Fireside is a short story magazine that has two goals in mind: Publish great stories, and pay writers well. They pay above normal rates for their category of magazine: 12.5 cents per word, up to 4,000 words.

They aim to publish 10,000 new words of fiction each month – paying writers for every word published. They do have a strong preference for stories that are 1,000 words or shorter, because of their limit of 10,000 words a month. A longer story must be quite strong in order to be accepted. They previously accepted stories up to 5,000 words in length. They have changed their policy to just 4,000 words, capping the maximum pay at $500.

They are currently accepting submissions of Flash Fiction until March 25th. On April 16th, they will accept short stories and flash fiction.

According to their submission guidelines:

“Fireside’s goal is to publish great storytelling, regardless of genre. What do we mean by great storytelling? We want stories that go somewhere, with plot and a beginning, middle, and end. We’re not looking for character studies or metafiction or hallucinatory visions. (We LIKE those things; it’s just not what we publish in Fireside.)”

To get a sense of what they publish, browse their back issues.

To learn more about submitting, read their submission guidelines.