Looking for a Terrific Paying Market for Humor and Cartoons?
Check out The Funny Times
Medium humorists and cartoonists have been getting financially flattened by the platform’s new payment metric.
Many of us are responding by seeking paying markets outside of Medium. Our goal? Publish and get paid for our work elsewhere before we post it here.
Introducing — The Funny Times!
One such market is The Funny Times, a print magazine with a circulation of 70,000 that has published nothing but humor since 1985. They’ve been running my own work for almost that long and I can report that they are a pleasure to work with.
The Funny Times pays $75 for written humor and $30 — $50 for each cartoon, plus a free subscription to the magazine.
Best of all? They use reprints!
You can send them originals before you post them on Medium — but they’ll be just as happy to run something hilarious after you’ve posted it on Medium.
And? They only purchase the one-time, non-exclusive right to publish. You retain copyright to the work and are free to publish it elsewhere.
What Are They Looking For?
Here’s what their guidelines say:
Our print publication pokes fun at politics, news, relationships, food, technology, pets, work, death, environmental issues, business, religion (yes, even religion) and the human condition in general. Not much is off limits, so do your best to make us laugh. Plus we’re advertising free, so whatever we like, we use.
I can add that they tend to be progressive and forward-thinking. For instance? They were running LGBTQ humor long before most other humor venues were doing so, and they don’t run racist, misogynistic or body-shaming humor.
The Funny Times (unlike Medium) doesn’t require that you provide an illustration to accompany your written work. Instead, they use written humor to “anchor” a page of cartoons on a particular topic. (So that page full of cartoons serves as your “illustration.”)
How Should You Submit Your Work?
They don’t respond to pitches — just submit your top 5–10 cartoons or 3–5 stories, along with a brief description of where you’ve been published before. (And if you’ve only been published on Medium, that’s fine too. The only thing that matters to them is whether your work is funny.)
Stories and humor pieces should be about 500–700 words.
Cartoons should be hard-copy printouts of high-res images (Not originals!) They run both single and multi-panel formats, color and black & white.
Their Submission Process is Very Simple
Submit your work to [email protected]
Even if they like your work, they may not run it for months. And you may not hear from them until they actually decide to use it.
But? You’re free to publish it elsewhere while you’re waiting for their acceptance/rejection/publication/feedback.
The FT pays, by check, upon publication (not acceptance). And there’s no need to invoice them. A copy of the issue your work is in will turn up in your mailbox — and shortly after that, so will a check!)
Good luck! Several Medium Humorists are already Funny Times regulars. (I’m looking at you, Andrew Knott.)
Please join us! Maybe we’ll all end up in the same issue.
Writing Coach Roz Warren, who writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, can help you improve and publish your work. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)
