Your Submitting Habits

[Philip Overby]

For those of you that submit to magazines, journals, e-zines, or book publishers on a regular basis, how do you go about doing it?

I know the standard way: follow the guidelines.

But how do you stay in the habit of keeping stories in rotation? I had a story rejected a while back and for whatever reason decided, "Well, I guess that one's not good enough." I only submitted to the one place. I also have a novella I wrote years ago that I submitted two places and haven't bothered to send anywhere else. It's not because I felt like "Oh no, I got rejected. I'm never submitting again" and got depressed. I just didn't send them anywhere else for whatever reason: forgetfulness, laziness, etc.

I have a spreadsheet that I borrowed from Benjamin that I think is a great way to keep track of where submissions have gone and such, but I just wonder if anyone has any good patterns or habits that keep them constantly writing, editing, and submitting.

For now I'm not looking for book publishers at the moment, but more for short story markets.

Any tips?

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

I am not submitting stuff right now, mostly because my effort is focused either on my serial novel or short stories and novels in my fantasy series (and I'm publishing all those, including the shorts - they're not really the sort of thing most paying venues would want).

But when I do submit stuff?
Pretty much I make a list of the pro markets out there.

Then I take my story, and I examine the list of pro markets, and I cross off any for which the story would be a terrible match. Know your markets, i.e. read them.

Then I send my story to the one which pays the most. Of the ones which pay the most, I send to the market which I feel best matches the story, or one which I have some other connection with.

If it is rejected, I go to the next on the list. Then the next. And so on. If you go through all the pro markets (5 cents a word+) and still want to try, then do the same with the lower paying markets.

At some point, stop. Verify that the story really IS a decent one, and not crap. If it's not crap, self publish it.

Never self publish short fiction you intend to submit to markets. Burning first pub rights doesn't impact novels, but it DOES impact short story markets still, most of the time.

 

[Philip Overby]

Thanks a lot, Kevin! That's great advice. I do have that spreadsheet I have, but maybe I should "tier" the markets I'm interested in so I can start at the top and work my way down. I've been reading several of the markets I'm interested in, not just because I want to submit, but because I really like what they produce. So I'm going to really start getting some stuff out there pretty soon. I'm working on a novel at the moment as well, but I have several short stories just sitting in my file that I think I could polish and send out. So I'd like to do that as well.

 

[adriandiglio]

If you're submitting to literary agents or publishers, I use querytracker.net to track my submissions. You can even add publishers/agents to their database. I don't think they have magazines or e-zines though. If they don't, there may be another website out there that does.