All About Our Short Story Word Counts
Here’s everything you need to know about the short story word counts we publish in our regular “The People’s Friend” publications.
Whether you’ve had hundreds of short stories published by us or you’re just starting out, we thought this would be a useful refresher and guide.
What are the short story word counts you will accept for the weekly issues?
We publish 1200, 1800, 2000 and 3000-word stories in the weekly issues.
Are the story lengths the same for the Special?
No! For the Specials, we accept 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 3500 and 4000-word stories.
In every other Special, we publish a long read of 10,000 words.
Does the word count have to be exact?
No. We allow a 10% wiggle room on all short story lengths. For example, a 3000-word story can be anywhere from 2700 words up to 3300.
Do you publish longer fiction?
We publish two serials in our weekly issues. Serials are 5000 words per instalment and a serial can run between three to eight instalments. In total, a complete serial amounts to 15,000-40,000 words. If you’re interested in writing a serial for us, please see Fiction Ed Lucy’s guidance.
Our series, which we also publish in the weekly issues, are 800 words per instalment and they run for 30 episodes. That brings the total word count to 24,000.
We also publish pocket novels every two weeks. The word count for these is 37,000-39,000 words.
Do you publish flash fiction?
We do not publish flash fiction. The shortest story length we publish is 1000 words. We do allow 10% wiggle room, so the absolute minimum we could publish is 900 words. We will not accept any stories below this word count.
What length of story do you publish the most of?
We publish 2000 and 3000-word stories more than any other length. You may find that these story submissions will be read more quickly than a 1200-word story for that reason.
What is the total breakdown of story lengths you publish?
Only including our regular weekly, Special and Annual publications, the breakdown is:
Weekly – 1 x 1200, 3 x 1800, 1 x 2000 and 2 x 3000-word stories.
Special – 2 x 1000, 1 x 1500, 8 x 2000, 2 x 2500, 5 x 3000, 1 x 3500 and 1 x 4000-word stories. In addition, we publish one 10,000-word story in every other Special issue.
Annual – 1 x 1000, 1 x 1200, 2 x 1500, 2 x 1600, 1 x 1700, 2 x 1900, 6 x 2000, 2 x 2200, 1 x 2400, 1 x 2800, 2 x 3000, 1 x 3300, 1 x 3500, 1 x 4000 and 1 x 4200-word stories.
That means that, on average, per year, we publish:
- 192 x 2000
- 187 x 3000
- 150 x 1800
- 51 x 1200
- 35 x 1000
- 34 x 2500
- 19 x 1500
- 18 x 3500
- 18 x 4000
- 8 x 10,000
- 2 x 1600
- 2 x 1900
- 2 x 2200
- 1 x 1700
- 1 x 2400
- 1 x 2800
- 1 x 3300
- 1 x 4200
Please read our fiction submission guidelines before submitting your story. Good luck!
