Is there a market for short stories?

writingcooperative.com - Literary Markets for Short Stories and Where to Find Them

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Literary Markets for Short Stories and Where to Find Them

Publishing short stories for beginners

So you’ve written some short stories and you are ready to share them with the world, or at least a handful of readers. How do you publish them? Unless you are a celebrity (a la Tom Hanks) or a big name author with a fanbase and sales record to your pen name, it is highly unlikely you are going to publish a book of previously unpublished short stories right out of the gate. This is no reason to despair for their is a gigantic literary marketplace for publishing individual short stories. If you are interested in publishing a book of short stories, and you are not a celebrity or big name author, the path to that is to first publish individual short stories in various literary markets and then make a collection. There are many publishers of short story collections outside of the big five publishing houses, including small and indie presses, and university presses. However, this article will focus on the publishing of individual short stories, which is the first step in a longer publishing journey.

What are literary markets?

Literary market is the broad umbrella term for the venues in which a writer can submit, sell, and have a piece of their creative work published. In terms of short stories the main literary markets are literary magazines, anthologies, contests, and non-literary publications that feature short stories. Literary magazines, sometimes known as literary journals, are publications that feature a collection of creative writing — often a mix of short stories, poetry, essays, and sometimes artwork — that comes out on a regular schedule. In the digital age many literary magazines are no longer hard copy magazines, but exist purely online; however hard copy literary magazine publications do still exist. Some are a hybrid blend of both. Literary magazines are most often labors of love of the editors that run them. Some literary magazines are attached to other institutions like universities or writing organizations. Anthologies, like literary magazines, are a collection of different creative writers’ work. Anthologies are usually larger collection than magazines, usually have a print and/or ebook run, are more sporadic in publication, and often themed. Anthologies can also be labors of love, but are often also connected to small and independent presses. From the writer’s side of things, literary magazines and anthologies are very similar. In fact, they were probably more dissimilar in the era before the internet. One of the big differences is in the marketing/selling side of the finished product. Magazines try to gain subscribers for multiple issues while anthologies are selling a standalone book. Contests for short stories are run by all sorts of organizations: literary magazines, newspapers, universities, writing organizations of large and local scale, and so many more. Some charge submission fees and some do not. Some have monetary prizes and some do not. Some have publication as part of the prize and some do not. Some are so prestigious the award itself is the prize and some are not. Some are some hitherto combination of the above elements.

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Other Markets. Back in the early to mid-twentieth century, short story publishing was in its heyday and a lot of trade or commercial magazines published short stories, such as Ladies’ Home Journal. Now a days most trade or commercial magazines have dropped fiction and poetry from their pages, but there are still the occasional publication or website that does put out calls for short stories. This is all to say that publications that are not usually homes for short fiction can be so you shouldn’t be too shocked if you happen to run across such a thing during a perusal of calls for submissions. The fact that these publications don’t have short stories is more unusual for modern times for they historically have.

Where to find literary markets

Luckily, many organizations have already done the hard work of compiling lists of various literary markets and calls for submissions for short stories. There are ones behind paywalls and ones that are freely accessible. This list will focus on the free ones. The Writer’s Market. This resource book (although there is also an online presence now) has been around since 1921 and has been called “the Bible for writers” but you can also think of it as the yellowpages of literary markets. A new edition is published annually with its pages filled with all sorts of venues for writers to sell all sorts of creative writing with a special section for short stories. Check out your location public library to score The Writer’s Market without having to buy it. Most public libraries should stock this as it is a pretty standard and long-held resource. Newpages.com. If you have not checked out NewPages yet, you definitely should as it is a great resource for writers chock full of all sorts of goodies. Some of those goodies include a list of recent calls for submission, a list of recent writing contests, and a database of literary magazines that can be searched by format and genre. Submission Grinder. The submission grinder is the ultimate, free literary magazine database created by the team of the Diabolical Plots literary magazine. (It is in vein with another, longer-standing database called Duotropes that is completely behind a paywall. Diabolical Plots is donation run.) It has an immense list of literary markets, tons of ways to search and sort them, statistics on submission rates and turn around time, as well as a submission tracker. You can use all or some of the features, again, for completely free. The only caveat to this database is that due to being relatively new, it is still a growing organism in terms of importing all literary markets and in having accurate statistics. However, if you use it, you can help improve it. Email lists. There are email lists you can be on to receive recent calls for submissions and contest postings straight to your inbox. These tend to be more manageable lists than all database options and when the message shows up in your email gives you a kick in the butt to get submitting. If you are overwhelmed by the options in the full databases like NewPages and Submission Grinder, and the need to screen them yourself, these are a good alternative, or supplementary, option.

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Two email lists to get consider getting started with are Freedom with Writing and Authors Publish. Freedom with Writing only sends literary markets that pay writers. Authors Publish only sends publications they judge legitimate, are open to everyone, and do not charge submission fees. To subscribe to either, just go to their websites and enter your email.

Conclusion

You can choose to only pursue and peruse certain types of literary markets and submissions calls, or you can mix it up. Pursuing calls for submissions on NewPages or via email lists helps you be able to keep up with the ever-revolving submission windows of various markets. And, as stated above, are often more manageable than databases and are pre-vetted. However, anything based on calls for submissions misses literary markets with year-round, rolling submissions. Databases also give you more power of what factors you want to sort your markets by. I find a mix of all the above resources gives me the best of all the options with little downside.

writingcooperative.com - Literary Markets for Short Stories and Where to Find Them

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