In the Mood Magazine bills itself as a “Pop Culture Journal about the Things We Like to Watch.” Their focus as a publication, is on the viewer, and their preoccupations. This is one example they give to try to make it clear what they are interested in learning about: “Why can’t we stop thinking about the exact shade of pink of Suki’s car in 2 Fast 2 Furious?” They want writers to share their obsessions, through essays, conversations, and unconventional forms of criticism like film diaries, poetry, and comics. The pieces they publish cover TV, film, music videos, and celebrity culture.
Their website is well designed, easy to use, and all pieces are accompanied by appropriate images. They publish highly specific and engaging work, and I really encourage you to spend time with their most recent issue in order to figure out if one of your pieces is the right fit for them, because it has to fit the site as a whole as well as the theme of this month’s issue. You can see the most recent issue here.
They are currently reading for Issue 9 which is focused on the theme of Hometown. They are “looking for writing about film, TV, and pop culture related to your hometown—however you may define it. These could be films shot or set in your town, state/province, or country. Or maybe it’s a town you’ve always identified with, an invented hometown, or a hometown hero.”
The word count for features is 1,000 words, and the max for film diaries is 300 words. They offer an honorarium, but just for certain categories. They offer 30 CAD for features and 20 CAD for film diaries. They close to submissions for this theme on December 31st, 2023. They are always open to newsletter submissions. All submissions must be made via email.
Their submission guidelines are extremely helpful in part because they give you of at least one example of what they are seeking in terms of every category and genre that they publish. You can learn more here, but you have to scroll through the images on the left before you can get past the about page to the guidelines.
They are not interested in the following
– Straight up reviews
– Excessive summary
– Academic or overly-formal tone
– Flat-out pans (if something is bad, tell us why that’s interesting!)
– Pre-1970s media
– Clickbait/hot takes
Please read and carefully follow the guidelines before submitting.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2023 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
