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 Kevin Lucia concludes his blog series The Path to Publication with Part Two of "Closing."
1. Find potential markets. Duotrope’s Digest is a great online resource listing thousands of markets, with reports, stats, and other data. It also has a submission tracker and a monthly email update. Best part, it’s free. Predators & Editors, (a must booklink for the serious writer), has a magazine list that keeps track of bad reports, broken links, and other reports on potential magazine markets. Forums such as Absolute Write have an extensive market list as well. Ralan.com also lists magazines in the speculative market. Not a web surfing person? Then the following titles are must haves, and are easily found on Amazon.com: Literary Marketplace , Writer’s Market, Christian Writer’s Market, Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, and the Poet’s Market.
2. Know your own rung on the ladder. Most markets don’t require a synopsis or query letter first, but for first time writers, you may want to avoid those that do. They cater to experienced folks who are often selling on “name”, which more than likely, if you’re like me and lots of other folks, you haven’t got yet. Focus on the markets who want a cover letter and the full story.
3. Find two or three magazines that fit your story’s genre. Note whether or not they accept “simultaneous submissions”. If they do, it means they don’t care if you send your work to them and someone else at the same time, as long as you inform them if your work gets accepted elsewhere. If they say they DON’T accept simultaneous subs, you may be tempted to think, “C’mon…how will they ever know?”
My advice? Don’t mess around with it. The risks are high if you get caught out, because when you’re trying to stand out amongst thousands of other writers, you don’t want ANY smears on your name. The same holds for publications who do or do not accept reprints, and even if publications do accept them, show discretion. Recently, Coach Culbertson, editor of Coach’s Midnight Diner, advised me concerning this issue. As a writer, you don’t want to be known as someone who palms off the same story to lots of different people.
4. Follow all the format guidelines. Many publications link to or reference William Shunn’s Manuscript Format. Some publications request very specific guidelines, so follow them. Not doing so is a recipe for failure. If they say send submissions by snail mail (regular mail) only, then do so. If they say paste the story into the body of an email, do so.
5. Write a cover letter. Here’s a basic yet solid guide to follow: First paragraph, surmise the story concisely, giving just enough for the readers to understand the direction the story is taking. Second paragraph, any REAL relevant biographical data that you understand won’t get your story published if it stinks, as well as any relevant non-fiction credits. Third paragraph, your fiction credits, and any writing contests won.
* as a side note: make cover letters as simplistic and straightforward as possible. Imagine this: the person reading your story has slogged through ten stories bad enough to burn their eyes out, and they really don’t care if you love their magazine, won the fourth grade writing contest, or have dreamed of publication since you were ten years old. With as little embellishment as possible, they want to know who you are, what your story is, and what you’ve done already. This was probably the best thing I learned while reading for The Harper Palate, because I was one of those tired readers. An annoying, self-important cover letter made it harder to read the attached story objectively. This is easy to do inadvertently, especially because we are – rightly so – proud of our early achievements. For more on the benefits of reading for a literary journal, see Deanna Hershiser’s recent blog on reading for Relief.
6. Keep a list of where your stories are, where they’ve been, and where you’d like to send them. I’m old fashioned, so I do this in a notebook. However, there are plenty of electronic sources. Here’s a great blog by Relief’s Heather von Doehren on maintaining a database for your submissions and writing.
Despite all this talk about the nuts and bolts, the last and best advice I can give is something I’ve already said: sit down, make some goals and plans, and then just write. I’ve seen too many talented individuals sputter into nothing, simply because they couldn’t make that step, which, in my opinion, is the most important one of all.
Happy writing.
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Kevin Lucia is currently seeking an MA in Creative Writing from Binghamton University, is a born-again Christian who teaches 9-10th grade English and acts as a freelance columnist for The Press & Sun Bulletin. If you can’t get enough of Kevin here at Relief, you can find him at kevinlucia.net, as well as on MySpace and ShoutLife.
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