Thank you for your interest in Young Rider. Young Rider is a small magazine at the moment, with an even smaller budget. We don’t use much freelance work, most of it is done in-house by the editor, who also designs the magazine and shoots most of the photographs.

We sometimes buy 800-1,000 word “horsey interest” type stories. Stories or events that will interest kids ALL over the country that the editor is not able to personally. We need 4 to 5 good color pictures with stories like this. The pictures must be color and tack sharp. The pay is about $200 for those types of stories.

We do buy short stories (approximately 800-1,000 words) for about $150. They have to be “realistic” stories and not too sugary sweet. We only use 4 to 5 of these a year. We get a great deal of “children overcoming the odds to win things or struggling to buy or get a horse of their own” so we don’t encourage these types of stories. We would prefer funny stories, with a bit of conflict, which will appeal to the 13-year-old age group. They should be written in the third person, and about kids. The story should have a definite plot, some sort of conflict (humorous, serious or not-so-serious) and a resolution. No “childhood memories” please.

Please do not send in features. We do like receiving queries or ideas and may commission stories. Please review a copy of the actual magazine before sending in any ideas.