Escape Pod publishes all of its stories in audio and text formats. They are a science fiction market but as they say in their submission guidelines “our mandate is fun.” They allow some flexibility to exist within the genre and they have published the occasional steampunk or superhero tale. But they are not interested in fantasy, magic realism, or stories that contain more than a tinge of horror.
They publish weekly podcasts which are always free to listen to. It is easy, and entertaining, to get a better idea about what they have published previously and what they are interested in publishing more of. Each link to the podcast on the main page contains a written typed version of the stories (there are usually two) that the podcast contains.
One of their focuses is on publishing authors from backgrounds that have been traditionally excluded from Science Fiction. This includes women, people of color, LGBQT, etc.
They publish stories between 2,000 and 6,000 words in length. Please do not submit anything longer or shorter. They pay 6 cents a word for unpublished work and a flat rate of $100 a story for reprints. They accept all submissions through the submission platform Submittable. They accept only blind submissions so please do not include any identifying information on the name of the file.
To learn more visit their website here.
