One of the stories I submitted last year went to an online magazine, and let me tell you that was an up and down ride.

The first email I got was this:

We’re delighted to let you know that your story, “Short Story,” has just been accepted for its second step in our selection process. Each of our editors will evaluate your story and we’ll make a final decision as to whether or not we’ll be able to accept it for publication. This happens for less than 10% of our submissions.
…
You should hear back from us within one month.

Then a few weeks later…

Our editorial review of your truly lovely, delicate story, “Short Story,” has been completed. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to use your piece at this time.

Once again, though, we liked your work. Please be aware that only a small percentage of the stories submitted to us ever make it to the ‘second step’ stage where we’ve been considering your story, and only 52 can be published within the framework of our weekly schedule each year.

We genuinely look forward to seeing more of your work in the near future.

Wow, that was a let down, let me tell you, particularly since this particular editor really did seem to like the piece. Happily, it later was published in a different market

Years ago when I started trying to write seriously I purchased a subscription to Writer’s Digest, and I kept it going for a few years. The more I wrote however, the less help I found the magazine as a whole. Part of the reason was that I found they often ran articles that were variations of ones they ran previously. Given that there are always new writers looking for the same information other new writers looked for first, this is a smart marketing tactic to bring in new readers. Writer’s Market is a huge business, books, website, etc., and I’m sure they look at the magazine as another way to draw writers into their brand market, which probably explains their attention grabbing headlines. While some of the other writing magazines, such as Writers’ Journal and Poets & Writers are a little subtler in their cover advertising, others such as The Writer are not. I feel like the Writers’ Journal and Poets & Writers tend to consistently have a little more that interests me than the other two, but I generally scan through them all at the newsstand, only purchasing them if there is an article I feel like I can use. Right now I am very focused promotion and publicity, so any articles on this tend to catch my eye, as do articles dealing with agents and rights.

Right now sitting on my shelf is a small stack of magazines I bought specifically for an article or two in each. The magazines that only had a couple of articles that interested me I used paper clips so I can open them up to those specific articles each time, and skip over the rest of the issue. Right now I have:

Writers’ Journal Jan/Feb 08 – for “Apples and Oranges: Adapting Your Novel”, as screenwriting really interests me. There were also a few secondary articles that interested me, “From Lowly Letters to the Big Time” and “Networking for $$$,” neither of which I would have bought the magazine for, but they did help me make up my mind about whether I should buy it for the first article. There were also other articles that I’ll refer back to as a bonus. (Didn’t paperclip this issue.)

Writer’s Digest Oct 07 – for a section they had on PR. There were three articles in the whole issue that interested me, but they were all worth it – “Get Your Money’s Worth” (self-promotion), “Sling Your Web” (web self-promotion), and “Marketing: Give a Good Reading” (obvious).

The Writer Nov 07 – “Making the Most of Minor Characters” (something I was focusing on) and “Using Podcasts to Promote Your Book.”

Writer’s Digest Writer’s Yearbook 2008 – “The Healthy Writer” (Health insurance), “Giving it Away” (giving away fiction and goodies on your website), “Get Good Press” (Building a PR kit), and two secondary articles – “101 Best Websites for Writers” and a small part of an article that talked about giving sneak peeks through mobile devices.

Poets & Writers Jan/Feb 08 – “Talent Search: A Special Section on Literary Agents” – a series of five articles. (I didn’t paper clip this one either.)

These are example of the kinds of articles that I have been looking for lately. Tomorrow I’ll follow up with marketing tie-ins from each of these magazines, and how useful I find them.

Just received the email (4am in the morning no less!) from Tattoo Highway.

congratulations! “liturgy of the abandoned” has tied for 2nd place in our “picture worth 500 words” contest.

Sweet! I’ll post when I know for sure the publication date.

And I get paid!

I have had a submission out to the “Slow Magazine” (not the real name obviously!) for quite a while – since February of 2007 as a matter of fact. This particular piece is a long poem, which they specifically state they like in their guidelines. Because I am anal (and my handwriting sucks!) I had printed labels for both the to and return envelopes, I included postage for a reply, and dropped it in the mail slot. (Well, really, I gave it to to post office lady over the counter, if we are going to be specific.) Although I have a tendency to go over my Duotrope tracker and see how long my submissions have been out, I really don’t stress over them, well, until they get to a year or so, and then I start to wonder.

I have one other story that has been out for a year, to BUST Magazine. However, in this case, as it was an electronic submission, I shot them off a polite email in December inquiring about the status of my submission:

I am writing to inquire about a submission for your “One-Handed Read” I sent in February of this year, “Story Title.” I was wondering if I could find out if it was still in the consideration process?

Thank you very much for your reply – I appreciate your taking the time to let me know.

I very promptly received an email reply that stated:

thanks for contacting BUST! It is still in our folder for consideration.

thanks again

So, I know they still have the story, it is still in consideration, and while I will still look at it in my submission tracker, I’ll be waiting a while to inquire again. It is a glossy mag, and I can wait to hear

However, my submission to the “Slow Magazine” is a different story. Part of that story is its dismal Duotrope stats. Of the 26 responses that have been reported, over half were assumed rejections and withdrawals, and of the assumed rejections, the average time was almost 400 days. Yowsers. If you know Duotrope, you know those are some sucky stats. Now granted, I did look at those numbers, and wonder if I should attempt it, but I figured what the hey, long poems are harder to find markets for, and who knows, it might get in there.

Yeah.

So, while years ago I did have a non-responsive email-submitted market (Literal Latte – which is also on Duotrope’s list of low-responsive markets - they didn’t respond to a follow-up email either), I hadn’t yet encountered a snail-mail submission market that not only hadn’t responded, but had such low response stats. I looked all over their website, and couldn’t find an email where I could even ask about inquiring about my submission. So, I thought about it, and sent them a snail-mail inquiry (on printed envelopes, with postage on the return envelope as well), and I said:

I am writing to inquire about the status of a long poem that I submitted to the “Slow Magazine” on February, 26th, 2007, titled “This Long Poem.” I would like to know if this piece is still being considered, or if it was lost in the mail. If I have not heard of the status by April 1, 2008, I will be withdrawing it from consideration and submitting it elsewhere. Enclosed is an SASE for your reply.

Thank you for your time in replying to this inquiry.

Now, hopefully I will have heard from them one way or the other by April, but if not I have it put it writing that I will be withdrawing it. Then I will revise it again as I haven’t looked at it in over a year, and send it back out.

Somewhere with better stats.

So, one of the markets that I am waiting to hear back from is Dark Hart Press. I submitted a piece for their anthology Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry back in November, and they had over 300 responses. The information link, once the submissions were closed the end of Dec., was set up to lead to the anthology’s MySpace page, I thought this was a little odd at first, but since then they have posted a couple of updates on their blog about the submissions they received, so I actually think that it is rather neat. Checked it out today, and there was a post dated the 26th:

Hi All,

In case you haven’t heard we had about 300 stories come in for this antho….if you have not heard back yet definitively with a yes or a no, you are probably on the maybe list (and in very good company with about 100 others) I’ll be re-reading.

I will be out of town from tomorrow till Feb 3rd, so expect a response following the fourth and I apologize, but it will take me a week or two to get through all the maybes…

Sorry for the delay.

So since I haven’t gotten a rejection letter yet, that means I have been in the third she is still looking at, not the two-thirds that she has rejected. Which is a good thing, and there is still a chance. (Yes, as writers we look for every possible indication that we are this much closer to having a piece accepted.) Plus, I might hear this coming week, which would be awesome. Hopefully.

“Dear Val:

Many thanks for sending “Your Story” my way. I found your story to be well-written with good description and believable dialog. You did a nice job slowly revealing what was going on, and building sympathy for our killer.

The only qualm I had with the writing was the use of “began” in the story. Began is a very passive word that can usually be eliminated from a story. If you think about it, you can only “begin” to do something for a nano second before you’re actually doing it. Why use “he began to shake” when you can write “he shook”. Unless something is going to stop him from shaking, the word has not point. Again, this is not a big issue, just something small to improve on.

I though that the conclusion of the tale was well done in that it was both horrific, yet poignant.

Unfortunately, I tend to shy away from accepting revenge pieces. Although your story is very well written, the main point of it is to show someone getting violent revenge on someone who wronged him. As a result, there was never any doubt in my mind how the story would end. I tend to receive a lot of these stories and, as much as I may enjoy them, they rarely offer anything original. You’re tale is by far one of the best of these types of stories I’ve read, but it really didn’t have any twists or turns. As a result, I’m going to pass.

The above comments represent only one person’s opinion; another editor may completely disagree. “Your Story” is a good story that I’m sure another market will appreciate.

Best of luck in all of your writing endeavors,

The Editor”

Now THIS was a nice rejection letter. Not only did he like it (even though he didn’t want to publish it) but he also offered some constructive criticism. (The only thing that really could have made it better would to have actually published it )

But I love them. Well, maybe not love, but close. I feel like every rejection letter I get is a letter closer to an acceptance. I have a stack of them, I don’t throw them away, perhaps because I feel like having them is a physical symbol that I “am a Writer” as it were. In this age of online submission, now most of my rejections are electronic, which means I don’t have that physical proof, but I still save every one of them. I have to say that my best rejection letter, or perhaps just my most memorable one, came from Glimmer Train, at least 7 years ago. At that time they were still doing submissions by mail, and they had a standard rejection letter, tri-folded, with three check boxes on the card. I believe they were , I don’t remember them all, I know there was one that was basically “no thanks,” ( I was like wooo, that one would suck) a second one I’m not sure what it was, it may have been we will be publishing this, and then a third one that went along the lines of “Thank you for sending this, we’re not going to publish this, but we liked it and would like to see more.” They checked that box, and underlined “like to see more” in dark pen. Coming from one of the top-tier literary magazines that was a huge boost to my ego. Glimmer Train** is one of the best paying, most well known, hardest to get into markets. And they wanted to see more of my work.

*sigh*

I felt like my daughter did when she got Corbin Blue’s (one of the hottest “tween” crushes) autograph by catching him at the back fence after a show. She was on air for days and laminated the fair ticket he signed. I felt like that. (Although, from my older, more cynical self this doesn’t count as a personal rejection exactly, but it was the most personal I had received up to that point!)

So far in the last twelve months I have submitted twenty-nine short stories. (Perhaps obviously, several have been out more than once.) Of those, I haven’t heard back on six, one was published (“Spring and Fall” in Khimairal Ink), and the other twenty-two obviously were rejected. However, of those, five were personal rejections, which means over twenty percent were personal. (Yes I am that much of a geek.) I’m not sure what the average is, but I do know that that’s not a bad average, considering some of the publications I submit to. (I tend to aim high, perhaps I shouldn’t but I do.)

I will post some of the personal rejection letters I’ve received over time, but there was one form letter I received that was so funny I have to post it here. It was from Postcards from Hell, and it went:

“Val,

We have subjected our victims to your story but they were not sufficiently traumatized. Your story has been consigned to the Lake of Fire. Thanks for trying Postcards from Hell. Have a nice day.

Minion

editor from hell”

How great is that??????

What do you mean postally isn’t a real word? Oh, ok. Well, on the serious side, as more and more publications establish an online presence, and more and more accept electronic submissions, this method of submitting had become less of a novelty and more of a norm. Glimmer Train prefers electronic submissions, and The Kenyon Review accepts this method exclusively. And of course, almost every magazine now has a website, usually with their guidelines posted, and often with sample stories.

My preference? I much prefer to submit electronically. Of the all of the stories I submitted over the last year, three out of twenty-nine (Artful Dodge – who I am starting to despair of hearing from, Cemetery Dance and American Short Fiction) went postal (Ahhh! Stories running around with machine guns!) and all of the others, including Glimmer Train and The Kenyon Review went electronically. For one thing, it is much more convenient to submit electronically. I can do it at any time of day, or on a weekend, I don’t have to worry about it printing right, (although electronic submissions have to be formatted correctly – I’ll post on that another time), and I don’t have to pay postage. (Which does add up, as does paying for paper and ink.) Also, when a story is submitted, many markets email you to let you know that your submission was received, and some of the larger ones even let you keep track of your submissions online at their website. Responses are also somewhat quicker I think, as the editor can write the decision in an email and send it right out. And of course, there is less paper used, and fewer manuscripts to recycle or discard.

The only advantage that I can think of to postal submissions is the fact that it has a physical aspect to it. There is a certain satisfaction in the tactile sensation of holding a manuscript, and of putting it in the mail, and I admit to having a weakness for a paper rejection letter, (although not enough of a one to make me submit by mail!) The downsides to postal mail is that pretty much they don’t notify you when your manuscript was received, (which I notified by over half of my electronic submissions,) following up on long-time manuscripts is a little bit trickier, and of course the amount of paper that is wasted. And I’m not just talking about wasting paper from a financial point, but because of the environmental impact. I hate how much paper I go through as it is, even though I try to keep it to a minimum, and I have gotten to the point that a huge amount of my revision is done on the computer. I try to print on the backside of other pages I’ve printed, and for the most part I just print them out for final polishing, and any errors I missed on-screen. Adding up all of the manuscripts that are sent out and discarded equals a huge amount of paper. In the end though it comes down to what works better for each individual author. For me though, electronic submissions are the way to go.

isn’t really like chopping up and selling your babies. More like shoving them out of the nest, “Go, fly you damn things! It’s about time you decided to use those wings! Now go make Mama proud!”

Another story out of the nest, this time to a “Best of” anthology. Another one on my Duotrope tracker.