This week rather than spotlight a personal favorite shorty market, I’m using Market Monday to present a long list of magazines that favor very short fiction.
There’s no shortcut to discovering the right markets for your work. You have to search and read, search and read, search and read. I can’t help with reading, except to point to model micros and fab flashes I’ve encountered online, and highlight the good work my favorite shorty markets are publishing. But I can help with the searching.
You have to start somewhere, and my somewhere was Google, Poets & Writers, AWP’s Writer’s Chronicle, and word of mouth. Over time I pulled together a list of markets that request very short fiction in their guidelines, or run contests for very short fiction. I researched each and submitted my micros and flashes to the magazines who publish work I like and seems to fit well enough with my own.
When I discovered The Best Small Fictions 2015, I was introduced to quite a few additional publications that specialize in shorties, and I consider representation in that collection an automatic reason to give a market careful attention. The 2016 version included more.
At this point my master list is quite long, almost 100 titles. Of course my personal list, which I am forever refining, is much shorter, because I don’t submit to magazines if I don’t care for what they publish or if I think their aesthetic is so far from my own that they could never be interested in my work. You’ll discover the right markets for your own submissions by doing that reading reading reading I mentioned. Check out the magazines on my list and soon enough you’ll find your favorites.
You’ve got to start that research somewhere. If you don’t have a list already, why not start here? Good luck!
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Daily Shorty 
Market Mondays are so generous! Great idea to keep both a master list and a personal list. I’m off to explore your master list now!
Well honestly I hesitated to put such a long list up b/c it can feel overwhelming. But in the end I’ve found it very helpful to know there are so may good magazines out there looking for very short fiction, and it doesn’t feel like you’re losing anything when you eliminate a market from your personal list b/c you don’t care for the work they publish. Hopefully it’ll be helpful to you and others, we’ll see!