Good Places to submit my mystery short stories to

March 31, 2016 7:23 PM

So I've got a half a dozen mystery/crime short stories written and I'd like to start submitting them for publication. I know of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen and Thuglit. What other reputable magazines/e-zines are out there that you would recommend? My stories are about 3000 words long, and they've done well in local short story contests.
posted by storybored to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Relevant questions include: what genre of mystery, what sort of pay are you looking for, online submissions versus mail, how long do you want to wait to hear back.

There are other places, but The (Submission) Grinder is a free search engine for this.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:55 PM on March 31, 2016 [5 favorites]

I also came to suggest the Submission Grinder!
posted by Narrative Priorities at 7:59 PM on March 31, 2016

There are not a lot of mystery only magazines. A few that come to mind are Crimespree, Crime Factory, & Big Pulp, in addition to the more mainstream ones you mention. At the risk of stating the obvious, have you looked at Writers' Market in print at your library or online (subscription) http://www.writersmarket.com? You would be able to determine which magazines/zines might be interested in your mystery stories based on the story content. This zine resource might have some ideas, too. Some libraries have resources called Magazines for Libraries or Ulrich's Periodicals Directory are used by libraries for collection development, but both list thousands of magazines with content descriptions & other info. Search WorldCat to find libraries near you that have them.
posted by Nosey Mrs. Rat at 8:00 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Any magazine that's gotten a story into the Best American Mystery Stories yearly anthology is probably fair game. I mean, there's all these little regional and local journals I've never heard of.
posted by matildaben at 8:49 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]