Elegant Literature

Elegant Literature publishes a monthly online magazine and holds a contest based on a writing prompt. For March, the prompt is 'Write a story involving time behaving stangely, and a coin'.

Elegant Literature has two subscription levels.

Free Membership:

With free membership, you can submit work to their magazine. If selected, they will pay you ten cents a word. This is above the eight cents a word that many publications typically pay.

Monthly Paid Membership:

For $10 a month, you can also enter the monthly contest. The winner receives $3,000 and publication in the magazine. Second through tenth place receives ten cents a word and publication, 2000 words would be $200. And eleventh through thirty-fifth place receives $20.

The contest usually draws between 100 and 200 entries.

Main Rules:

1) All work must be unpublished.

This includes Vocal, Medium, Facebook, your blog, website, among others. Basically, you are writing the story for Elegant Literature and only them, until the contest concludes, and the magazine selections are made. After which time, if not selected, you regain full rights.

2) You also must be unpublished, which means you have not.

• traditionally published a novel of greater than 40,000 words,
• self-published a novel of greater than 40,000 words and sold 100+ copies,
• sold four or more works of short fiction to markets paying 8c/word or greater,
• self-published short fiction work totaling 10,000 words or more, with profits in excess of $500.
• won a fiction contest with a prize greater than $2,500.

3) Ownership right.

If they publish you in their magazine or you win the contest, they have exclusive First World Electric Rights for two months, and non-exclusive thereafter. You regain all rights after the two-month period and are free to do with the story as you wish.

4) PayPal.

To receive payment from them, you will need a PayPal account.

5) Writing prompt.

Each month, they provide a writing prompt. For example, the December prompt was “Write a story involving magic, merriment, and the color red”. You must use the prompt for both the contest and any submissions to the magazine.

6) Word count.

The word count must be a minimum of 500 words and a maximum of 2000.

7) Multiple Submissions.

Multiple submissions are allowed, but remember, until the contest ends, and winners are announced, you can publish nowhere else.

8) Winners Announced.

It takes about six weeks after the contest for the winners to be announced.

9) Judging.

In their contest rules, they list the following criteria used to judge each story.

• Creativity 25%.
• Character 25%.
• Structure and Flow 25%.
• Quality of writing (e.g. grammar, clarity, spelling) 25%.

All entries are first judged in a preliminary round, where the finalists are selected. The winning entry is then chosen by the senior judge or judges.

The head judge for the October and November contest was Max Gladstone, who has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He also provided extensive comments on the winning entry.

That summarizes how Elegant Literature chooses its magazine stories and runs its contest. With the success of Vocal’s fiction contest, we can expect to see more of this type of contest being offered. I encourage you to carefully review the material on their website before deciding to enter or submit work.

You can also freely download their magazine. This allows you to see what stories have won and are accepted for publication.

If you are interested and use the attached link, I get a small commission for paid members. While I consider this a good thing. I would rather you make an informed decision. There will be many opportunities; we must evaluate each and do what is best for ourselves.