$1 Flash Fiction for Every Day Fiction

Every Day Fiction is paying $1 for stories under 1000 words.

http://www.everydayfiction.com/submit-story/

They make you sign up for their forum, which is new and strange but nothing to worry about. I believe the purpose of this is so that it will remember your name, contact info and bio each time you sign in to submit another story. Do not worry about that.

I have been rejected by them a few times, and what stands out for me is that they give a thoughtful inventory of what works for them and doesn't in the submission. These are neither cruel nor kind since I infer that these are actually internal memorandum, one editor writing to another, which makes their curt review of the submission very informational.
I don't submit to them meaning to be rejected so that I can get an editorial insight. Do not do that. I submit stories with a certain commitment that I know I have done good, polished work, and even given that this is all subjective, sometimes I get seriously confused. Sometimes it helps to get some professional insight, and sometimes I need to be told the obvious.

They accept only unpublished work, and since they are an online publisher that includes your story sharing website or blog. There is a lesson here. Throw your work past your friends and acquaintances until something strikes a note, even go ahead and throw shit at publishers until something sticks, but please don't just throw a few chunks online for free expecting fame or even feedback. If you want help you have to give something, even if that something is just trust. If you trust a few people to judge your work they will take it seriously and help you (maybe.) But showing work to just anybody is a lot like showing it to nobody at all. Now, giving stories away is the entire driving force within webcomics, which I love and respect with the occasional strong exception. However, giving it away is something that works when you make it work, not something that runs by itself.

They are a website, but also a mailing list. Sometimes I do like to know what business model the publisher is using even though it doesn't change the color of their money. This may be a part of my web 2.0 "participating in something" delusion. The nature/business model of the publication is this: they email the stories to their list, allowing people to read short fiction without navigating to short fiction websites which are more obviously not work. This is not how Every Day Fiction explains their venture, but it's how I prefer to see it. Maybe the model is just meant to give people small amounts of prose at regular intervals, because only using a website which would archive large amounts might intimidate people who don't feel they have time to be big readers. But it's also true that a downside to a website or an RSS feed is that when you check those at work, it is obvious you are not working, and if you read an email at work, it appears that you are.

So they pay you a dollar for first serial rights. I cannot explain the world of publishing, it is not my expertise. My understanding of it is this: writers give away the first serial rights to their stories for nothing or next to nothing, but later the rights revert back to the author, who can make a book of short stories and sell them, including versions of stories that were rejected from those places. This is what I infer from reading collections of short stories--often every third story has a note saying that this or that journal originally ran that story.

A veteran (by which I mean old person) writer told me that no news is good news, by which he means the longer it takes to hear back from a publisher, the less they hate what you sent them. This has less to do with EDF and more to do with everything else on this blog, but I've had to start a spreadsheet of creative work, how long it is, and what publishers have seen it. This has less to do with how prolific I am and more to do with how forgetful I am. Generally I will hear back from a publisher around the time I completely forget what they publish and what I sent them. If the idea that no news is good news is true, I wonder, are my stories getting that much better or is this blog just getting harder to do?