Since my last article was about upcoming contests and
publications looking for submissions, I thought this would be a good follow-up,
especially for keeping up with events throughout the year (and years to come).
While I can recommend the Writers’
Market: Novelist and Short Story Market and Poet’s Market books (and Guide
to Literary Agents, if any of you are that far along on your publishing
endeavours), there’s a new literary database that can help you find publishers
looking for submissions for magazines or contests. It’s not that well known,
but once you check it out, you’ll be hooked forever.
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| www.zazzle.com |
Another amazing thing about DuoTrope is that although it
lists every publisher, it will notify you via e-mail, if you’d like, when
markets open up for submissions. How great is that? You can also choose to
browse for markets that are currently taking works, but getting an e-mail
reminds you that you should probably check the site out and get your work
together. It’s a constant reminder that you can be sending your work out—all
year ‘round!
In addition, once you’re on the site, looking up publishers
is a lot of fun. When you’ve gotten everything sorted to your liking by what
kind of writing they take, their acceptance and pay rate, and many other
categories, it’s time to look at their catalogue page. It tells all the basics
of how long submissions must be, what to include in cover letters, and how many
submissions they allow at a time. They also give information on what dates they
are taking work through, whether to send work electronically or through the
mail, and how long their response times usually are. There will also be
information on themed anthologies (if they are doing one), so you know not to
send just anything to them during that time. Their website and contacts are
also all linked and listed, as well as PDFs of an older issue so you can browse
the work that they usually take beforehand. It’s very organised and helps you
get your submission right when sending it.
I think the most helpful thing about DuoTrope, however, is
the real feedback you get on the
publishers. You get to manage your submissions via the site and put in where
you have sent work. Once you have heard back with either an acceptance or
rejection, you log into your portal and report the data. This helps determine
how long the response time to a submission usually is. It also has you put in
if you submitted fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, and what length and
genre-type. Other writers looking to submit, say, historical fiction to a
certain publisher, then can see what the response time and acceptance rate for
historical works are. There is even a section that you can put in if your
rejection was a form letter or a personal rejection letter. Essentially, you
are helping other writers know what they’re about to walk into, as are others
letting you know before you start sending your work.
DuoTrope can get addicting and you can start realising that
you’ve got work sent out to a bunch of places at once (most always use
Submittable, so it’s easy to just click on that about once a week and see if
any more of your submissions have gone into review). Then, you’ll get an e-mail
from a publisher about a month later, and more likely than not, you’ll have
forgotten you had sent work to them. Just make sure to keep a list and know
where all your work is. It makes it more helpful for you when trying to send
more out, etc. Plus, you’ll feel more organised and in control of your work!
So, what are you waiting for? Go give DuoTrope a chance and
sign-up for it! I guess it’s true what they’ve been saying all over writing
forums and blogs lately: Once you go DuoTrope, you don’t go back.
By Erin Sinnott
