Writing Blog Number 2

20240124 Finding Publishing Markets

Finding Publishers

Another question from a reader!

You’ve had so much published! Congratulations. Where do you find your publishers?

Fair question. This is going to be purely about traditional publishers, small to large. Self-publishing, I am not your person.

Early on, I had to bite the bullet and enter competitions. It’s how my first novel was picked up. Competitions can be found with a simple Google search. The thing about competitions is that it gives you three things:
1) a chance to write to prescription, which is important when submitting;
2) getting used to rejection, which can be easier for many people when it is a competition as opposed to just being rejected, because you know there has to be one winner; &
3) if you do well, getting used to being edited by an external person you do not know.
Competitions are a place many people find non-threatening because, mentally, you know there will only be one winner, and your odds are low it’s going to be you.

Next…

I need to put something in here. Do not submit a novel first. Most publishers, even if they are interested in your work, will not risk such a huge investment as a novel if that is all you have done. They need to make sure you can be edited without fighting the process, and that you can write an ending to a work. Most trad publishers sort of demand you have at least one short story published they can look at and talk to that publisher. Yes, publishers talk. If you get a bad reputation with one, you will have a bad reputation with many of them. It’s simple.

So, now that I’ve said that, short stories.

Magazines used to be the go-to market, but the number available has shrunk in the past 20 years. They tend to be specialist – horror, science fiction, fantasy, romance, Western and capital-L Literature are all out there – but get hundreds of submissions every week. Tough markets, but go for it. Rejections don’t hurt, and so long as you don’t annoy them, you can try again at some point. Annoy them? you may ask. Send them work that is not polished. Use AI. Keep asking if they’ve read it yet. Sending an obnoxious response email after being rejected. So many ways to annoy a publisher…

So, nowadays, it is anthologies that are the best places for short story sales. Again, they are specialist, but even more so. Not just horror, but horror about bugs, for example (yes, I appeared in that one). Not just romance, but romance set in the 1980s. Not just science fiction, but dystopian steampunk. Not just Western, but one featuring a sheriff. What this means is that while there are going to be a heap of submissions, there won’t be as many because these niche topics are not as broad.

Where do I find magazines and short story anthologies?

My main go-to is Duotrope  . I pay the yearly subscription fee, which means I get a list every week of anthologies coming up that are closing, so I don’t have to search the site as often. But searching the site is perfectly valid, and something I do every month. It also has a submission tracker, but I don’t use that. I just use it to find markets. You can choose which market types you want, by the way.

The second one is my daily emails from this group  . This covers a lot of journals and stuff that Duotrope might miss. It also covers the releases from the Horror Tree, which I used to use, but their emails have become messy and I had a falling out with the owner. (This got so bad, by the way, when he found out we were in an anthology together, he told the publisher either him or me. The publisher chose me because I wasn’t being a dick. The guy has since apologised to said publisher… but not me.)

The final is an irregular email from Authors Publish  . The issue with this one is that they have only one or two publishers at a time and half are looking for books. However, they have a better non-fiction reach, and the collator really makes sure they are above board and that they produce good quality publications.

Then there is doing a Google search. Just be careful you are looking at recent ones and they are legitimate. That’s all.

Now, once you’ve found a publisher, what next? Well, on Duotrope and Authors Publish, they only advertise legitimate publishers; the writers group does not. So, I would recommend going to one of the writer beware websites to check if the publisher is listed there as a “watch out” prospect.

That’s it. When it comes to the novels, I found all my publishers but one on Duotrope. The one I didn’t, I’d had 2 short stories published by them already, they had an internal call for books from those already published by them, and I got lucky.

One final thing – any publisher who approaches you… AVOID! No legitimate publisher will do that. None.

Good luck!
Of course, you do you, though. This is just where I sell.