Welcome Writer,
As the #1 destination on Medium for all things humor, and think-pieces on cats, Slackjaw wouldn’t be what it is without you, High Warlock of Funny Ideas. That said, we do accept submissions from humor writers of all backgrounds and extraterrestrial lifeforms.
If you’re interested in submitting a humor piece to Slackjaw, please email slackjawsubmissions@gmail.com with a private link to your unpublished Medium draft.
Please keep in mind…
- Our pieces fall under 1,000 words. Less is better. But not too less. Most pieces are 300–800 words.
- We publish funny writing: premise-driven humor pieces, humorous essays, and a bit of short comedic fiction — if it feels right. We don’t publish fake-news/Onion-style pieces.
- We also happily publish illustrated and cartoon pieces. Here are two examples. We don’t currently publish single-panel (single-image) cartoons, as we prefer pieces with more than one illustration.
- Send us previously unpublished work.
- To get a feel for what we like, please read Slackjaw.
- New writers and current Slackjaw writers should email submissions to slackjawsubmissions@gmail.com. The submission should be a link to an unpublished, private Medium draft in your email. Attachments and pasted texts scare us!
- Our writers are welcome to submit Medium member (gated paywall) pieces. This means you get paid for your work. However, this is optional.
- One submission at a time, please. Contrary to popular belief, we aren’t multitasking robots.
- Expect a reply in one to two weeks — sometimes more, sometimes less — depending on the alignment of Earth’s rotational axis with the business hours of your local Costco.
- Topical/timely submissions: Because we are prone to occasionally living in a treehouse without a computer for a few days, 48-hour topical news cycle pieces are not the best fit for us. We love evergreen humor, though! Seasonal timely pieces (New Year’s, Halloween, Xmas, etc.) are welcome, and we adore it when you send those 3+ weeks in advance.
- As of 2021, we get around 100 submissions per week, and we accept maybe 15% of those.
If your story fits, we’ll add you as a writer and publish it.
We Boost
Slackjaw is now part of Medium’s Boost nomination program.
Every month, we nominate Slackjaw stories for extra exposure in Medium’s feed. This means more reads for the boosted story and more money for the author (if the piece is paywalled).
We’re seeing boosted Slackjaw stories get a minimum of 500 to 1,500 views, sometimes quite a bit more.
Bottom line: If you publish a piece with us, it’ll most likely be nominated for The Boost, and there’s a decent chance it’ll be boosted.
We pay writers
We believe in paying Slackjaw writers so that they can purchase coffee, groceries, extra bitcoin, and those cool bouncy balls you find in toy stores.
We pay via Medium’s partner program. Some stats:
- We commonly publish stories that earn our writers $20-$200+, per piece.
- Boosted stories often earn on the higher end.
- Our top 5 highest-earning pieces have earned their authors $6,854, $3,496, $3,001, $2,483, and $2,255. (The last time we checked this was 2021.) These were organic Medium paywall earnings, all paid directly to our authors.
We get way more submissions than we can publish. To improve your odds…
- Give your piece a clear and funny or interesting title that will make readers go, “That sounds cool! I’m clickin’, baby!”
- Good title example: “Jeff Bezos’s Lazy Saturday Morning Routine”
- We like pieces with a clear humor premise in the title and first paragraph. We’re allergic to long, unfunny preambles. We have a doctor’s note on this.
- Also, for newer writers, it wouldn’t hurt to read these: “Top 10 Short Humor Writing Mistakes,” by Alex Baia, and “Your Humor Piece Needs Way Less Explanation Than You Think It Does,” by sarah james
Farewell and prosper,
The Slackjaw Editors (and Matthew McConaughey)
