Ophelia

So, you want to be a published writer. And not just any old published writer, oh no, not in this day and age when publication is as easy as copy-pasting your masterpiece onto livejournal or offering it up on LuLu.com – you want to be published by a third party, your writing selected from the slush pile and acknowledged as the thrilling story you believe it to be. But how?

Submitting short stories for publication is easy enough once you get the hang of it. Having sweated blood and bled mucus making your story the best it can be, you need only to find a series of markets to apply to and present a believable front.

Finding a Market

There are two major databases for fiction markets on the web that I know of: Ralan.com and Duotrope.com. While Ralan.com is essentially one big alphabetic list of markets, Duotrope has the advantage of making its contents available via a very neat search engine. Here, you can refine your search by genre, story length, even payscale! But whatever way you go about it, there are likely to be hundreds of markets that seem to fit your story. Using the entirely fictional fiction story “Agapanthus Pox and the Plague Unicorn,” I will walk you through the steps of finding a publication to fit your needs.

Firstly – take note of your story. This means word count, genre, possible rating given content, and so on. “Agapanthus Pox,” my piece d’oeuvre, is a 3,500-word humorous fantasy story that features an abundance of exploding pustules and disease-ridden flakes of glitter, but no real horror, violence or sexual themes to speak of.

Secondly – find a market that fits your specifications (for the purposes of this exercise, I’ll be using markets as fictional as my story). I am looking for something that publishes things from the shorter end of the short stories spectrum, and has a target audience of kids who like laughing at icky stuff as well as educated adults who will be able to distinguish the scathing social and meta-fictional commentary contained within “Agapanthus Pox.” Seeing as I live pretty damn near the bottom of the Earth, it’ll also need to be something that accepts electronic submissions. I visit Duotrope, select the relevant options in their search engine (Fantasy, 3,500 words, payscale of “token and up,” electronic submission), and voila! I have a list of possible markets. Here are a few of them:

• Cyclopean Circles
• Gar’s Forge
• Lady Trottenham Presents . . .
• Inkblot Escapades
• Scheherezade Scrolls
• Torchlight Press
• Magic and Mayhem
• Gyrotechnica
• Incredible Tales
• Aurora Borealis Magazine

I’ve given myself a theoretical ten choices here – depending on the sort of story you’re looking to publish, you could have dozens more available to you. But now to start narrowing down the field.

Rather than just start sending off submissions to whichever market tops the list / catches your attention right off the bat, you should do a bit of research and find out what they actually publish first. Remember, the only specifications I put into the search engine were word-count, wide genre, submissions method and payment levels: there’s so much else I need to know. The best way to do this is to visit the market’s website and, if possible, read through a few back issues to see what the editors like. Here’s what the theoretical me discovers when I look over those markets’ goods:

• Cyclopean Circles: is a fantasy fiction publisher, sure – but primarily erotic fiction, and although, they being a print-only publication, I was not able to have a look at any past issues, I doubt they’ll be interested in my sexless story about a disease-bearing, mythological beast. Struck off my list of possibilities.
• Gar’s Forge: is internet-based, so I was able to delve into some past stories. They seem to mostly publish the sword-and-sorcery flavour of fantasy, but there’s a good smattering of other sub-genres here as well, and they definitely prefer comedy stories. This one goes in the “yay!” list.
• Lady Trottenham Presents . . . : right genre, right story length, pays nicely – but wrong tone. I doubt that this Austenesque journal would appreciate my pus jokes (despite their thematic undertones associating them with the struggle of the proletariat against an aristocratic elite valorised by the ignorant masses), so this market is out.
• Inkblot Escapades: the folks here seem to favour a wide variety of subgenres under the wider fantasy umbrella, so I decide to give them a go. The sheer snazzyness of their website was definitely a plus, even if the payscale lurks around “token.”
• Scheherezade Scrolls: Oh dear! This market is not currently accepting submissions. No can do – it’s off the list, at least until its next submissions period.
• Torchlight Press: another solely print publication, so no chance to read up on what they’ve previously accepted. Their submissions policy is encouraging, though, so I decide to give it a go.
• Magic and Mayhem: at last! This publication is a fiction magazine aimed at kids aged 9+, with a definite fantasy slant (just look at its name!). This one isn’t just going on the list, it’s going on the top of the list.
• Gyrotechnica: ah, steampunk. Doesn’t really fit my story, so away it goes.
  Incredible Tales: Hmm, this looks great! The payscale is up there on a pro level, they publish absolutely heaps of stories of all sorts, and – oh. Hmm. That isn’t spelled correctly. And that – that bit doesn’t even make sense. What’s this about rights? That word looks suspiciously like “forever,” despite the extra numerals. You know what? I might just give this one a pass.

(Exaggerated, yes, and I doubt Duotrope would ever list such an obvious scam, but it’s worth noting that there are scam markets out there, and markets that are unreliable, so you need to be a bit careful. Read the fine text, see if you can find any warnings or recommendations from previous submitters)

• Aurora Borealis Magazine: The title made it seem a bit fancy and floaty, but the stories it publishes are pretty solid. Nothing quite as gruesome as “Agapanthus Pox,” but that doesn’t mean they won’t be willing to give my baby a go. I can’t lose anything by trying, after all.

So, I’ve now narrowed my options down to five possible markets. Excellent! Hopefully, at least one of them will love my story enough to let it grace their pages, whether they be paper or pixel. Unfortunately, before I get to that step, there’s another hurdle to cross …

Writing a Cover Letter

Here, I will momentarily put on my Editor Hat dons said rather dashing piece of headwear. I really hate it when authors send in a submission without any sort of cover letter, am happy when they send a submission with one, and get all joyful when the cover letter is particularly interesting, because that’s generally an indication that the writer has a good grasp on this whole literacy deal and may have therefore sent in a pretty good story.

So, what makes a good cover letter? You’ll probably get different advice from everyone you turn to, but I like them to be short, succinct, and preferably fun. A cover letter’s contents may include your name and address, a brief bio, a bibliography, and/or references to any writing awards you may have won. Be polite, professional, and wherever possible address the email to the person whom you know will be reading it. This information can sometimes be found on the Submissions or About Us page of a market’s website; if you can’t find it, though, a “Dear Sir/Madam” will usually suffice.

At last . . .

Now you’re ready to send it off! Pick your favourite market from your list of possibilities, email it to the publisher in the specified format, and wait. How long you wait depends on the particular market; some have an average response time of a few weeks, and some have an average response time of up to a year. You can use the wait to write, edit, polish, and maybe even do whatever it is you do when you’re not trying to become a published author. Whatever you do, don’t let yourself stagnate while you’re waiting for a response; don’t get sick of waiting a few days in and send you story someplace else (some markets do allow such simultaneous submissions, but it’s easier to go one-by-one); and don’t pester the editor for updates on your story’s progress through the system. If it’s a month or so past the expected response date, then you should email them for a check-up, but spamming will hinder rather than help you. Just relax, keep writing, and one day an email will appear in your inbox . . .

Dealing with Rejection and Accepting Acceptance

It is inevitable that some of your stories will be rejected, and it is likely that your very first submission will have a less than happy ending. When this happens, both etiquette and good sense demands that you on no account vent your anger on the editor who rejected your story (and also remember, s/he is not rejecting you, only your story). Believe it or not, word could easily get around that you’re no fun to work with, and that can damage your chances of publication – heck, hat, if I heard that Guy McGuyerson had cursed out my friend for rejecting his story, I’m hardly going to look on him favourably when something of his turns up in my inbox.

Instead, take a deep breath, and if you’re upset by the editor’s decision, go away from the computer until you’re in a better frame of mind. Then, you can choose either to respond to the rejection letter with thanks for considering your story and for any constructive criticism they gave, or go straight on to re-polishing the story and sending it to the next market on your list. Rinse, repeat, and always remember to keep up-to-date records on where and when you made your submissions. Double-ups are seldom fun and often embarrassing.

And if you’re accepted? Excellent! Be gracious in your success, thank the editor(s) for choosing your story, provide details for payment if applicable (alternatively, you may choose to donate your fee to the magazine), and wait to see your story in print. Again, though, don’t rest on your laurels too long: keep writing, keep polishing, and don’t think that you can sit back just because you have one writing credit to your name. Even if you take a break from submitting work, continue writing and honing your craft.

Now, get thee to Duotrope.com, and let us all know how you do!

-

_{“Agapanthus Pox and the Plague Unicorn” was rejected by all five of the author’s selected markets, much to her horror and abject humiliation. Caught in the delirium of failure, the author completely reworked the manuscript, utterly altering the story’s tone and contents. As a result, “Agapanthus Pox” is due to be published in Cyclopean Circles next August.}

Comment [7]

A Good and Happy Child is Evans’ first novel. I myself do not have, perhaps, the perception to say whether or not this shows; suffice it to say that, while it is entertaining, this book definitely has its weaknesses.

A Good and Happy Child is the story of George Davies, a new father who finds himself unable to hold or even touch his newborn son out of some paralysing and unknown fear. He turns to a psychiatrist to help him, and the supernatural trauma of his childhood slowly comes to light. The story of George’s childhood is a gripping one, involving Christian beliefs about the existence of evil and the devil, and I’ll admit that it had me hooked – I began the book thinking it would fill the gap after Pterry’s Nation, and ended up finishing the whole thing in one day. Evans, for the most part, weaves a world and a cast of characters that are continually engaging and makes sure that the suspicious reader is never quite sure who to trust.

For the most part, mind. Evans’ almost mechanical insistence on phonetically describing how a particular person pronounced a word directly after the relevant piece of dialogue without an exception pulled me out of the story every irritating time, and one particular scene near the end of the book was obviously composed for effect, at the expense of my suspension of disbelief and, it must be admitted, my disenchantment with the story’s end entirely. Of course, endings are many authors’ weakness, but nothing came after this particular break to lure me back into the story: I kept reading, the book ended, and that was that. In fact, not expecting an ending so soon, I almost missed it the first time around, although the book’s producers are to blame for that – seeing more text on the following page, I assumed the story would go on, but it was only the Author’s Note, tacked tightly on to the end of the manuscript.

Overall, and I say this still in the post-read glow, I enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I read a decent book which accepted the Christian, particularly the Catholic, faith as based on truth (and I say this as an atheist), and although I must disagree with some assumptions that world view takes, Evans never tried to ram his faith down my throat, nor completely denigrate other religions – well, apart from saying that tend to be infiltrated by or based on the ignorant worship of demons, heh. In the end, this was one of those books in which the journey is better than the destination, but whether the disappointment of the book’s conclusion is made up for by what comes before it, I shall leave for you to decide for yourself.

Comment [6]