Submissions

Will This Be A Problem?: The Magazine re-opens for submissions on February 15th 2025.

While we occasionally put out submission calls for specific projects, such as our anthologies and magazines, which may have different qualifiers, below are the general submission guidelines. Please read them twice over before submitting!

FICTION SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Your story can be speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy or horror. Genre-mashing is completely fine, however your work must contain strong elements of one of these genres. We strongly encourage character-driven narratives and rich worldbuilding tied together with heavy African influences. 

We only accept submissions from African writers who are 18 years and above. We define an African writer as:-

  • someone born in Africa,
  • someone whose parents (at least one) are African,
  • a Black person in the African diaspora.

We particularly welcome submissions from women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, people living with disabilities, and members from other underrepresented and marginalised communities. 

We only care about the quality of the writing, storytelling ability, plot and ideas, not whether you are new or established. Only send us work you are proud of; if you don’t like it, our readers won’t. If you’re not sure if your story is suitable, don’t query; please just submit it and let our editors decide.

Most publications encourage potential readers to read their previous works to get a sense of what they like. Will This Be A Problem? encourages potential writers to peruse our back issues to find what we haven’t featured and introduce us to concepts and worlds we’ve never seen before.

Our preferred length is between 2500 and 5500 words. However, this is just a baseline; if the story is strong enough, it can be longer or shorter. Flash fiction is also welcome, up to 1,500 words.

We are open to receiving stories around many themes, but we will immediately reject stories that feature any of the following:

  • Graphic depictions of rape or sexual assault. (If there are sex scenes within your story, the sex must be consensual, and it must also be tastefully written. We will not publish smut.)
  • Needless brutalization of women, queer people and children.
  • Extreme gore.
  • Depictions of brutalization or abuse of people with (physical and mental) disabilities.
  • Graphic abuse of animals.
  • Themes of necrophilia, paedophilia and other extreme taboo topics.
  • Casual, benevolent or blatant misogyny, bigotry, racism, or any form of decontextualized insensitivity.

We will not consider any of the following:

  • Stories above 10,000 words, including serialized novels or novellas.
  • Partial or incomplete stories. Please don’t send us part of a story and ask us to request the rest if interested.
  • Multiple submissions from the same author.
  • Work that has previously been published.
  • Poetry, non-fiction, scripts, screenplays, fan-fiction and reprints, including anything posted on the internet and blogs.
  • Stories written, co-written, created, script-doctored, world-built by or in any way assisted by AI and language learning machines such as ChatGPT or DeepSeek. (While we have yet to write our own official stance on the matter, Nicholas Cage’s recent comments on AI and the human condition are a good indicator on where we stand.)

Regarding simultaneous submissions: For the magazine issues, we do allow simultaneous submissions, but you must clearly indicate this in the email when submitting, and immediately withdraw the story from consideration if accepted by another publication. We do not accept simultaneous submissions for the anthology issues.

Send your work to willthisbeaproblem@gmail.com as a single Word (doc, docx, odt. or rtf.) document. PDF’s are not allowed. Do not send it in the body of the email. The subject heading should be: WTBAP? Magazine Submission by Your Name. The document should be named: The Story Title – Your Name – Your Country.

Attach a short bio about yourself (100 – 150 words), what country you’re from, your pronouns and what name you would like the work to be published under. If this is your first short story or would-be publication, let us know!

Submissions should primarily be in English, though pieces of dialogue and the text may contain other languages.

BOOK REVIEW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Starting February 15th, 2025, Will This Be A Problem? will be accepting book reviews.

We seek thoughtful, insightful, and well-written reviews of worthy African speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and horror books. Reviewers must also be African. Book reviews should primarily be in English; if you include another language, please provide a glossary for the editors.

Please email our Editor-In-Chief beforehand if you are interested in reviewing a specific title at okidula@willthisbeaproblem.com with the subject line: Book Review Query—Book Title by Author’s Name. (Book review queries sent to the main email will be disregarded.)

A query should:

  • outline your proposed piece: a 200 – 300 word pitch, explaining why the book will be of interest to readers of Will This Be A Problem?;
  • give a time frame in which you would be able to complete the book review;
  • include a statement confirming that writing your pitch did not involve the use of LLM/AI, and that if accepted your review will likewise not use LLM/AI.

We strongly encourage reviews of short-story collections, hidden gems or under-recognised titles. Extra consideration will be given to books written by African women, members of the LGBQTIA+ community, people living with disabilities and underrepresented and marginalised communities.

We are neither interested in effusive praise nor unnecessarily brutal takedowns; book review submissions should offer a lucid evaluation of the work’s themes, story, and impact. Reviewers should be constructive and collegial in their reviews while being specific and detailed about their criticisms of the book, giving examples where possible to illustrate their points. Criticisms in the review should focus on the book, not the author.

Reviewers should avoid recounting the plot chapter by chapter or providing a basic plot summary. Instead, we encourage reviewers to express their opinions and craft reviews that give readers a clear sense of the book’s strengths, weaknesses, and contributions to African speculative fiction and fantasy. The review should not only treat the book’s content critically but also give a good sense of what the book is about. Reviews should also be accessible to any reader of literature; if your review is rife with academic jargon, it’s probably not what we’re looking for.

While we recognise that the AfroSFFH community is tightly-knit, reviewers of books should be at arm’s length to the author whose work they are reviewing so that the conditions for an impartial review might be optimised. A potential review author should not be writing a review if they are a close friend, editor, advisor, or colleague of the author. While you may have met the author at an event or are perhaps even an acquaintance, you should not have a relationship with the author that will compromise your ability to praise or criticise the work objectively.

We are currently not reviewing self-published books. Given the burgeoning self-publishing industry in Africa, this will be subject to change in the near future.

We prefer reviews of 1000 to 2500 words, although we have no upper word limit.

SOME QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

  • What can you infer about the audience and their level of familiarity? What background information will readers need to understand the book’s themes and the author’s perspective?
  • How does this book contribute to the genre or to the author’s body of work? How might it fit into the larger context of other works or trends in the genre they are writing in?
  • What themes stand out in this particular work and how do they relate/fit in to the current zeitgeist? Are there any works by other African authors that display similar themes?
  • What additional references (such as other critics, reviews, authors etc) could help deepen your review and shed light on this book?
  • Why did you choose to review this specific book? What sets it apart?
  • Are there potential issues (like overused tropes or themes) that readers might encounter? Are they worth dismissing or acknowledging?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

FIRST ROUND OF EDITS

The WTBAP? First Readers will read the piece in its entirety, then provide an initial recommendation of the work’s potential. Our editorial assistant will review each submission, considering the readers’ feedback, before finalising their decision. Writers whose work does not make it past the first round will receive rejections.

SECOND ROUND OF EDITS

Submissions selected for further consideration will be shared with the entire editorial team. All editors will read and review the pieces in this longlist, then collectively discuss and make decisions on each piece.

The writer will then receive a notification from us, usually one of the following:

  • A rejection accompanied by encouragement to submit future works
  • A request to revise and resubmit, typically with detailed feedback provided in the email
  • A provisional acceptance, contingent upon specific edits and/or additions
  • An acceptance, possibly with minor suggestions for edits

EDITORIAL & PUBLICATION PROCESS

If your piece is accepted, we will contact you 30 to 45 days after the submission deadline via email to confirm your interest in being published. Please do not email us with inquiries before this time window closes!

Once the writer has formally accepted our offer of publication, we provide an overview of the publication process, which includes a short editorial process. All works selected will undergo editing, copywriting, and proofreading as necessary. Once we’re done, we’ll be able to provide a contract for you to sign.

PAYMENT

There is NO submission fee.

We pay KES 1 per word up to a maximum of KES 5,000 (or the dollar equivalent of the same for non-Kenyan citizens) for each story we publish in the magazine. Anthology rates will be announced during the call-out period. For book reviews, we pay a flat rate of KES 3,000 (or the dollar equivalent of the same for writers outside of Kenya.)

Money will be paid via M-PESA or Airtel Money (for Kenyan writers), and in order of preference: M-PESA (for writers in Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, Bangladesh and Pakistan) MoneyGram, Western Union or PayPal for writers outside of Kenya.

Disclaimer for international writers: If the above options are not viable, we will do a direct bank transfer but only as a last resort.

Payment will be before or on publication.

If any of these guidelines are unclear, please feel free to ask us on Twitter or BlueSky!

All the best!