Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine publishes all kinds of mystery short stories. The preferred length of their stories is 2,500 to 8,000 words. However, they sometimes use stories of up to 12,000 words and feature one or two short novels (of up to 20,000 words) every year. They also consider shorter stories that are as little as 250 words. According to their guidelines, they pay 5 to 8 cents per word and at times more to established writers. To find out more, read their writer's guidelines.

Updates & Calls

Monday, March 28th 2022

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is accepting submissions

They publish mystery fiction. “We publish every kind of mystery short story: the psychological suspense tale, the deductive puzzle, the private eye case—the gamut of crime and detection from the realistic (including the policeman's lot and stories of police procedure) to the more imaginative (including "locked rooms" and "impossible crimes"). We need hard-boiled stories as well as "cozies," but we are not interested in explicit sex or violence. ... We are especially happy to review first stories by authors who have never before published fiction professionally. First-story submissions should be addressed to EQMM's Department of First Stories.” They prefer stories in the 2,500-8,000 word range, and occasionally publish novella-length work. Pay is $0.05-0.08/word, and submissions are ongoing. Details here.