Hi all - just getting started. I have a few stories ready to go but would rather not wait months to break my cherry. :)
I've skimmed a few magazine guidlines so far and was wondering if it would be faster to just ask you guys.
Which magazines do you know accept SS's for sure? Ranked by quality woul dbe great too.
Thanks so much! I think a few of us would really benefit from this.
(ps: I know that Geist and Prairie Fire do. Grain and Descant don't).
You can check this if you sign up for Duotrope, I believe.
There's really too many to list. You're better off signing up for Duotrope, as Renfield suggested. $5/month. It'll be the best investment you'll make.
See this article by Richard Thomas. It will help immeasurably. Definitely go with Duotrope.
Also, note his stance on simultaneous submissions. In the comments section, he also linked to a blog he wrote about it.
Has anyone ever really had a problem of too many acceptance letters?
Well, I believe Richard Thomas' argument for endorsing simultaneous submissions is it's incredibly unlikely a story of yours will be accepted by two different mags at the same time. In that case, you're likely Stephen King status, and it doesn't matter who you piss off.
He does set out guidelines for being careful, such as staggering your simultaneous submissions by average response time so as to give mags sufficient time to respond, and if someone accepts your story, you simply write to the others, saying, "An opportunity has arisen for this story, and I must respectfully withdraw it from submission to your publication," or something flowery like that.
Basically, know what bases to cover, cover them, and you'll be fine.
I get what he is saying, and that is all fine, but what I'm wondering is if getting accepted by more then one place is really a problem? Does this happen everyone once in a while?
i'd say it's about 75/25 in favor of simultaneous. yes, duotrope is well worth it. even if it's just the $5 for one month to do research. if magazines have a simultaneous policy, there's not a problem withdrawing all outstanding submissions. just do it immediately. they won't begrudge you. i've rarely had two at the same time, e.g., within 24 hours of each other. very rare.
the previous links posted should help as well. let me know if you have any questions.
Guys, thanks for replying, but I really don't think my question is being understood.
@Tim - I'm asking a literal question, not debating.
@Richard - I get you are (provided it is done carefully), in favor of simultaneous submissions, and you have went over a lot of details of this in Storyville. I've already read all/virtually all of your Storyville articles. You even wrote one semi inspired my thread wondering if it was worth it to submit short stories. I think you are probably right on all stuff regarding s.s. you've put there.
That being said, does anyone know of someone who attempted simultaneous submissions (sounds like a band name btw) when they weren't supposed to, and was double accepted? If you can tell me details/who that would be interesting, but I'm just wondering if this has happened, ever.
There's not a huge occurance of people having the same story accepted so quickly that the writer cannot withdraw in time, but it happens. And it happens more often if you aren't tracking your subs, which is another thing you can do on Duotrope.
Actually, I think Richard had a story get accepted twice with in a 24 hour period -- Didn't you? Or am I thinking of someone else?
Ah, I see what Dwayne is saying. YES, I have broken the rules and submitted a story to more than one market at a time that had a "no simultaneous submissions" policy and then had a story accepted. I think I may have even had a story ACCEPTED to two "NSS" markets at the same time (I chose the "better" one). Here's how to handle it.
Let's say you have stories out to 10 markets, for example, and 4 are NSS. You figure, shoot, they're all 1%, I'll never get in. Then BAM, one does. Now what? The chickenshit way is to let the other NSS pieces ride, relying on the odds. You'll never get into ANOTHER one, right?. If you do? Then you're really fucked. You may be on your way to getting blackballed. It happens.
The way I'VE handled it is this way—send a brief note withdrawing your submission. You're doing that for the other six markets that are SS anyway. BUT, you have to chose your wording carefully. If you just withdraw it, they may say, "Hey, idiot, we don't have a SS policy." (I've accidentally withdrawn stories from places I THOUGHT were SS, but were NSS). You can just say, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I must have missed that, my apologies. Noted for next time." They probably won't make a big deal out of it. DO NOT DO IT TWICE. Back to that message. You're now sweating it with three cool markets, all NSS. What do you say? Here are some options:
"I'd like to withdraw my story. I'm going to put it in a collection, and I want to keep it unpublished. I apologize." (They may get mad, a little bit, but hey, you're a big publishing author!)
"I'd like to withdraw my story. I'm not happy with it, I want to work on it some more." (You look like an amatuer, but at least it feels ditzy, not on purpose).
"I'd like to withdraw my story. I'm not happy with it, I'm going to expand it into a longer piece. I think I need to flesh out the characters, the setting isn't where I want it to be, the confict is not fully addressed." (Something like this, at least you LOOK like you know what you're doing. You're a perfectionist! They may not get mad at all).
"I'd like to withdraw my story. Thank you." (Don't say anything. They may not either.)
DO NOT say, "I'd like to withdraw my story as it has been accepted elsewhere." They WILL get mad. They WILL tell you about their policy. Apologize, if you did this by accident, like I did, and say you didn't see that in their guidelines, and you're sorry.
Most times if you're nice, they won't get too upset. But do be careful. If you say, for example, that you are killing a story, and it pops up someplace big and they see it, they may not like you very much.
Also, try not to do this repeatedly at the same market. I think I HAVE had to do this for one or two places. It does NOT help my reputation. I have, in fact, started to NOT send stories to several NSS at the same time. If you want to do that, just target the fastest NSS first. Then wait. Clarkesworld, for example, is very fast, and a NSS market I think. Hit them first. Same with F&SF. But really, if you are sending ALL of your submissions to 1% (or less) markets, you won't get busted. Where I SCREWED UP was that I was ALSO submitting to some 10-15% acceptance rate markets and got in THERE instead. Whoops.
Did that address your concerns, Wayne?
I have to say I have actually learned a lot from this. I've never really done simultaneous submissions. I can see now that I haven't been operating as efficiently as I could. Waiting months to resubmit somewhere else has been a drag. I hadn't really thought about doing it otherwise.
Thanks again, Richard. You're a wizard.
@Richard - Yeah, I was just wondering if it was a common problem (car crash) vs. rare, but horrible (house hit by a meteor).
I'd say it's probably somewhere between... I can't think of a good metaphor that lands between car crashes and meteors hitting houses though.
Hey everyone thanks for all the answers and discussion. I knew this would be a hot topic, and useful for being more efficient. I will def. look into Duotrope to make this all easier for me.
happy to help. i think the WORST thing that could happen is that you get into one really great market and then burn a bridge with another. that would suck. but, with 1% acceptance rates, i wonder with some of these places if i'll EVER get in. i've been rejected 15 times by some of these bastards.
Well even a 1% doesn't have to mean an even distribution. Who ever is putting the first round in the slush pile could just keep throwing you over for some minor style choice they don't even have listed, or just not care for your writing.
oh for sure, dwayne. and who exactly is reading submissions? the editor or some slush-pile intern? the same people issue to issue? no idea. it takes a lot for me to give up on a market.
I can see that, but maybe you should lay off them for a while? If I am understanding what you are saying has happened to you at them.
if i thought it wasn't a good fit, i would, for sure, Dwayne. but i keep re-reading the guidelines, for example at a place like Shimmer, or Shock Totem, and i read their issues and my work would DEFINITELY fit into those universes. like i said, you never know who is reading the slush. my stories always find a home, so if they can't recognize the genius, then screw them, right? :-)
I meant if you get turned down a lot from one place without seeming to make it out of the slush pile, it might be more practical to direct your energy towards some place else for a while. Slushing seems like a job that changes fairly often.
yeah, i disagree. i've heard enough stories to not give up. a friend tried to get into the Missouri Review for years, thought they hated him. they finally took his 25th submission, which ended up making it into Best American Short Stories, edited by Stephen King. they said, "We've loved your work for years." He was shocked.
So, unless it's a bad submissions, romance story to a horror rag, or you feel like you haven't gotten close, don't stop. Take, Shimmer for instance. They've rejected 15 of mine. But I've gotten a LOT of nice comments, "this was close" or "really loved this but..." same with Shock Totem. if i hadn't gotten those notes, maybe i'd think about it. but i also haven't gotten any personal notes from Barrelhouse or Juked or The Missouri Review, but i won't give up. i believe i can crack the code. it's never a waste of energy. what's another 5 minutes of submitting. i've got it down to a science.
I understand what you are saying, but that seems like it could just as likely be someone who liked you moved into a position to get the story in. Of course I don't expect to live to be real old so I hate the idea of wasting even that five minutes.
The less that 1% markets, by definition, are going to hand out a lot of rejections, I don't take it as a waste of time (I chase Richard all over Duotrope and I don't think I'd find much disagreement if I said he was more talented than I) because I make sure I have a system in place. But I get what you're saying, Dwayne, but I think if writers were a breed of people who gave up easily, sites like this wouldn't exist for long.
If you're tired of chasing the white whales, a good alternative is to resign yourself to inevetably be found hanged in the supply closet of your local cubicle farm, your feet dangling over crisp hardcopies of your various unpublished works.
@Renee - I pretty much think anyone trying to do this isn't going to stop trying.
@Ren - You need to get out more. Or something.
Well, I was honestly suggesting something inbetween Renfield's office space meets Lovecraft and Renee's winners never stop. Maybe, "I'll try again in the winter and use that five minutes to look for other markets."
Sure, Dwayne. I mean, a lot of what we do is guesswork, no matter how much research and "science" we put behind it. You take your shots. If it's a market I really want to get into, I have to keep trying. If I let rejections or low acceptance rates stop me, well, then I'd never send anything out, and I'd never have gotten into Shivers VI (Cemetery Dance) with Stephen King and Peter Straub. What's that saying, "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity?" or something like that. And then, there's this:
Always. Be. Closing.
Well, I was honestly suggesting something inbetween Renfield's office space meets Lovecraft and Renee's winners never stop. Maybe, "I'll try again in the winter and use that five minutes to look for other markets."
I don't ONLY sub to less than 1% markets, that's what I was talking about when I said I had a system in place that kept subbing to those markets from feeling like a waste of time. If you're writing a lot, and subbing on a teired system (taking pay/acceptance rates/response times into consideration and staggering) then you've always got a lot out to a lot of different places, and you're always getting a steady stream of rejections and acceptances. That's a strategy that works for me (granted I haven't been subbing much lately because I've been focusing on a longer work and prepping for the Books and Booze event).
