Midwest Literary Magazine

Submission Guidelines

Please read the guidelines below. (We recently changed our guidelines 03/31/11. Read the changes here.)

By submitting to MLM, you are granting permission for MLM to publish your submission electronically and in an anthology.

You may reprint your work, sell it, or otherwise continue to benefit from your work however, you must include an acknowledgement.

Generally our email notification system works well, however, occasionally our automatic notifications are mistaken as spam, or may be inexplicably delayed etc. For this reason, it is your responsibility to check on the status of your submission.

Simultaneous submissions are fine. You can withdraw using the submission manger at any time prior to being accepted.

Do we pay you money? Not usually. We are listed at Duotrope as "Pays Occasionally." We do select several writers each issue to receive a small cash award. We do not have paperback copies of our monthly journal to provide as a contributor copy. Our magazine itself is an online magazine. When writers ask if they can have a contributor copy, we would send one if we had them but we just don't print such a thing. The magazine itself is free and available online.

We do print anthologies after the works appear online in the magazine. An anthology is a different type of publication and we do not mail them out for free. Why not? Imagine your favorite literary journal mailing everyone who participated 5 courtesy copies of the journal. You would be very surprised. Journals could never support those expenses. Our anthologies represent multiple issues of our magazine. It's just too expensive to do. We do keep the prices low for a small press (about $20 for a large book). However, if you are a contributor who intends to buy an anthology, we will always give you a token payment in the form of a coupon to help knock the price down for you. Just ask.

As it is, we do give our monthly online magazine away for free by printing it online publically. We do not charge reading fees or otherwise solicit any money to support the monthly magazine. We do not sell subscriptions or archive our magazines in a membership area. It truly is free.

We do NOT charge to accept your work. Submissions to MLM are free. We accept a limited number of works each month. Please consider donating if you enjoy the services we offer.

We prefer to read as blindly as possible. For this reason, your bio is hidden from our staff until your submission is approved. Please join our website and publish your bio or other information in your profile.

Our readers will regularly visit your profile to learn more about you. Feel free to use your profile to promote yourself. You may link to other (non-adult) sites. Of course, it’s free.

Midwest Literary Magazine is accepting manuscripts. See the link for "Publishing" on our website.

Only 5 short stories or poems per month. Separate your writing, 1 per submission.

Good Luck!