Should I publish to multiple different magazines or choose a select few.

[Eliot rite]

I have been trying to publish poems and flash fiction to multiple websites and magazines to get my name out, to some success. I am wondering whether or not to submit to websites and magazines that have already accepted me or keep sending to new sites.

 

[Catriona Grace]

Both.

 

[CMBright]

Read the guidelines. Some don't want you to submit elsewhere until they reject you. Others say if they don't say they've rejected you after x time, they have.

Otherwise, I'd say submit to any place that will consider what your writing.

 

[Catriona Grace]

If a publication doesn't want me to submit elsewhere until they've rejected me, they'd better give me some incentive and/or get the acceptance or rejection to me in a timely manner. Making such a demand, then sitting on someone's work product for six months or a year without a response is horse feathers.

 

[Helix]

I have been trying to publish poems and flash fiction to multiple websites and magazines to get my name out, to some success. I am wondering whether or not to submit to websites and magazines that have already accepted me or keep sending to new sites.

Publish widely.

 

[CMBright]

If a publication doesn't want me to submit elsewhere until they've rejected me, they'd better give me some incentive and/or get the acceptance or rejection to me in a timely manner. This thing of sitting on someone's work product for six months or a year without a response is horse feathers.

As a writer, I totally agree, though the 'no response, it's a rejection' sites I was seeing said two or three months. Not necessarily both conditions at a given site, haven't poked around much, not ready yet.

For an editor or agent with stacks of emails with queeries or stories to read, I kinda see the point of wanting time to get through the volume. Assuming they ever get to the top given they should start with the oldest and work up to the most recent.

I haven't looked at many sites. Some had tons of fine print and warnings if you missed anything. Some essentially said send it in for a read, maybe we will, maybe we won't get to it. There are probably others with every variant inbetween.

I am not an expert, just my limited experience and opinion based on it. I do wish the original poster the best of luck in getting published.

 

[Unimportant]

I have been trying to publish poems and flash fiction to multiple websites and magazines to get my name out, to some success. I am wondering whether or not to submit to websites and magazines that have already accepted me or keep sending to new sites.

Submit to the top markets in your genre, and work your way down.

One publication in whatever is your equivalent of the New Yorker is worth fifty publications in an unpaying Little Backwoods Magazine With A Readership of 200.

 

[ChaseJxyz]

If you ONLY get published in tiny little places, people are going to look at your bibliography and wonder what's up with that. Is your work just not good enough for bigger publications? Or do you have absolutely no faith in yourself?

Go on submission grinder and work your way down. Make sure to keep track of who you submit to, and when, and which piece, and what the "if you don't hear after x days, then consider it a no" and make a note of it somewhere. So once they say no, you can check that off and move on to the next one.

Some places allow "simultaneous submissions" which means multiple people can be looking at it at once. But once someone says yes, and you accept, you're supposed to tell everyone else so they can remove your piece from their considering pile. Places that don't accept sim subs have a decent reason to, because there would be offers they'd make and then they'd be told "oh actually someone else said yes already, sorry!" and it wastes their time. A lot of the big markets don't accept sim subs because this happened too much.

Also, some places don't accept "multiple submissions," which means you have more than one piece in their consideration pile. Or maybe they do accept multiples, but only with poetry. Or they have multiple submission windows each year, and you can do 1 per window (and if you got nothing from the last window, consider it a no). This is why tracking everything in submission grinder or a spreadsheet (or both!) is so important, so your wires don't get crossed and you accidentally sim sub or multi sub.

If you go biggest markets down, and someone says no, well, nothing's changed on your end! Nothing lost, let's go onto the next thing. What you should probably prioritize, though, would be anthologies, since those are only open the once, while big magazines are always going to have another submission window later.

 

[ap123]

Another vote for both. Also agree with Chase re subbing to the more broadly known/respected mags first (bonus, these tend to be the places that pay better).

IME, all the lit mags (genre and general) reply to subs, whether they tend to reply within hours, days, weeks, or years. I personally wouldn't sub to a magazine that has a no reply = no policy.

As for multi subs and sim subs, most of the general lit mags accept sim subs, but several of the pro paying genre mags do not. Another thing to look at in the sub guidelines, many of the mags include guidelines as to how frequently you can submit--these are all individual to each mag. Some are good with you subbing again as soon as you've received an R or A, others will say only once, or twice, per reading session, and many have specific guidelines for this connected to being published in their mag--they might say something like, "if you've had a piece published in Great and Powerful Review, please wait at least one full year after publication before submitting again."

 

[Elenitsa]

Submit different stories to different magazines and make yourself wider known!

 

[Mutive]

If a publication doesn't want me to submit elsewhere until they've rejected me, they'd better give me some incentive and/or get the acceptance or rejection to me in a timely manner. Making such a demand, then sitting on someone's work product for six months or a year without a response is horse feathers.

As a writer, I agree.

As an editor, define "timely". Almost any paying market is flooded with submissions. And it takes time to get through those (even more time if the writer expects a response, or personalized feedback, or literally anything beyond radio silence). While ideally it doesn't take 6 months to a year to review a story, it doesn't shock me, either, that it can take a long while. (A huge number of markets for short fiction are staffed by volunteers, so getting through the slush is something they do evenings and weekends vs. something they're paid to do. Which is likely to continue as short fiction markets aren't particularly lucrative to run - I'd guess that *most* lose money, and those that don't aren't exactly pulling in cash by the bucketload.)

I do think that more markets should be okay with simultaneous submissions. But I get why they're not, too. It can be really, really frustrating to send out acceptances for enough stories to fill your issue just to have one (or more) pull out at the last minute. At that point, you're either stuck publishing an issue with fewer stories than you'd like or scrambling to find something else to fill it. (And, of course, stories that are so great and wonderful that one publication wants them are likely great and wonderful enough that *other* publications want them.)

 

[Catriona Grace]

My practice is to accept stories for a particular issue up until three months before publication. Within the next two weeks or (rarely) a month, I let people know whether or not their story is accepted for publication in an upcoming issue, adding a note that if I don't receive acknowledgement of acceptance from them within ten days, the acceptance will be withdrawn. Since my publication is small and of limited distribution (we tipped over 500 subscribers a while back), this works for me. Was I running a bigger operation, I'd probably stretch the deadline out to six months prior to publication so that I was collecting for February's issue while actually sending August's to the printers, and with November's stories waiting for editing, having been solicited and accepted in May.

Does that make sense? It's wonderful in theory, but things do gang aft a-gley.

What I don't and wouldn't do is expect a writer to submit work product and wait for six months or a year to hear back from me before being able to seek other markets. The writing market, maybe particularly short fiction, is competitive, and by insisting on exclusive rights of refusal, a publisher eliminates competition for as long as it suits him/her. It's common practice, but I say the hell with it.

 

[TheGaffer27]

Go on submission grinder and work your way down.

For the uninitiated, what is "submission grinder?"

 

[CMBright]

For the uninitiated, what is "submission grinder?"

Some website that helps with who/where to submit. I haven't used it, but have seen enough context here to get that much.

 

[Unimportant]

For the uninitiated, what is "submission grinder?"

This is submission grinder (bolded text is a link). A free site where you can put in your criteria re genre, word count, payment, etc, and it finds magazine and anthology markets that match.

 

[TheGaffer27]

This is submission grinder (bolded text is a link). A free site where you can put in your criteria re genre, word count, payment, etc, and it finds magazine and anthology markets that match.

Bookmarked this post!

 

[Unimportant]

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Bookmark the website!