Getting into the new yorker

[Harlequin]

How is this done?

I know the chances are slim even with an agent, but if I'm understanding it right you don't just need an agent, you need the RIGHT agent?

Ive asked mine and she has no idea. Genre fiction agents typically don't handle short fiction.

Any litfic types able to shed light on this?

It might be a 1 in 40,000 chance but I'd like to try lol.

 

[stephenf]

You go to their web site , go to submissions and send your manuscript .

 

[AW Admin]

How is this done?

I know the chances are slim even with an agent, but if I'm understanding it right you don't just need an agent, you need the RIGHT agent?

Ive asked mine and she has no idea. Genre fiction agents typically don't handle short fiction.

Any litfic types able to shed light on this?

It might be a 1 in 40,000 chance but I'd like to try lol.

Follow these instructions:

Contact Us - The New Yorker

If you want to send a submission (fiction, poetry, humor) or request back issues and permissions, please visit our Contact Us page.

www.newyorker.com

Fiction submissions: Please send your submissions (as PDF attachments) to [email protected], or by mail to Fiction Editor, The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. We read all submissions within ninety days, and will contact you if we’re interested in publishing your material. We regret that, owing to the volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to call or e-mail unless a story is accepted for publication. If you have not heard from us within ninety days, please assume that we will not be able to publish your manuscript. Submissions sent by regular mail will not be returned, so please do not send original copies of your work.

 

[ap123]

Just sub the way you would for any other mag.
I got a personalized, encouraging R from the fiction editor some years back, so you never know. On the plus side, my understanding is they're much faster to respond to subs than they used to be (I'm pretty sure I waited over a year before getting that rejection, lol).

 

[Paul Lamb]

Funny, I just heard on a podcast that they cultivate works from writers they want. I'd heard the same thing about the Paris Review. They publish writers who are friends.

 

[mccardey]

Funny, I just heard on a podcast that they cultivate works from writers they want. I'd heard the same thing about the Paris Review. They publish writers who are friends.

Was it their own podcast?

 

[AW Admin]

Funny, I just heard on a podcast that they cultivate works from writers they want. I'd heard the same thing about the Paris Review. They publish writers who are friends.

Pretty much every publisher and publication does that. Just because they are open to submissions doesn't mean they don't also specifically and/or commission as well.

Many publishers have a special relationship with a small coterie of agents; they will send calls to those agents.

 

[ap123]

Pretty much every publisher and publication does that. Just because they are open to submissions doesn't mean they don't also specifically and/or commission as well.

Many publishers have a special relationship with a small coterie of agents; they will send calls to those agents.

That's one stat we don't see on Duotrope & The Grinder I wish was available. Makes a difference subbing if I know they're soliciting 30% 50% or 95% of what they're pubbing. Not that I don't try anyway, but for me it helps to have a realistic frame of reference.

 

[MaeZe]

What kind of fiction gets into the New Yorker? I didn't know they had fiction stories.

 

[Helix]

What kind of fiction gets into the New Yorker? I didn't know they had fiction stories.

Remember 'Cat Person'?

 

[stephenf]

That's one stat we don't see on Duotrope & The Grinder I wish was available. Makes a difference subbing if I know they're soliciting 30% 50% or 95% of what they're pubbing. Not that I don't try anyway, but for me it helps to have a realistic frame of reference.

It actuly makes no real difference. If you write something THE New Yorker will publish , it will be true regardless. Most unsolicited submissions have about 2 % or less chanse of being published.

 

[ap123]

I actuly makes no real difference. If you write something THE New Yorker will publish , it will be true regardless. Most unsolicited submissions have about 2 % or less chanse of being published.

I wasn't specifically referring to the NYer with that wish, but to all the lit mags. It does make a difference whether they are taking 50% or 2% from unsolicited subs.

But the NYer really is its own category.

 

[stephenf]

I wasn't specifically referring to the NYer with that wish, but to all the lit mags. It does make a difference whether they are taking 50% or 2% from unsolicited subs.

But the NYer really is its own category.

My guess is , the less the publication pay , the bigger the percentage of unsolicited submissions get printed .

 

[ap123]

My guess is , the less the publication pay , the bigger the percentage of unsolicited submissions get printed .

lol, probably an excellent guess (always exceptions either way, of course).

 

[Lakey]

What kind of fiction gets into the New Yorker? I didn't know they had fiction stories.

They do — one story in each issue, typically (plus one issue a year devoted to fiction, which sometimes dips into the archives). I read them pretty regularly and write about them on the Short Story thread. It’s literary fiction; it’s one of the top markets for literary short stories and I suspect the most widely read. (I have a list of literary magazines ranked by how many times their stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, and the New Yorker leads the list, by rather a large margin.)

I am a subscriber so I’m not 100% sure what can be accessed on their website without a paywall, though I think you can usually see some fraction of the latest issues there. They also have a couple of free fiction podcasts—“The Writer’s Voice,” which is simply the story from the latest issue read out by its author, and my personal favorite, “The New Yorker Fiction Podcast,” in which the editor invites some writer to choose a story by someone else from the archives; the guest then reads it out, and then has a great lit-geeky discussion with the editor about it. I learn a lot about craft from listening to that podcast.

 

[Harlequin]

So my understanding from lit fic friends is that the new yorker gets 1000 fiction submissions per week.

The previous editor never bought a single slush submission. The current one supposedly has but those folks in question generally have connections.

If you have an agent you're supposed to send to an editor directly but I don't know what thst email is lol nor does my agent.

It looks to me like you not oy need an agent but thr RIGHT agent which is demoralising.

 

[Fuchsia Groan]

There are maybe ways to find the email by googling around? If you know the name of the fiction editor, and the NY’er has some emails on its masthead, your agent could try an email in the same format.

Take it from someone who got the email of an editor at the NYT Book Review this way. She responded to me because we knew each other in HS and college, but I did have to get that contact info first. In your case, your agent and your book deal would be the potential “in.”

Another possible avenue: Do you have any friends who are on the faculty of an MFA program? They might have the inside track or know someone who does.

Usually I would say, “Try the slush,” but it seems like a near impossibility in this case. Sometimes, when you have good credentials, direct approaches work. (My dad somehow got the email of an exec editor at FSG, pitched him directly with a translation, and got an invitation to submit! No agent, nothing. But he really knew what that editor was looking for.)

 

[shortstorymachinist]

I'm enjoying all the information in this thread. If they only accept literary, does that mean none of their stories have genre elements, or have literary sci-fi/fantasy/horror etc. pieces made the cut in the past?

 

[Lakey]

I'm enjoying all the information in this thread. If they only accept literary, does that mean none of their stories have genre elements, or have literary sci-fi/fantasy/horror etc. pieces made the cut in the past?

I would say that genre elements turn up from time to time. For instance, George Saunders’s stories often have a sci-if element to them, including some I’ve read in the New Yorker. I recall a story by another author not that long ago that had a sort of paranormal fantasy element to it, a man visited by dead relatives. Fabulism is maybe a better word than fantasy, though, for what you’re likely to see in the New Yorker.

Again, many of the stories are available on the magazine’s website and in the podcasts, so anyone who is curious about what they publish can go and see for oneself.

 

[Harlequin]

They definitely take some light speculative pieces - Gene Wolfe has sold a surrealist flash piece to them, once.

Another possible avenue: Do you have any friends who are on the faculty of an MFA program? They might have the inside track or know someone who does.

Nah sorry I've never had any connections to leverage, and hadn't even heard of MFAs until a few years ago (after already being agented).

I don't know why I'm fixating on this one place, really! Other than genre zines don't like cannibalism stories lol. But there are easier places to sub to.

 

[ap123]

Try Paris Review, Granta, Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, The Puritan.

 

[P.K. Torrens]

Nah sorry I've never had any connections to leverage, and hadn't even heard of MFAs until a few years ago (after already being agented).

I don't know why I'm fixating on this one place, really! Other than genre zines don't like cannibalism stories lol. But there are easier places to sub to

Wait! The New Yorker is into cannibalism stories?

 

[Harlequin]

Lmao

Well they don't actually say, but at least they don't list it has a hard no, like Clarkesworld does

 

[PeteMC]

How is this done?

Long answer short, it isn't except by invitation.

Long answer a bit longer, it isn't unless except by invitiation or very remotely possibly, if you have an MFA from the right university AND the right agent AND know the right people AND are already a feature on the NY literary scene.

 

[Harlequin]

Oh dear. But thanks Pete. I feared as much