So you want to get published.
A reference for submitting short stories to magazines and online publications.
God bless you, because you’re officially crazy. A true lover of pain. Nothing burns like a rejection letter. (Until you realize there’s more than one kind of rejection letter, that is.) Yet nothing gives joy and vindication like being accepted. (In your face, haters!)
I’ve had multiple short stories in varying publications, some for money, some not. Here’s how I find where to submit, and how I query.
Once you’ve got your story buffed, polished, and well spat-on, (that means edited, brutally proof-read & critiqued by trusted beta-readers, and edited again), where do you go?
There are two main sites to peruse for publications seeking submissions: Duotrope at duotrope.com and The (Submission) Grinder at thegrinder.com.
Both are useful. Personally, I find Duotrope easier to navigate and use, but it has a downside — a $5 per month subscription charge. The (Submission) Grinder on the other hand is completely free. Both generally offer the same services, such as submission trackers, search functions, drill down, and ‘The Brag’.
*Note* These sites also list places to submit novellas and novels. This How-to is about short story submissions only.
Let’s submit a story, yes?
After searching, contemplating deeply and (if available) reading some of a publications previously published work, I’ve chosen a publication to try submitting my newest short story to.
Carefully read over the submission guidelines. This means following them to a T. Creativity is not wanted in this regard, you save that for your writing. If the guidelines require you to make the font pink and the background blue, then that is what you do. Most publications will ask for Standard Manuscript Format, but not all.
Read. The. Guidelines.
I cannot say this enough.
There are neither excuses, nor forgiveness, for screwing up the submissions guidelines.
The Query Letter. That phrase alone will make some shudder.
There’s debate out there on what type of query to put out for short story submissions. These are: the Formal query and the Bare Bones query.
The Formal type is the same format as when you are querying an agent — detailed. (This subject deserves its own article.)
The Bare Bones is just that. Your contact info, story name, word count, and goodbye.
I’ve been using the ‘bare bones’ for short story queries. Publications seeking short stories don’t need a story synopsis, my publication history, a summary of my amazing life, or my cat’s name. (Wait. Everybody needs to know about my cat.) Acquiring editors just want to read your story!
So, unless otherwise specified in the submission guidelines (they may ask for a short bio, which means any previous publication experience. Self-pubbed stories you post on Medium, a blog, fanfiction.com, etc. do not count. A publication also may request a brief story summary, and so on,) this is what I do:
That’s it.
My work will stand on it’s own, or it won’t.
The guidelines for this particular anthology asked for something slightly different than what you see above. (They asked for the anthology name in the email title. This example is to show the Bare Bones query.)
The most important thing to remember when submitting is that so long as you’ve got everything else right (that means correct grammar, minimal typos, a plot), editor story selection all comes down to taste. An editor simply may not like the story, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Submit somewhere else, and resume praying.
*I really did submit The Organist to the above anthology. Because it’s a paying market, the odds of my being accepted are not good. An anthology like this will accept perhaps twelve to fifteen stories. They will receive hundreds of submissions. Do the math. May the odds be ever in your favor!
Love y’all!
