Mission Statement
The Chamber Magazine is an independently run publication provided free, i.e. at no cost/ no charge, to the reader. The Chamber Magazine is published monthly on the first Friday and contains at a minimum 40,000 words (the equivalent of a small novel) of prose/ fiction plus poetry (not included in the word count) consisting of short stories, flash fiction, and micro fiction. All forms of poetry are welcome and are published. If any story is quoted elsewhere in print or non-social media, please respect the author’s rights and give credit where credit is due. The publisher would appreciate it if you would also cite The Chamber Magazine as the source of the work.
Readers are encouraged to retweet/ re-post any stories or poems they enjoy, link back to them, or otherwise share them on any and all social media. The writers do not receive any compensation, financial or otherwise, for being published here other than the recognition they receive. Please give them the recognition they deserve. Tell all your friends and colleagues about the professional writers and high-quality material you read here.
Help keep The Chamber a free magazine by purchasing something from one of our many advertisers/ affiliates. Out of each purchase, The Chamber garners a small percentage.
The Chamber publishes “the strange and dark and beautiful” of contemporary short fiction & poetry from around the world and from all genres: mainstream, literary, science-fiction, fantasy, horror, grimdark, suspense/thriller, action-adventure, experimental, gothic, Southern gothic, neo-noir, noir, transgressive, magical realism, macabre, mystery/crime, cyberpunk, and more.
Interviews with contributing authors are also published, but irregularly. The Chamber hopes to eventually publish non-fiction articles and essays about dark fiction and poetry and its authors.
The Chamber endeavors to reach the largest possible audience worldwide, both of English-speakers and of those who speak English as a second language. Hopefully, one day all The Chamber’s contents will be in multiple languages.
Unfortunately, The Chamber is accepting submissions only in English at this time. Go to the Submissions page for details.
For now though, a gradually increasing number of pages will be offered in other languages. These will mainly be the About page and a few others giving general information on The Chamber. These will be translated using translation software available online. Stories and poems will not be translated, because the software probably will not be able to accurately translate all the nuances of the original English. A translation app is available in the upper right of each page, should you want to translate something into another language. If you prefer not to use this app, you can find free translation services online, which will translate the entire in a few minutes. With most of these, you can type the web address into the original language space, hit translate, and then follow the resulting link. These services include Google Translate, Bing Translator, Yandex Translate, and others.
However, because almost everything in The Chamber (at least currently) is in English, issues are timed to reach the maximum number of English-speakers around the globe. Issues go out not only on WordPress, but also go out automatically on LinkedIn (the publisher’s account), Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter.
New stories and poems are published in The Chamber twice on the first Friday of each month. First at 10:00 a.m. (US central time) and then at 10:00 p.m.
The majority of the US population is in the Eastern Time Zone along with the greatest number of universities and publishing houses. 11:00 a.m. (10:00 a.m. central) is when most people are theoretically finishing up their morning work and may be taking a break or an early lunch, during which they may take the opportunity to surf the Internet.
10:00 a.m. US central time is also 4:00 p.m. in Great Britain, when many people are leaving work and may have time at home to surf the Internet.
10:00 a.m. US central time is also 5:00 p.m. in Europe, again when many people are leaving work. There are a great number of English speakers in Europe.
10:00 a.m. is also 8:30 p.m. in India, which also has a great number of English speakers, who are probably chilling out at home at this time.
10:00 a.m. is also 1:00 a.m. Saturday, Australian Eastern Standard Time, which is the time zone covering most of Australia’s major cities and it is 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. in New Zealand’s two time zones. Most people will probably be asleep at these hours, but the posts will be waiting for them when they rise in the morning.
Publishing a second time at 10:00 p.m. shifts everything twelve hours, so that if a story was first published in the middle of the night in a location, the second time it is published will be in the middle of the day and the reader will see/hear the bells notifying him/her that the newest issue has arrived.
Other material is published sporadically. Any work published in The Chamber is simultaneously published on The Chamber’s Facebook page, Tumblr blog, and on the publisher’s LinkedIn account.
Please like and comment as often as possible and share their works on as many social media as you can.
Our authors’ and poets’ only pay is publication, exposure, and whatever constructive criticism and compliments you provide.
If you would like to submit your work to The Chamber, follow this link to the Submissions page.
Why is it called “The Chamber”? The words “The Chamber” invokes images of a alchemist’s or sorcerer’s chamber deep within the bowels of a castle or of a wizard’s study where ancient manuscripts containing arcane knowledge of the Black Arts lie waiting to be used for nefarious purposes. The perfect place to store, discuss, and develop terrifying philosophies and works of horror and other dark matters.
Be warned that stories published in The Chamber may contain adult language and situations and may not be suitable for people under the age of 18.
Visit The Chamber’s YouTube Channel, where you will find playlists of dark music and dark ambience and a few of our own rudimentary videos.
To review The Chamber on Google Business, use this link.
Now read some of The Chamber’s stories and poems to get to know The Chamber a little better, then slide over to spookysites.com and check out The Chamber’s rating there.
If you are curious about what type of books the publisher enjoys and his background in literature, visit The Chamber’s Goodreads account to see more, though you can also visit the publisher’s personal account for more details.
You can visit his personal blog at PhilSlattery.org.
Business Strategy
Currently, The Chamber supports itself primarily through affiliate marketing and donations. Purchasing anything through one of The Chamber’s ads earns The Chamber a small profit. The Chamber limits the products offered to those most likely to be used by someone while reading or for personal needs. Therefore, most of the merchandise proffered consists of various coffee, tea, wine, snack brands, and other personal items. The Chamber also provides opportunities to buy novels and other literature of a longer nature and occasionally various other items, usually for the home.
As mentioned on the homepage, dark literature has a worldwide appeal. This enables The Chamber, in some fashion, to reach into every literary genre around the globe.
Therefore, most of the advertisers it brings in appeal not only to the North American public, which can be expected to make up the greater part of the readership, but will ship to many other nations as well. In fact, some of our advertisers ship to dozens of countries.
To bolster that international appeal, The Chamber publishes its posts at times when they will reach the greatest number of people in the English-speaking world (see above for details). The Chamber is also gradually increasing the number of languages used in its pages and is asking writers to submit English translations of works along with the work in its original language. Why do this when a reader has only to hit the translate button in the upper right corner? Because most readers will probably Google something in their native language before switching to a secondary language.
The Chamber is always searching for new ideas and ways of increasing its global audience. This is only the beginning for a relatively new but increasingly popular magazine on the international market.
*The other nations that have visited The Chamber include: Malta, Netherlands, Germany, Nigeria, Mexico, Italy, Singapore, Philippines, France, South Africa, Spain, Bangladesh, Greece, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden Norway, Belgium, China, Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Poland, Austria, Pakistan, South Korea, Ecuador, Turkey, Jamaica, Portugal, Czechia, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, Serbia, Bulgaria, Antigua & Barbuda, Hong Kong SAR China, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Vietnam, Croatia, Ghana, Uruguay, Luxembourg, Puerto Rico, Hungary, Barbados, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Lithuania, Switzerland, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Cameroon, Slovakia, Colombia, Nepal, Chile, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, European Union, Uganda, Kuwait, Morocco, Iraq, Slovenia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Costa Rica, Rwanda, Bahamas, Venezuela, Myanmar (Burma), Estonia, Mauritius, Tanzania, U.S. Virgin Islands, Bahrain, Zambia, Iceland, Latvia, Armenia, Trinidad & Tobago, Tajikistan, Algeria, Botswana, Lebanon, Peru, Dominican Republic, Albania, Guadeloupe, Uzbekistan, Guyana, Panama, Unknown region, Palestinian Territories, Madagascar, Isle of Man, Oman, El Salvador, Kosovo, Honduras, Libya, Northern Mariana Islands, Guatemala, Guernsey, Maldives, Lesotho, American Samoa, Bolivia, Qatar, Ethiopia, Gibraltar, North Macedonia, Belarus, Liberia, Jersey, and Jordan.
