Hello Potential Contributors!

Thanks for taking an interest in Dragnet Magazine. Here at Dragnet we, as a rule, believe very few things. Some of these things are:

1. That literary writing should be as fun as it is well made. Although we’re not strictly a humour magazine, as frivolous people we enjoy work with a sense of play to it.
2. That most literary fiction is far too long, so keep your unsolicited entries at a 1000 words maximum, please. If we’ve spoken to you in real life and we said it was okay for you to submit, like, a bajillion words then you can do that.
3. That poets are special flowers who thrive under grow lamps of personal attention, thus each Dragnet issue showcases the work of one (1) featured poet. To be considered, please send a suite of 3-6 poems. These can be related, semi-related, or not at all related but they look really good together like a beautiful celebrity couple. (We should also note that because Dragnet is available as an ePub e-book, we can’t accommodate fancy formatting using spaces or tabs. Poetry must be left-aligned with line breaks as the only formatting.) NOTE: Poetry submissions are temporarily closed to avoid unnecessary heartache and will be open again in fall 2013. 
4. That artistic work, regardless of the medium, should try to, in some way, at least a little, when it’s feeling up to it, push boundaries.
5. That writing is about variety. We will strive to publish work that has had some TLC put into it, regardless of content. (Bring on the porn and gratuitous violence! {maybe not at the same time though, we’re not prudes, but, still…})
6. That you should submit work via the Submittable submissions system. You must sign up for an account if you don’t have one already (many other lit journals use it), but registering is free and you won’t get any spam. In the cover letter field, you should include a 50-word biography and your complete contact information. Also, our computers start making scary noises when we receive certain file types, so please keep it in .doc, .docx, or .pdf.
7. That you shouldn’t send us query letters. They’re gross.
8. That the life of the erstwhile writer is one fraught with rejection, so feel free to send simultaneous submissions. Just tell us ASAP if your work is accepted elsewhere.
9. That magazines should be nice to the people who submit to them, so feel free to email us with questions, concerns, praise, or praise. That said, you won’t get a personalized email reply to your submission unless we have kind things to say.
10. That fun dance parties are an important part of life and also, obviously, the best way to fund free online literary magazines.
11. That contributors should be paid for their work. We pay $20 per story, and $40 for featured poetry. (Featured poets are given a larger honorarium to make up for the fact that there’s a good chance they’ll be poor pretty much forever, see also belief #3 re: specialness, flowerhood, etc.)

And, uh, that’s about it as far as beliefs go.

Also, we should note that Dragnet is not focused on detective stories like the 1930s pulp magazine of the same name (though we will publish detective stories, along with every other kind of genre fiction, as long as they have literary merit). Fundamentally, Dragnet is an online/eBook literary magazine run by people who like old television shows.

xoxo
Dragnet Magazine