Second in an occasional series about literary
publication and promotion
A couple of weeks
ago I began this series with information about finding critique groups to help
us write the best stories possible. (And as a former journalist, I include
nonfiction in the term “stories.” Because writing is writing is writing.
Right?)
Today I’m
following up with information, both from this summer’s ArmadilloCon writing
workshop and other sources, for getting those stories in front of an audience.
This post will focus most heavily on publishing outlets for short pieces, with
further information on book length works to
follow.
Before anybody can
say, but I don’t write short pieces, let me say, don’t diss the shorts.
Consider that the Great American Novel (or any country’s great novel) can take
years to write and years more to find a publisher, for those of us who don’t
already have a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize backing us. While we’re honing that
really long piece, we can start building an audience for it with shorter forms.
Consider also that
a novel may grow from a piece of short fiction, a novel can grow. Or a book
length work-in-progress can spawn characters and situations that don’t fit in
the longer work but deserve their own place. We may even find we love the short
pieces enough to write an entire collection of them.
I’ve written
before about publishing sources for short fiction, but here’s a refresher of the biggest, all accessible online:
Duotrope’s Digest, New Pages,
Submissions Grinder and Ralan.
(By the way, please resist the urge to self-publish, especially on free sites, unless
you’re an established writer who simply wants to maintain a presence between
longer works. Publishing a work, even on our own websites or blogs, will usually
count as a “first publication” and may limit our ability to find additional markets for the work. And while it’s nice to get our words out there, it’s even nicer to get them on a site
that has some editing credibility. Nicer still if we can get paid for them.)
Duotrope is still
my favorite source for short fiction publishers. Yes, it’s a pay-for site: $50
for a year’s subscription (or try a trial subscription free, or pay as you go for $5 per month). Its listings of more than 5,800 sites for fiction, nonfiction and
poetry are hard to beat.
That said, other sources, including J.W. Alden’s, list free alternatives to Duotrope, especially for genre writers. Still, I haven’t
found anything to compete with the way Duotrope handles its statistics: length,
genre, topic, pay rate, response time, acceptance rate, and more.
Duotrope’s closest
(free) contender is the Submissions Grinder, whose search engine strongly resembles Duotrope’s. I have used the
Submissions Grinder and found that its listing of publishers has a significant, although not exclusive, overlap
with Duotrope.
Of particular
value to writers of genre fiction is Ralan, maintained
by Ralan Conley, and aimed at writers of fantasy and science fiction. New this
month is its listing of “under 1K, poetry, audio and twitter markets”.
For exclusively literary writers, try New Pages,
whose classified pages also list writing workshops and conferences.
