more to show examples of what a great pro-paying site with a great reputation can look like. Some of these are free to read and others require subscriptions to view the complete material, but they are all worth checking out.

1. Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show is a PG-13 site publishing fantasy & science fiction. At .06 per word, they’re an extremely difficult market to break into, but if you can meet their story requirements, you’re a fool to not give it an attempt.

2.  Apex Magazine publishes science fiction, horror, and fantasy. I’d say they’re a bit more “literary” than some of the genre magazines out there. That’s not a knock; it just means they publish a lot of high quality short stories. At .06 per word, they’re also a difficult market, but could make a huge jump to your writing career if you can get in.

3. Buzzy Mag is a personal favorite of mine. In a lot of ways, they’re the anti-literary magazine. They definitely take a more laid back approach to writing and have a great variety of speculative fiction. They are currently closed to submissions, but when open, I believe their current rate is .05 per word.

4. Daily Science Fiction is an online magazine that publishes to your inbox as well as keeping an archived copy on their site. While they are mostly a flash publisher, they do pay a very respectable .08 per word and if you have some flash fiction that you think can make the cut, you’ve got to consider sending it to them.

5. Beneath Ceaseless Skies publishes traditional fantasy stories up to 10,000 words.  Their site looks great and visiting it just makes me feel like I’m in high school again playing 2nd Edition D&D. They pay .06 per word.

So if you can get into any of these online magazines, you’ve got a bright future in writing.  Check all five of these out and read some sample material and then get to work on getting an acceptance from one of them.  I think I’ll make that one of my goals for 2017.