Are you a writer who wants to write a crime fiction novel? This guide will help you to get started.
If you’re an author who writes crime fiction short stories and are in need of a publisher, this post is especially for you.
Continue reading to learn about 17 top crime fiction short story publishers.
1. The First Line
Headquartered in Piano, Texas, The First Line is a literary magazine with print and digital versions. David LaBounty has been the editor since its first publication year in 1999. Budding writers love checking The First Line because of its unique creative push: For every issue, all short stories begin with the same line.
The First Line accepts all genres for fiction submissions, which generally range from 300 to 5,000 words. Writers can also send multiple entries for each issue. Stories such as Brian Shaw’s Harriet’s Eidolon and Vernon McDonald’s Message Received were featured in the Summer 2023 issue.
Interestingly, the magazine provides the required first lines for all four seasons of the year. This helps writers to prepare for later issues — or craft more ambitious stories spanning four to five parts. If your short story submission is accepted, The First Line will pay you between $25 and $50.
2. Vautrin
Based in Wichita, Kansas, Todd Robins is the editor of Vautrin and Vautrin.pub. The former is a literary magazine while the latter is its digital outlet. Apart from exceptional fiction reads, Vautrin hosts a wide assortment of photography, essays, poems, and book reviews.
In general, the literary magazine is interested in the following genres: satire, crime, mystery, and urban fiction. The Fall 2023 edition included short stories Murder Ballad (James D.F. Hannah) and Back to Hell House (Nick Kolakowski).
Writers can only send one story at a time and it should be 7,500 words long at most. You can earn $55 or $100 for your accepted entry. The pay depends on whether your writing is below or above 2,500 words. However, Vautrin has yet to reopen its submission window at the moment.
3. Guilty Crime Story Magazine
Another noteworthy option for writers of short stories is Guilty Crime Story Magazine. Since 2021, the magazine—available digitally and physically—has launched one issue after another, thanks to editor and publisher Brandon Barrows from Colchester, Vermont.
As an acclaimed author of crime fiction himself, Brandon hopes that Guilty Crime Story Magazine can help modern readers experience classic noir in bite-sized pieces. The Spring 2023 edition was dedicated to detective stories. Meanwhile, Issue #9 had short stories Bassoon Trouble (Susan Kuchinskas) and A Ring for Rosie (M.E. Proctor).
Print issues feature original crime fiction ranging from 3,500 to 5,000 words each. Guilty Crime Story Magazine pays $10 for every accepted story. However, it currently isn’t open to submissions for print issues. You can submit flash fiction to be posted on the Guilty website, but you won’t get any payment.
4. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
Established in the 1940s, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in Norwalk, Connecticut is widely regarded as the best magazine by fans and writers alike of mystery and crime fiction. It is the recipient of well over a hundred accolades. Plus, it has been graced by iconic literary figures Stephen King and Agatha Christie.
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine is distributed in print and online. The stories vary in their subgenre and use of crime and mystery elements. Some are cozy mysteries while others are wildly suspenseful and full of unusual crimes. The January/February 2024 issue, for example, boasts Qinwen Sun’s Sacrifice in White and C.H. Hung’s The Quebecois Quotient.
Magazine entries typically have between 2,500 and 8,000 words. Writers are paid from 5 to 8¢ per word — and this rate can increase depending on your stature in the literary industry. Do check the submission guidelines for more information.
5. Pan Macmillan Australia
Moving Down Under, Pan Macmillan Australia is headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales. It is home to several imprints and publishes fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages. As Australia’s biggest book publisher, it aims to discover the best writing from local authors while bringing international titles to the country.
As you might expect, this prominent publisher only prints short story collections instead of individual pieces — and they are all worthy of recognition. A couple of its most popular crime fiction short story collections are Peter James’s A Twist of the Knife and Ann Cleeves’s award-winning Offshore.
Pan Macmillan Australia is open to fiction submissions, particularly in genres like crime, suspense, and historical fiction. Read the guidelines carefully and browse the portfolio to see what the team is looking for.
6. Mystery Tribune
Located in New York City, Mystery Tribune is an esteemed literary magazine with not only flash fiction and short fiction but also comics, essays, and art & photography in print and digital editions. At present, Ehsan Ehsani serves as the managing editor.
Mystery Tribune specializes in mystery and suspense fiction. It is also host to related themes and genres like thrillers, crime fiction, noir fiction, and horror. Furthermore, short stories in print magazine issues usually range from 3,000 to 6,000 words.
If you want to get paid for your short story, you should submit it for publication in the print edition of Mystery Tribune. Payment for accepted submissions depends on the author’s professional background and any past experiences with the magazine.
7. Rock and a Hard Place Magazine
Established by New Jersey-based author Roger Nokes, Rock and a Hard Place Press is a humble publisher of its eponymous print and digital literary magazine. Its founding members include Jay Butkowski and the late Jonathan Elliott.
The magazine is dedicated to short stories about ordinary people pushed to the extremes whether in the political, social, psychological, or economic sense. As it celebrated its 10th issue in the Summer of 2023, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine featured the works of prolific crime fiction authors like Heidi Hunter and Nolan Knight.
Are you eager to send your work? Rock and a Hard Place Magazine is looking for short stories ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words and will pay $35 for each accepted submission.
8. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Penny Publications is home to not one but two historic and widely influential magazines in mystery fiction. Aside from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the publisher in Norwalk, Connecticut, handles Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Established in 1956, this print and digital magazine has published many acclaimed short stories about crime and mystery — and the list gets bigger every year. In 2022, stories like Elliot Sweeney’s Bad Actor and Gregory Fallis’s Red Flag garnered much critical praise.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine accepts unsolicited submissions of any mystery fiction as long as it involves a crime in one way or another. Furthermore, it prefers short stories with 12,000 words at most.
9. Text Publishing
Based in Melbourne, Australia, Text Publishing is an award-winning and independent book publisher of fiction and nonfiction. It caters to readers of all ages and publishes both literary and mass-market titles.
Text Publishing has dozens of short story collections and more than a hundred books in the thriller and crime fiction genres. In particular, it has Peter Temple’s The Red Hand, a fascinating work that combines fiction (short stories) and nonfiction (essays) to celebrate and highlight one of crime fiction’s renowned figures.
Interested writers should be from Australia or New Zealand. Likewise, the required length for fiction manuscripts depends on the target demographic. However, Text Publishing is closed to submissions at the moment.
10. Mystery Magazine
Headquartered in London, Ontario, Mystery Magazine is one of Canada’s most reliable literary sources of crime fiction short stories — and this has been the case since 2015! More than 80 issues of the magazine can be bought in paperback format while the newest releases can be instantly viewed online.
Crime fiction is as diverse as it can be in Mystery Magazine. You can find hardboiled fiction, detective fiction, cozy mysteries, and even short stories with supernatural elements. In the February 2024 issue, you’ll see brilliant stories like John H. Dromey’s A Chicken-Fried Mistake and acclaimed author Robert Lopresti’s Slow News Day.
Mystery Magazine offers a more flexible word count than most entries on the list. Original short stories can be between 1,000 and 7,500 words. Accepted submissions will earn you $0.02 per word and will be eligible for publication in print, online, and audio formats.
11. Stone’s Throw
If your crime fiction story is shorter than what is usually required for New Jersey’s Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, try its companion magazine Stone’s Throw. Instead of publishing paperback and digital issues several times a year, it operates as a digital magazine. At the end of the year, all 12 entries are collected in an anthology available in print and online versions.
Stone’s Throw is somewhat similar to The First Line: There is a unique prompt for every month upon which the short stories are evaluated. Thus, the magazine serves as a creative challenge for authors wondering what to write — and every genre is welcome. Recently, Stone’s Throw chose Sally Milliken’s Canary in the Coal Mine and M.E. Proctor’s Deer Tracks as its monthly picks.
Submissions to Stone’s Throw are allowed for the first week of every month. Stories should be around 1,000 to 2,000 words. You get $25 if your short story is chosen. For a list of all monthly prompts, go to the submissions page.
12. Shotgun Honey
In 2011, the Chicago-based Kent Gowran launched his own webzine and dared budding writers to send in their flash fiction projects. Known as Shotgun Honey, the online platform’s community of readers and authors has since expanded beyond the US.
The digital magazine has already published more than a thousand pieces of flash fiction spread across three main categories: crime fiction, noir fiction, and hardboiled fiction. Stories such as Caleb Coy’s Pale Horse Coming to Shane Joaquin Jimenez’s Victims are well worth the read on Shotgun Honey.
Each crime fiction short story should have a maximum word count of 700 words. If your work is selected, you’ll earn $15. As of writing, Shotgun Honey is open to submissions.
13. Flash Frog
Situated in San Francisco, California, Eric Scot Tyron is the head of Flash Frog, which likely got its name because he owns tiny, vibrant, and poisonous frogs. A digital-only magazine for flash fiction, Flash Frog complements each incredibly short story with a gorgeous one-of-a-kind illustration to entice readers.
Flash Frog isn’t exclusive to any genre. Instead of merely meeting word count, each story should highlight the writer’s talent in pacing, characterization, and use of language. Joyce Bingham’s The Others Are Here and Tom Walsh’s Last Call are great examples.
Aside from January and July, Flash Frog is open throughout the year to submissions of original flash fiction. Published works will earn you $25 each, but you can only have one published entry every six months.
14. Pulp Literature Press
Situated in Vancouver, Canada, Pulp Literature Press was founded by Jennifer Lendels, Mel Anastasiou, and Susan Pieters. They find beauty in both literary fiction and genre fiction, arguing that the two need not be exclusive from one another. Interestingly, the magazine’s compact size and affordable price are inspired by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
Despite its name, Pulp Literature Press isn’t limited to action-packed, violent stories. The team welcomes everything from crime fiction to thrilling mysteries and LGBTQ+ romance. In the 41st issue, the magazine included JM Landels’s The Golden Bull and Chip Houser’s Separate Worlds.
The team pays between $0.05 and $0.08 per word for short stories not exceeding 5,000 words — and such projects are likelier to be published in the magazine than longer short fiction. Still, Pulp Literature Press has not reopened its submission window for short stories.
15. Little, Brown Book Group
A multi-award-winning UK publisher, the London-based Little, Brown Book Group has a rich history that began in the early 19th century. Today, the company has more than 150 employees and 13 imprints like Corsair and Virago.
Crime fiction writers should check its Sphere imprint, which handles various genres of commercial fiction such as thrillers and crime. In 2022, it published best-selling author Val McDermid’s Christmas is Murder, a collection of his short crime fiction.
Whether you aim to get published under Sphere or any other imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, you should have a literary agent to represent your work. The submissions page has helpful information about finding an agent.
16. Thriller Magazine
Thriller Magazine was established in the late 2010s to discover and highlight exciting new storytellers in suspense, thriller, and mystery fiction. Currently, the Texas-based Ammar Habib—an acclaimed writer of short fiction and full-length novels—heads the literary magazine as its editor-in-chief.
Since 2018, Thriller Magazine has launched eight issues. The second issue of Vol. 4 was released in June 2023. Available in paperback and ebook versions, it featured the likes of John Grey and Richard Cass. All issues essentially highlight thriller fiction whether it focuses on crime or horror elements.
Thriller Magazine is eager to accept short story and flash fiction submissions, both of which are eligible for the upcoming summer issue. The team pays $15 for short stories and $10 for flash fiction, the latter of which can be published online as a blog post instead.
17. Murderous Ink Press
Are you based in the UK? Considered a humble yet beloved home for independent short crime fiction, Murderous Ink Press wants readers to step out of familiar territory. From cozy mysteries to gritty noir, every subgenre of crime fiction is accepted for printing.
Its primary publication series is Crimeucopia, a print and digital collection of crime fiction loosely tied by a theme for each issue. The November 2023 issue was titled Crank It Up! and introduced writers like Ed Teja and William Kitcher. Meanwhile, stories that don’t thematically fit into a given issue can be part of a non-themed version of the anthology series.
The usual range for stories is between 2,000 and 10,000 words — and writers are paid £2 for every 1,000 words. Murderous Ink Press is open to submissions for the entirety of February and September 2024.
18. HarperCollins UK
Located in London, HarperCollins UK is one of the world’s most prominent book publishers. Each year, it prints 1,500 titles across fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature alongside nearly half that number of audiobooks.
Catering to millions of readers young and old alike with varied interests, HarperCollins UK includes crime fiction in its ever-growing portfolio. You can find The Perfect Crime, a collection of 22 short stories edited by Vaseem Khan and Maxim Jakubowski. Reginald Hill has two short story collections, Dalziel and Pascoe Hunt the Christmas Killer & Other Stories and A Candle for Christmas & Other Stories.
As you might expect, HarperCollins does not accept unsolicited submissions. Consider seeking a talented literary agent to vouch for your work.
19. Pulp Modern
Founded by Indiana-based editor-in-chief Alec Cizek in 2011, Pulp Modern is one of the longest-lasting spaces for amateur writers to test their skills in genre fiction. Over the years, it has embraced the works of over 250 writers and published their stories in quarterly and biannual paperback issues.
Pulp Modern is primarily interested in non-serialized pulp fiction and covers genres such as sci-fi, crime, fantasy, horror, and western fiction. Stories must be between 3,500 and 5,000 words, no more, no less. The most recent release was the Fall 2023 issue Die Laughing. It includes authors Nicole Bird and Sarah Cannavo.
Approved submissions will earn writers $25 each. Unfortunately, the submission window is closed at the moment with no specific date for its reopening. Check the submissions page at a later date for welcome updates.
Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of Writing Tips Oasis.