After a highly rated independent book publisher held onto my mystery/crime novel for over six months, they finally admitted they are backed up with books and have no intention of considering any new ones for at least a year. Ya think they could have told me that six months ago? They even charged me $25 to print the novel out to share with their editors. (Maybe they don’t have internet and need paper copies???) I sent it to them despite this red flag because they were highly rated as one of the best small independent book publishers who have an excellent track record promoting their books. Some have become true best sellers. And, they accept manuscripts without an agent. I think that article I read about them was what gave them the massive increase in submissions.
Anyway, if I was in my twenties or thirties, even forties, I would just keep submitting it to agents and publishers. But I am late to the writing game and have plenty of other writing projects stuck in my head that I have to get out on paper. So, I will self publish it. It worked well enough for my first humor book.
A Floridian’s Idaho Adventure: From Oranges to Potatoes.
I am in the process of working my way through the book page by page to make one last final edit. Then off it goes.
Literary Magazines
Meanwhile, I am growing tired of the literary short story market. I write micro stories, less than 150 words, Flash fiction, less than 1,000 words and traditional short stories. While I have twenty five stories accepted and published in various publications, I have three times that rejected. The so called literary market is a jungle. You have well known, well established award winning magazines produced with a large team of editors, and then you have some guy in Madagascan sitting in his bathtub pumping out a daily or weekly magazine by himself. With WordPress and other blogging and webpage creation software out there, almost anyone can have a literary magazine website up and running in a day. So, at times, it is difficult to determine which magazine is worth sending your fiction to.
Luckily there are websites that writers can use to help with this, Duotrope and the Submission Grinder are two such sites, but there are others. You can dig a little deeper on these sites and discover a publication’s history. Especially important is their acceptance rate. If they accept 100% of the stories submitted to them, run away like your butt is on fire. In fact, they should reject more than they accept. I don’t know what the correct percentage is these days. I know so far I have not been published in the magazines where only 3% of the stories sent to them are accepted.
As a new writer, it is important to build a resume of sorts, and listing where you have been published is one way to do that. In an ideal world, as a writer improves, they should start moving up to the more selective magazines.
I imagine before the Internet when all such magazines were paper, that there were not as many as today. Paper cost money, and unless they were part of a university they probably had to sell enough copies to pay the bills. Today? As I said, someone dare me and I’ll have a website up and running in less than an hour.
There must be thousands of these magazines out there today. But not every magazine is open to a wide range of writers. Some are only open to marginalized writers, as defined by them. Some are only for young writers, some only for writers over fifty, some only for “two-spirit” writers.
As a straight, white, English speaking one-spirit male, many magazines specifically don’t want to hear my voice. So, the first thing I have to do is narrow down the publications where a racist one-spirit Nazi such as myself can submit a story. (Sarcasm there, I am really not a racist Nazi.) I guess I could tell them I have two or more spirits, as I don’t know how they verify that. But that would be dishonest.
So, I ruled out a few thousand online magazines, and sort through the rest. I have to then discover what they want in a piece of fiction, Some don’t want any curse words, or a story that promotes, or seems to promote, racism, hatred, prejudice, violence, abuse, or anything republican-like. Some publications have a list of No-Nos pages long.
After that, I have to review their style requirements. New Times Roman and 12 point font is the most common, but some want double space, and others have numerous other requirements. Some have none at all.
One last thing. I will not submit a short story to a magazine that says that 1) They will NOT notify writers if their story is rejected or 2) It will take them at least six months to respond. As mentioned above, I am not a young man and I don’t have the luxury of time. If it takes them six freaking months to respond, they need to limit their submissions by time or some other component or get more readers. Six months is ridiculous.
Sure, some accept simultaneous submissions, but why would I even bother with a six month timeline?
Oh yes, some magazines charge for submissions. It could be the price of a good cup of coffee or more. But, unless they promise a fast turnaround time and maybe a critique on your story, I pass them up.
Eventually I have a small list of publications where my fiction might be a good fit. I submit and in most cases, get rejected. So, then I have to check the story, see if I can edit it, and submit elsewhere.
I do have a collection of God stories. Call it speculative or just humor, but those will not be published by anyone. First, they are religious, so that rules out 90% of the publications. The other 10% would also probably be offended by my writing as it might not be akin to their doctrinal tastes. Religious people can be very judgemental. So, these are going to be edited and self publish on Amazon.
So, that is my complaint for today. Moving on!
– Dart