The Labletter is a beautiful print journal filled with visual art, poetry, and short fiction. It is one of my favorite journals to read because the art is carefully chosen and the journal is put together so wonderfully. They just reopened to submissions this week and will close in October. They only have one reading period per year so it is vital to submit during this window.
The Labletter has been published since 1998, so it is a very established journal, although initially it was only open to people associated with the group that published it, they started accepting submissions from the world at large in 2009.
If your work is accepted the Labletter gives you a contributors copy and they pay you 25$ per poem, or 150$ per short story or essay (up to 10,000 words). If they choose your work for publication all rights revert back to you after printing.
When you submit to the Labletter you submit to an email address, and you attach your work in as a word doc file or a pdf. Each genre has it’s own email address so check on the website before submitting.
When you submit poetry make sure you send between 4-7 poems as they are interested in seeing a variety and they often publish more then one. They like poems that work together, that have a consistent mood or theme.
Essay’s should focus on some aspect of art, for example dance, musical theater, painting, etc. Essays should be narrative in nature.
All of the work you submit to them should have never been published before, even on a personal blog.
The Labletter carefully considers work so it takes them a while to respond to submissions, usually between 3-6 months. They only accept about 1% of the work submitted to them, so if they choose to publish your work they rejected 99 other writers in order to publish you. Of course that makes it harder for work to be accepted but makes it even sweeter when it is.
In conclusion you should submit to the Labletter because they are a beautiful established and respected print journal, that only reads once a year. If you want to submit or get a feeling for the work they print visit their website at http://www.labletter.com.
