In Today’s Journal
* Submitting Manuscripts to Traditional Venues
Note: Whether you’re submitting your manuscripts to traditional magazine publishers or looking to begin your own magazine and invite submissions yourself, this post and the next are all about my personal best practices in publishing.
I intended to cram all of this into a single post, but it became too long so I split it into two parts: submitting manuscripts and inviting manuscripts.
Submitting Manuscripts to Traditional Venues
If you’re looking to submit your manuscripts to traditional venues vs. self-publishing them (you can still do that after rights revert), two quick things:
- In this context, I’m talking primarily about submitting short manuscripts—short stories, essays, or poetry—to traditional paper or online magazines.
- Also, this isn’t about following guidelines. That’s a no-brainer. Always follow the guidelines.
Otherwise I have two bits of advice:
- Respect yourself as a writer, and
- Respect and defend your work.
Writers are often known for the company their work keeps, so defend your work zealously.
If your stories, essays, or poems are accepted and published in a ‘zine that typically showcases shoddy, amateurish work, your reputation as a storyteller, essayist, or poet will suffer.
Regardless of the pay rate a magazine offers, always read a few issues before you decide whether to submit your work. Not only to get an idea for the type of content they publish, but for the technical (not reader taste) quality of that content.
Here are my personal criteria for submitting stories to magazine publishers (and for that matter, to traditional publishers of longer fiction):
1. Naturally, magazines and anthologies that pay professional rates and/or higher royalties are attractive. But for me, the quality of the content is just as attractive, so
- If a mag offers pro rates or better while publishing amateurish works that are not technically sound—for fiction, think hooks, openings, cliffhangers, action-and-dialogue sequences, etc.—I might submit a story for a quick payday, but I won’t be a regular contributor.
- If a mag offers less than pro rates and/or royalties but contains technically sound stories, I’ll submit work to them all day long and twice on Sunday.
- Of course if the magazine pays less than pro rates AND features amateurish stories, I’ll won’t go anywhere near them. You shouldn’t either.
2. If the publisher insists sight-unseen that they have the right to edit the content of an accepted story (i.e., anything beyond a simple copyedit to correct spelling, wrong words, and punctuation), that’s a hard pass. Period.
Be wary, and ask their policy if necessary. Writers’ guidelines seldom mention the publication’s take on editing. Again, respect and defend your work. Nobody has a right to intrude on the content of your characters’ story or your own tried and true process.
I once encountered a magazine whose submission guidelines stated that “all works must have been rewritten at least ten times and submit to editing by our staff” to be considered for publication.
Okay. First, how would they know whether or how many times the author rewrote a work?
With that silly demand, they’re either forcing the author to rewrite or to lie about having rewritten. I won’t do either of those, so I gave them a hard pass. I don’t feel at all bad about that. Places like that can get along fine without my (or your) submissions.
Even if that particular magazine wasn’t defunct (it is), they would have found more than enough gullible writers out there to fill the pages of their magazine. Again, respect yourself and value your work.
3. Finally, especially in the case of magazines, the publisher’s response time, payment policy (I’m not talking about pay rates and royalties here), and their rights reversion policy are biggies for me.
- If the response time is longer than 3 months, either their knowledge of publishing or their work ethic are lacking. For me, that’s a hard pass.
- If they pay “on publication” or later instead of “on acceptance,” again, that’s a hard pass. I did the work. I deserve to be paid on delivery.
- Watch for rights grabs: If the venue is buying the manuscript outright so that once I cash the check they own the IP, that’s a hard pass.
- And if my IP rights to the accepted story don’t revert to me automatically on publication OR if the reversion happens longer than 1 year after publication (I prefer no longer than 6 months), that’s also a hard pass.
(More on all of this tomorrow from the other side of the publishing fence.)
All of that said, I only publish with venues that offer an actual contract. Good fences create good neighbors.
Now, I’m not saying you should be nasty or mean with publishers. Someday circumstances might change and you might decide to submit work to them. So conduct yourself as a professional.
But always respect yourself and enforce your own standards, and always respect, value, and defend your work.
Back tomorrow with some guidelines regarding “Becoming a Traditional Venue.” Talk with you then.