26 Top Ranked Fiction Magazines of 2023 (Open Now)
Or very very soon.
So Shel, my partner who manages our social media, has started submitting some of her poems. She came into my office (our kitchen [microwave + open cabinet = standing desk]) yesterday and said, “I finally understand why people like the Sub Club Newsletter!” (No, we’re not unpacking that). After she’d started looking for magazines she realized what a nightmare it is to find those that are open for submissions when you feel like submitting. Like, it’s bad enough that we all suffer from choice paralysis, procrastination, and imposter syndrome, but THEN we have to schedule our mental health to sync with open submission windows! ffs.
So, I decided to throw out the ‘top-ranked’ list for fiction I’d been working on and chose to only focus those that are open right now or very close to now. If you write fiction, and want to target the most prestigious magazines around, you can head over to any of their submission pages and submit to all but a few of them which open at the beginning of December. Some only accept postal submissions so watch out for that. I’ve noted those in the list. I’ve also included:
Location, description, founding date, fee & payment info, description, genres, social media presence, whether they nominate for pushcart (all do), popularity notes, direct links, and copy-pasted essential information from their guidelines pages.
“Today” for you future-folk out there is November 29th, 2023. Luckily, though, almost all of these magazines are open until at least mid-December, so if you need a little more time to coax your confidence out of that dingy corner full of childhood insecurities, you’ve got some wiggle room.
This will be our LAST ranking list based only on accolades and anthologies. Soon we will be releasing our own rankings system that takes into account several other factors to help move indie lit away from only recognizing North-American magazines with institutional backing (as fantastic as so many of those magazines are). We’ll be announcing all of this in December. Just a heads up.
This is one of our paid subscriber lists this month. Our paid subscriptions are what give us the ability to gather all of this information and maintain our database. If you have the means, you can upgrade here.
Of course, we are always happy to comp those in need, just let us know. Our next free list will be Monday (Dec. 4th).