Reprints, Tra La!

So, we all know most places don't want reprints, right? But there are so many places out there that I think that doesn't matter because there are still many places that do want reprints. I realize that sounds like no great revelation except that to me, it was (uh, that paragraph hasn't been critiqued yet, ha ha).

All but a few of my hundred-plus flash stories have been published at least twice. First in a magazine, e-zine, or anthology (some more than once). Then in my self-published book of flash stories.

Now, I'm starting to send them out for a third or fourth round. Just got an acceptance by Bete Noire, a paying, print magazine with a decently low acceptance rate. That's the third time for that story and I only wrote it a year or so ago.

Strangely, I think I've gotten more pay from the second and third round stories than from the first time around.

In other words, tra-la, tra-la!

Any cool reprint stories out there to motivate the rest of us?

Polenth said:

I've sold some reprints, but they've always been stories that were published by someone else first. Ones I either self-published or were on my website first haven't sold as reprints. So I wouldn't say it's that nowhere takes reprints, but you have more chance of selling a reprint if the first publication was by someone else.

A lot of the time when we're cautioning people on reprints, it's because they want to post it to their blog and then sell it. Which is going to be harder than selling a reprint of a story from a magazine.

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True. I have been told several times by publishers that do accept reprints that being in my book (as well as published once or twice before that) was too much for them. But then I'm happy to discover some of them will accept it anyway!

Also, your story about the person inside a living meat building blew me away. It was beyond wonderful. Are you going to make that collection with the jellyfish-thing on the cover in print? I just can't get used to my Kindle but I'd buy it right away if I could get it in print.