Peasant Magazine publishes fiction (1,000 to 40,000 words), nonfiction articles on topics related to fantasy storytelling or historical fiction (500-7,500 words, query first). “We are focused on pre-industrial (pre-1750) settings such as the middle ages, ancient cultures, and the prehistoric era.” Read the complete guidelines here.
SQF: Why did you start this magazine?
Charles Moffat: I felt it was necessary and needed. A lot of writers (especially indie writers) are facing a marketing Catch-22. How to get their stories in front of readers who will buy their books, but without already being successful. Readers are much more likely to take a chance on buying an author's book if they have previously read a story by the author and liked their work. And to get your short stories in front of a larger audience you really need to get your stories into literary magazines that don't care whether you're already successful or not. (The popular literary magazines usually only publish the work of authors that are already successful because it is a financial risk to be paying pro rate to an unknown author.)
I see Peasant Magazine as a stepping stone for authors to get the marketing ball rolling. More readers = More people buying books = More reviews.
SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?
CM: (1) A memorable story that is (2) well-written and (3) either fantasy or historical fiction set before 1750 AD. You might be impressed by the number of people who somehow submit something that doesn't end up qualifying for #3.
SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?
CM: An abundance of poor spelling/grammar is a big no-no. A few mistakes, that's fine. We can quickly edit those out. But if there's a lot of mistakes (eg. people who spell a lot as 'alot') then it could take hours to edit their work. In that situation it is faster to just write (or copy/paste) a rejection letter.
The other big no-no is when the story isn't suitable for the magazine. The vast majority of rejection letters I send out aren't because of poor spelling/grammar, they're because the authors didn't bother to read/follow the submission guidelines and sent something that doesn't fit Peasant Magazine. So if someone sends me a science fiction story set in the future... Automatic rejection. If someone sends me a story set in the contemporary (for our purposes, that includes anything set after 1750 AD)... Automatic rejection.
At the same time I know what is happening here. Sometimes people are just skimming the submission guidelines and not reading the whole thing.
I recall submitting one of my own stories to a literary magazine that publishes stories about forests/wilderness, and they said in their guidelines that they accept fantasy stories. So I sent them a fantasy story that takes place in a forest, with an unicorn, a treefolk and other fantasy elements that felt normal to be within a fantasy story set in a forest and they rejected it immediately. They felt that the unicorn and treefolk was "too much fantasy" and they wanted something that was more like "magical realism", which is generally considered to be a completely different genre from fantasy. So in that instance I blame the publisher because if they're looking for magical realism then they should say so in their submission guidelines. This is why it is very important that publishers have very clear and easy to understand submission guidelines, and it is paramount that the authors read those guidelines before submitting their work.
SQF: What do you look for in the opening paragraph(s) of a submission?
CM: I've been doing this for a long enough time that I know that the whole opening line/paragraph thing is subjective to the reader. As such I don't care about the opening lines.
In my own work I've been using animal symbolism in the first paragraph. If the story is peaceful and woodsy I might lead with a deer in a forest, without a predator in sight. If the story is morbid I will usually lead with ravens, crows or vultures eating a corpse. The animal serves as a symbolic metaphor for the kind of story that the reader will be getting.
SQF: Many editors list erotica, or sex for sex sake, as hard sells. What are hard sells for your publication?
CM: Stories that don't have much of a plot. That's a hard sell. I can't see approving a story that doesn't really have much happening.
Due to Google algorithms we are limited to stories that are family friendly or PG (limit of 1 F-bomb per PG story). If there are too many graphic words on a website (or PDF) then Google will list the file as being adult in nature and from a marketing perspective that severely limits our ability to make the magazine popular. There are magazines out there that cater specifically to that, but since Peasant Magazine is focused on being more mainstream we have to keep it Family Friendly or PG. Someone who wanted to could easily make their own magazine and call it "Harlot Magazine" or something like that. (I just Googled it... There already is a Harlot Magazine.)
SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't? And how would you answer it?
CM: Let's do two! The answers to both are related.
(1) "I noticed that Peasant Magazine is free and non-profit. If you could start a magazine that had a larger budget, would you want to?"
(2) "What would you do to change how the literary magazine industry works?"
Absolutely! I think all writers should ideally get paid for their work. Sadly it doesn't always work out that way. If I could find a way to fund a for-profit literary magazine in a manner that makes financial sense, I would do so. I have even come up with some possible names for such a magazine, but right now it isn't viable. Running a brand new literary magazine that doesn't already have an existing audience is itself a Catch-22 in terms of making it financially viable.
Ideally what I would like to do is create a tiered system of multiple magazines under one publishing house, wherein authors could submit their work and be considered for the various magazines which offer a combination of being paid pro rate, semi pro, a flat rate and non-profit. So roughly four magazines with different pay grades, but the authors only need to submit once to be considered for all of them.
Indeed, I wish that this was the way the entire industry worked. Submit once to one website (or app), the editors read the stories, give them a thumbs up if they like them, and then bid on them. Highest bidder gets to publish the story. Stories would be sorted by subgenre(s) and theme(s) so that editors are only reading stories they know match their magazine. The editors save time by not reading any stories that don't fit the themes of their magazine, and the writers are ultimately paid more thanks to the highest bidder system.
And there would be a side effect of this. Stories with subgenres/themes that don't really match any existing magazines will create opportunities for people to create new magazines or anthologies based upon those ideas in order to fill the gaps.
We just need someone to create such a website/app that facilitates the needs of both publishers and authors. I, unfortunately, do not have the skills needed to do that. What you need is someone who knows how to make a website with a SQL database with logins, etc.
Thank you, Charles. We all appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.
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