Paying market, The Big Bad anthology, payment: $50 per story

Deadline: 31 July 2012

Send John Hartness your best short story (6,000 words max, if it has to be longer contact him first) that features a bad guy or evil character as the protagonist. It can be fantasy, urban fantasy, superhero, horror, whatever. Just send your best bad guy story. 20 stories will be selected.

Payment is $50 for one year’s exclusive electronic and print rights plus two contributor’s copies. After that we retain rights to publish electronically in the anthology only, and in print in this anthology only, but you can take it and sell it somewhere else, or sell it yourself as a standalone.

From johnhartness.com:

1) I will not start reading until the submission period closes. I have limited space and limited money to pay for stories, and I don’t want to run out of acceptances before July 31.

2) While nothing is off limits, there are things that I as an editor and publisher will not publish. I will not publish work that glorifies racism or race/gender/creed/religion/sexual-preference-based crime. You can have characters that are racist, sexist, homophobe, whatever. They are supposed to be evil. But if the tone of the piece is “INSERT CLASS OF PERSON HERE deserved it because they are a member of that class” then it probably won’t get bought for this anthology. I do not want this book to promote hate in any way. Just to celebrate and embrace the bad guy. Or question what is bad. If you think it’s over the line, let me know. If I have time, I’ll read it early and tell you if it’s over the line. Then I promise to re-read it when I’m doing my selections.

3) I will take flash pieces, but I cannot pay the full amount for flash. I will pay $20 for pieces under 2,000 words. Sorry, I have a budget. And I have a number of pages that I need to fill. That means if I take short pieces, I can’t pay as much for them.

4) No, there is not an age limit. If you can write, you can submit.

5) No, there is no need for an agent.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For inquiries: johnhartness@gmail.com

For submissions: e-mail submissions to johnhartness@gmail.com as a .doc or .txt attachment and include a brief author’s bio.

Website: http://johnhartness.com