Submission Guidelines
Submission Guidelines
We would love to read your story, but here are some things you should know first.
Razzle Dazzle Cafe is an audio zine seeking to give voice to good stories. We publish all our stories on YouTube, so we strongly encourage you to subscribe to the channel. This helps the stories reach a wider audience and it also helps us reach our goal of monetizing the channel so that we can eventually pay authors! We also recommend subscribing to this substack to get the latest updates by email, including when we publish new stories:
What we are looking for
We are looking for good stories independent of genre or style, but we have a soft spot for dark fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror and humor. If you have a story that mixes some of these genres, even better!
Writing
We are looking for good writing. And, we made a video that should help you find your voice in writing! Feel free to give it a watch:
Length
We accept short stories between 1,000 and 2,000 words. That’s not a super strict word count, and it’s ok if your story has slightly fewer or more words than this.
Reprints?
We accept reprints, as long as you have the rights to the work. When submitting let us know if the work was published somewhere else previously.
How about AI?
We hate AI. That’s our line in the sand. We want to support art made by humans. Don’t send us AI-generated work, or work that was AI-assisted in any way (using AI prompts for story ideas, using AI to help with style, or any other AI usage).
Simultaneous and multiple submissions
We are okay with simultaneous submissions, but if you get accepted elsewhere, please let us know.
About multiple submissions: we only accept one story per submission.
What we are NOT looking for
Erotica
Explicit sex
Too much profanity — keep profanity to a minimum.
Young Adult
Fan-fiction
Stories where the main character is an animal
Stories where everything is nothing but a dream
Anything with gratuitous violence and/or gore. If violence/gore is for shocking value rather than forwarding the larger themes of your story, it’s probably not for us.
No hate speech.
Anything overly sad, :( we already have too many bills to pay and problems to solve. We don’t want to see a character suffering only for the sake of suffering.
How to submit
We accept one story per submission. You can send your story to the email rdcafezine[at]gmail[dot]com. On the subject field put “Submission / Genre / Shortened Story Title”. Include in the body of your email:
the full title of your story
your name and/or pen name
word count
a brief one-line description of your story (don’t summarize it, we want to be surprised)
a short author’s bio, and optionally a site or other platform where people can find more of your work.
If the story you’re submitting is a reprint, let us know.
Formatting: Send your submission as a .docx, .doc, or .pdf attachment. Your document should be formatted in Arial or Times New Roman, size 12pt, and color black.
Make sure to proofread your story! It’s okay if an error or two slips in, but try to get as many as you can before sending it! It’s a little hard to read a story with a lot of typos.
Submission Process
After receiving your story we will contact you as soon as possible. Upon acceptance, your story will transform into audio and will be posted on our YouTube channel along with a charming custom cover.
Since audio can be quite different than the written word, we may ask if we can change a word or phrase if necessary.
Rights
You retain copyright to your work. If your work is accepted, we will ask you to grant us non-exclusive archival rights and rights to reproduce your work in audio form on our YouTube channel and our other platforms, including Substack.
Payment
We currently can’t pay authors, but we really want to in the future. For now, what we can offer is a friendly platform to share your work and reach more people.