Diary of a Mad Editor

When you are a young, less experienced and more foolish writer, there is a tendency to fire-off submissions prolifically and blindly without knowing anything about a literary publication.  Of course, what happens is you (more often than not) get a proportionally higher number of rejections than acceptances.  Now this could be because you’re not a very good writer, but more likely it’s because you didn’t bother researching your marketplace other than knowing the name of the publication and the address. 

I know I did this myself when I was a teenager.  I’d submit my work anywhere that would read an unsolicited submission.  Some of those magazines where simply out of my league.  Others published material completely different from what I was writing.  In those early years, while I would occasionally garner an acceptance, I mostly got rejected. 

Was it because I was a bad writer? No (Well … I’d like to think it was mostly “no”) — it was because I didn’t know anything about the vast majority of the places I sent my stuff to.

One day, I was fortunate enough to get a personal note from an editor who articulated the point to me that I was rejected because my piece was inappropriate for the magazine’s audience. It was a valuable lesson.

I’m not saying that you should necessarily tailor your writing to a specific publication.  I am saying that you should know enough about the marketplace to be aware of the places tailor-made for your own writing. 

For example if you happen to like to write poems about wall fountains (I’m thinking of “A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra” by Richard Wilbur), and you send it to a publication that only likes poems about garden fountains, you may not have much luck.

Okay, that’s an extreme example, but you see my point, don’t you? The literary marketplace has become very specialized to a large degree.  Material that would be seriously considered for The Kenyon Review would be scoffed at over at Zygote in My Coffee and vica versa.  And if you write sappy greeting card verse both of those publications would snicker at you and send your a big fat rejection slip to add to your collection.

There are a number of things you can do to help minimize rejection slips resulting from sending inappropriate material:

Read the Submission Guidelines

Editors prepare submission guidelines for a reason.  Not only will publication guidelines tell you how an editor likes a manuscript submitted, but they often reveal what an editor likes to read.   Sometimes just a few vague clues and sometimes a very detailed treatise on the subject.  Pay attention to this information.

Read a Sample Copy

The surest way to discover what a magazine publishes is to read a copy.

Ask for recommendations

Ask other writers for the names of appropriate places to publish your work.  Say you are part of a writing group or discussion forum.  Your fellow wordsmiths who’ve read your work can probably offer advice on the subject.  Also, occasionally if you add a polite request in a cover letter to an editor — something like: “If you find these poems unsuitable for you’re magazine, I’d really appreciate it if you recommend a few places that might be interested in them, etc. . . .”

Purchase a Literary Marketplace Directory

There’s The Writer’s Market (mostly for non-fiction articles), The Poet’s Market, The Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market and others all published by Writer’s Digest Books which breakdown all the listings by category and subject matter — all very well indexed.

or, better yet. . .

Duotrope.com

because it’s free and easily accessible from your computer and updated more often than annually published market directories that may often be out of date by the time they go to press.  Duotrope has the most up-to-date database of over 2000 markets for literary writing  you can find.

So, again, it’s not about tailoring your writing to a particular market (although, there are writers who are quite successful doing this) — it’s about going about the business of submitting what you do write in a smarter, more efficient way so that you save yourself a little grief.  And while it’s not an exact science, there is no doubt in my mind that more targeted submissions will result in a higher percentage of acceptances.