Picking the right magazine to submit to

efreysson

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I'm looking for an online magazine to publish my space opera serial. I started with Clarkesworld in December, largely because of their quick response time, but got rejected. I want to pick magazines carefully, since most of them take months to reply, but I've never read one in my life so I don't know the field.

Basically what I'm hoping for is to make a little extra money and draw some attention to my e-novels.

I'm currently looking at Fantasy and Science Fiction (imaginative title there...) or possibly Analog. Are those decent choices?
 

cornflake

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Uhm, start reading?
 

CaoPaux

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Why aren't you reading the publications you want to take your work? The easiest way to know if something is a good fit is to read the magazines. It's really that simple. You say you want to be careful with your selection process. Well, so do the editors at these magazines. And if you are not reading these publications, it will be very hard to know what the editors are looking for. Just start reading and then you should be able to answer this question for yourself better than anyone else
 

Polenth

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You should read the markets and you need to be prepared for how long it'll take. You're making it harder trying to sell a serial, because it's not what any of those markets want. They want a short story that can be read without having read any of your other work. So it can share characters and worlds, but it has to stand alone.

Don't overthink where you send work. The Grinder allows you to sort markets by genre and pay rate. Start at the top and work down. Sometimes a story will sell to a market you didn't think would be interested. Do make sure it fits their general guidelines, but don't self-reject based on stuff they haven't said. And while you're waiting, get down to some reading and write the next story.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Except in the grossest sense, it's hard to know what they're looking for even if you are reading the magazines.

caw

Why is that? I know exactly what I'm looking for, and have no trouble finding it. I know by reading the mags.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I want to pick magazines carefully, since most of them take months to reply, but I've never read one in my life so I don't know the field.

Basically what I'm hoping for is to make a little extra money and draw some attention to my e-novels.

I'm currently looking at Fantasy and Science Fiction (imaginative title there...) or possibly Analog. Are those decent choices?

First, if you don't read such magazines religiously, I'd say your chances of writing something any of them want are about a million to one. There is no other way to know what editors want except reading issue after issue. Nor can any of us tell you anything without reading your stories, and without reading the magazines ourselves.

Second, trying to sell short stories in an effort to earn money and/or to bring attention to a novel is a losing game for almost everyone. Selling a short story to a decent magazine is a hundred times harder than selling a novel to a good publisher. The competition is incredibly, and every submission period at every good magazine means the editor is receiving stories by the best and most famous writers in the world. Your story has to be better than theirs in some way, small or large, or it won't sell. Not as good as, but better. Why buy your story when an editor can get a story of the same quality from a writer with a name that draws readers to the magazine.

Miracles happen, but the reason to write short stories for magazines in because you love reading and writing short stories, not because you think it's a way to earn extra money, or a way to draw attention to a novel. Maybe you can write stories they want without reading them, but if so, you'll be the first such writer I've ever known. Only a tiny, tiny handful of talented writers ever sell anything to good magazines, even if they do rad them religiously. It's far and away the most competitive field there is in fiction writing.

But even if you can, there's no way anyone can tell you which magazines to submit to without reading your stories, and without reading the magazines.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Well, you're smarter than I am, James.

caw

Probably not. I'm not even as smart as I am. But I developed the knack of telling what editors want, and how they want it, very early on, and I did it from reading the magazines.

I've said this before, but I think it's worth saying again. "Well-Written" should always be a prerequisite, which means good use of language, good mood and tone, good flow, and good rhythm. But beyond this, editors want what no one else but you can give them, as long as it fits within the general scope of the magazine.

Too many read magazines in order to send editors stories like those the editor has already published. The reason to read magazines is so you can send editors stories that are, in substantive ways, unlike anything the editor has already published. Editors want a detailed, realistic location/setting that is unlike all the others. Editors want detailed, realistic characters who speak realistic language, and who are unlike all the other characters who inhabit stories they've already published. They want your next door neighbor who is what he is because of where he grew up, who does what he does because his daddy did it, who speaks the way he speaks because that's how people really speak where he grew up, who believes what he believes because of parental influence, and because of whatever his life experience has been. What they usually get is Captain Kirk, or Mike Hammer, or some other character the editor has seen a thousand times, and that readers know should not be in a new story. They really do want to meet new characters who behave and speak in a manner only someone who grew up where that character did would act and speak. They want the kids you played with when you were a kid, the teachers you had in school, the next door neighbor you talk to over the fence, the guys you play poker with every Saturday, and the people you work with Monday through Friday. And they want them as they really are, not as you would have them be.

They want a setting detailed enough that readers could go there and pick up a dime the mill operator dropped when he was getting a Coke from the old pop machine that sits in front of the local garage. What they get is a setting the editor has seen ten thousand times, and that isn't realistic, anyway, because the writer has never been within a thousand miles of the place, and hasn't done the hours and hours and hours of smart research it takes to bring such a setting to life, or because the writer doesn't use the right detail to bring a place he does know alive. They want a writer who knows his setting so well, and who shows it so well, a reader could go there and walk through it blindfolded without stubbing his toe.

All of this is part of writing well, all of it is part of telling a story well, all of it is part of building realistic characters, and none of it seems all that difficult to me, as long as you can write well, and as long as you learn what it means to give editors yourself.
 

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The best advice I ever received came directly from SF editors and pro writers before the advent of self-publishing. Start with your top target market. Submit. Start working on your next story. Don't worry about the timetable, or worry about a rejection. IF rejected, go to your next market. Work your way down the list.

Be sure to read the guidelines carefully and at least one sample issue. Know the market, and what they are looking for.

Check to see if your markets further down the list accept simultaneous submissions. Some do.

Never give away your work ( submit to magazines that pay zero or just give a writing credit or a sample issue ). If you believe your work is good enough to be published, and you exhaust all the paying markets, re-evaluate your work. Get critiques.

According to editors, if your manuscript is formatted properly and you can weave a coherent paragraph you are already beating out the *majority* of the submissions that hit the slush pile. Multiple editors advised me that over 90% of what they receive is simply not well written enough to publish.

When you finish your next story, send it out, rinse, repeat. If you're working on a serial, polish and re-polish your first in the series until it sparkles like pro work.

It's a simple formula and few bother to follow it. All those that I know who did, published.
 
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King Neptune

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I agree with WordswithFriends, but one can get a fair idea of what a magazine publishes by reading the submission guidelines and whatever parts of stories are readily available. If the guidelines say that they are looking for high fantasy and nothing else, then that isn't a good bet for space opera. Even knowing what a given market has published in the past doesn't tell what that market will buy in the future.
 

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I definitely have this problem too, with knowing what to submit where. I usually write a story and then when I read different publications, I find the stories I've written don't really fit anywhere. I think it's probably best to start reading a few publications in your genre religiously, and then you know before you write what kind of think is likely to get published.
 

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To get back to the original question. How to know what magazines to submit to. Most have already said something similar to what I will say. Yes, if unfamiliar with the magazine, you should read some samples of what they publish. Skim it, read it, whatever excites you but it will give you some vague idea what the editors like. It isn't necessary to subscribe to the magazine, it wouldn't hurt I don't suppose. I have submitted to a lot of mags I don't read, most of them in fact. But I did read some of what they post online, and skimmed through their content in order to determine if my work fits. Once published, I usually don't read that mag again. Maybe that's callus but I simply don't have time to read a bunch of magazines every month.

In fact, reading content of magazines is what kept me writing and submitting. I kept reading and saying "I can write better than this." I knew that if I kept editing and improving that one day my stories would find a home and some of them did.
 
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HoosierJoe

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The best advice I ever received came directly from SF editors and pro writers before the advent of self-publishing. Start with your top target market. Submit. Start working on your next story. Don't worry about the timetable, or worry about a rejection. IF rejected, go to your next market. Work your way down the list.

Be sure to read the guidelines carefully and at least one sample issue. Know the market, and what they are looking for.

Check to see if your markets further down the list accept simultaneous submissions. Some do.

Never give away your work ( submit to magazines that pay zero or just give a writing credit or a sample issue ). If you believe your work is good enough to be published, and you exhaust all the paying markets, re-evaluate your work. Get critiques.

According to editors, if your manuscript is formatted properly and you can weave a coherent paragraph you are already beating out the *majority* of the submissions that hit the slush pile. Multiple editors advised me that over 90% of what they receive is simply not well written enough to publish.

When you finish your next story, send it out, rinse, repeat. If you're working on a serial, polish and re-polish your first in the series until it sparkles like pro work.

It's a simple formula and few bother to follow it. All those that I know who did, published.
Can't agree with not submitting to no pay magazines. Most magazines now days are online and no pay. Many print mags are token pay only. And many literary mags are ran by universities and don't pay or token pay and quite a few of them are well established and respected.

No pay is the norm in today's market. These established writers are not trying to break in to writing today. It was different for them when there was a smaller supply of magazines. Now there are how many? A thousand, more? They don't have to pay and probably can't anyway as they are ran out of the pocket of the editor who is doing it in his/her spare time and making nothing off of it. Doesn't mean they can't publish a good story, it means things are different now.
 

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Can't agree with not submitting to no pay magazines. Most magazines now days are online and no pay. Many print mags are token pay only. And many literary mags are ran by universities and don't pay or token pay and quite a few of them are well established and respected.

Ask yourself what you get out of it? What's the readership? Exposure is not worth much, especially in online, since if it's a non-paying market, what do they offer that you can't garner on your own site/blog?

No pay is the norm in today's market. These established writers are not trying to break in to writing today. It was different for them when there was a smaller supply of magazines. Now there are how many? A thousand, more? They don't have to pay and probably can't anyway as they are ran out of the pocket of the editor who is doing it in his/her spare time and making nothing off of it. Doesn't mean they can't publish a good story, it means things are different now.

This is less than accurate. There are plenty of paying venues. If you're not getting paid, why give up your content?
 

cornflake

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Can't agree with not submitting to no pay magazines. Most magazines now days are online and no pay. Many print mags are token pay only. And many literary mags are ran by universities and don't pay or token pay and quite a few of them are well established and respected.

No pay is the norm in today's market. These established writers are not trying to break in to writing today. It was different for them when there was a smaller supply of magazines. Now there are how many? A thousand, more? They don't have to pay and probably can't anyway as they are ran out of the pocket of the editor who is doing it in his/her spare time and making nothing off of it. Doesn't mean they can't publish a good story, it means things are different now.

I disagree - there aren't that many more outlets now, and the Internet has been around decades. If someone isn't paying; I'm not writing. It's a job. There are plenty of magazines that pay regular rates. The people willing to write for nothing (or close to it, like cents on the word), are part of this problem. I get it, but 'exposure' is generally worthless as a pay rate, and when there are people willing to work for nothing, the idea takes hold that writing is worth nothing in terms of payment.

As the man said, if someone wants you to write for free, who is not a close friend (and sometimes even then), the proper response is: Fuck You, Pay Me.
 

Taylor Harbin

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When it comes to serials, you might have to look a while before you'll find a publication willing to do that. It's just not in style at the moment. They're out there, but not the norm. Serials were at their peak when the average person wasn't able to afford a book and newspapers only cost a nickel.

As to "knowing." I sold my first story to Bards and Sages after hearing about an anthology contest they were hosting, reading the guidelines, and reading some of their previous pieces. I agonized over it for a month. I didn't read every single back issue, but I read enough of their stories in the sf-f spectrum to get a rough idea of what they liked. I wrote another short for a different contest and it was shortlisted as a finalist, even though it was rejected. That one took me two days and minimal editing. I have yet to break into a SFWA-rated magazine, but that's ok. Short stories are like spitballs. You just keep making them and launching them at the ceiling. The right ones will stick.

And I agree with the others on the subject of money. Don't do it for quick cash (though you should get paid something). Magazines used to sell ad space before radio, TV, and the internet became the main source of advertising. There was a lot of money to be had, and they used it to buy fiction. Today, that's gone, and just because Alice Munroe won the Nobel Prize for her fiction doesn't mean publishers are suddenly going to start offering $400+ to everyone who gets accepted.
 

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Ask yourself what you get out of it? What's the readership? Exposure is not worth much, especially in online, since if it's a non-paying market, what do they offer that you can't garner on your own site/blog?



This is less than accurate. There are plenty of paying venues. If you're not getting paid, why give up your content?

The consensus here seems to be ignore all markets that don't pay. Which leaves out publications like [FONT=Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]The North American Review which has been around since 1815. Plus hundreds of other magazines that have helped launch many careers. Sorry all of you literary mags but the all knowing messages board has determined that you are giving nothing to the writing community.

[/FONT]Sorry, I may not be 100% right but moderator or not, you are 100% wrong. So all of you guys keep on submitting to the pay only markets and let us know how you are doing.
 

HoosierJoe

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This is less than accurate. There are plenty of paying venues. If you're not getting paid, why give up your content?

What exactly is less than accurate? No pay is the norm, the majority. How do you not know that? Take a look at the grinder markets. And I never said there were not pay markets.

What else is not accurate? Established writers are not trying to break into today's market and they did have a smaller magazine market in the past. How do you not know that also?

What else is not accurate? That the magazines can't pay because they have no money? Do you even know what these magazines are today?

What else is not accurate? That magazine editors can't spot a good story because they can't pay you for it?

Disagreeing with a moderator will probably get me banned but calling me inaccurate shows your ignorance. And maybe a bit of jealousy on some peoples part because they haven't been accepted by pay, non pay, token pay, or contributor copy pay.
 
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HoosierJoe

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Oh hey look at this Zoetrope Magazine doesn't pay. What did these writers get out of it? They might as well publish on their own blog. Salmon Rushdie and Gabrielle Garcia Marquez got nothing out of sending to Zoetrope. They should have shouted "F you, pay me!" Too bad for them they didn't listen to a message board. Think of where they might be today!

[h=2]Zoetrope: All-Story[/h]Founded by Francis Ford Coppola and Adrienne Brodeur in 1997, Zoetrope: All-Story’s mission is “to explore the intersection of story and art, fiction and film” and “form a bridge to storytellers at large, encouraging them to work in the natural format of a short story.” Submissions should be no more than 7,000 words.
Submission Guidelines: http://www.all-story.com/submissions.cgi
Deadline: Open
Payment: None, but this magazine has discovered many emerging writers and published big names like Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez, so publication here could win you some serious “prestige” points.
 

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For all of you pay market only people. I had this article bookmarked. Most of these are pay markets. If you go to the bottom of the article there are links to more markets. The ones I have looked at are pay.

And if you find ones that aren't pay, then they are invalid and you will get nothing out of submitting to them.

http://thewritelife.com/where-to-submit-short-stories/
 

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For all of you pay market only people. I had this article bookmarked. Most of these are pay markets. If you go to the bottom of the article there are links to more markets. The ones I have looked at are pay.

And if you find ones that aren't pay, then they are invalid and you will get nothing out of submitting to them.

http://thewritelife.com/where-to-submit-short-stories/

By mistake I have submitted to no pay markets, but I think that I deserve some pay for my work. I haven't counted the numbers of pay versus no-pay short story markets, but there are many that pay; although many of the pay market only pay nominal amounts. But there are two good reasons to avoid no-pay mags. The first is that a writer deserves payment for work, and the second is that most of the no-pay markets are fly-by-night operations run by people who don't know anything. Twice no-pay markets have published my work without permission, and that is simply unacceptable. It is possible that some of the no-pays would put a story in front of eyes that might appreciate it, but I suspect that their audiences are even less knowledgeable than the editors.

If one runs out of places to send a story, then it might be a sign that the story should be rewritten.