I was looking through some of my older posts recently and realized there were a few submission lists that could probably use a refresh. Sure enough, when I looked through them I found some markets that have closed, and realized they were missing a few that I’ve discovered since writing them. So if there’s anyone out there with work looking for a home, here are some potentially useful lists:
…all three now up-to-date and accurate, at least for the next little while. I also figured, since I’m in researching markets mode, I’d round up a few others that folks can send their work to no matter when they stumble across this post. Here are some literary journals not featured on any of those lists above that generally stay open for submissions year-round and have been around for at least 10 years (which means the odds are good they’re not going anywhere anytime soon).
This past weekend was the last multi-day conference on my agenda for 2025, the Lit Youngstown Fall Literary Festival. It was my first time attending this conference, as well as my first visit to Youngstown, and I was thoroughly impressed and delighted by both the event and the city. Similar to other events that I went to this year like the In Your Write Mind Conference, it featured a huge variety of panels that covered topics ranging from craft advice to marketing strategies for authors to how to get published. I presented a panel on tips for submitters, which is a topic I'm always happy to geek out about. What was extra cool was that I got to share the panel space with the team from Chestnut Review, another publication that I very much enjoy and respect, and it was very cool to hear how they approach the editorial process.
While I spent much of my conference time in the book fair representing Scribble House and After Happy Hour (and having some excellent conversations with the folks walking through, including a chance to geek out about Appalachian folklore and the ruins around Mérida), I was able to sneak away to hear a few other folks talk. My brain is mostly focused on the book publicity and marketing process at the moment, so that's what I focused on. I figured I'd pass along some of the things I learned in case it's also helpful insight for other folks out there!
I completely understand why writers might find the process of submitting overwhelming. It's not a lack of resources. I'd say it's the opposite problem. There are so many newsletters and online listings for finding publishers that it can be hard to even figure out where to start.
Currently, I’d say there’s three clear top publisher databases: Duotrope, Submission Grinder, and Chill Subs. All three have built-in submission trackers, which means they provide user-reported stats along with info on submission guidelines and other relevant details. I've used all of these sites at various points but I wouldn't say that any one of them is perfect, or even the definitive best option for every writer. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of each site and which situations, genres, or types of writers it's the best for.
I've resisted the idea of self-publishing a book-length manuscript for many years. Not out of any sense that traditional publishing is “better”—it's more that the process of self-publishing has always felt a bit overwhelming. What I've realized recently, though, is that I already use a lot of the same skills for my other projects, like producing the issues for After Happy Hour and publishing the prompt journals for Scribble House. This has brought me around to a new outlook on self-publishing my fiction. Yes, the process is a lot of work, but I'm slowly gaining confidence in my ability to do it, and am tentatively building toward self-publishing a book in the first half of 2026.
With this new goal on my radar, I've been doing a lot of research lately into all of those skills beyond just writing well that you need to be a successful self-published author, and figured it might be helpful for other folks contemplating this question. As I see it, there are four big-picture steps beyond the writing stage that each require their own sets of skills.
“Don't judge a book by its cover” is a nice thought, especially as it's applicable to, say, other people. When it comes to actual books, though, readers absolutely do judge books by their cover, and while this might be a hot take, I don't think that's a problem. I would argue it's the whole reason the cover exists in the first place. Not just to entice readers (though that's part of it) but also to inform them about the kind of story they're getting into and help them decide if it's something they'd enjoy reading.
This has become especially important in the modern era of publishing. It's a great thing that self-publishing has taken down some barriers that used to stop writers from sharing their work. That said, it also means readers can't count on a book being well-written or telling a complete, interesting story just because it's been put out into the world. These days, readers can't be sure whether a human even wrote the damn thing. If your book's cover is pixelated and grainy, or looks obviously AI generated, that doesn't inspire confidence in readers that what's inside will be worth their time.
I can tell that a writing conference was worth the attendance when I leave feeling slightly overwhelmed by all the new info stuffed into my brain. Which was how I felt leaving the most recent In Your Write Mind workshop last weekend, enough so I needed a bit of time to let my mind settle before going back over my notes to pick out the gems.
This is probably going to be a slightly more random-feeling blog post than my usual because the topics covered at IYWM were pretty varied, and the notes I took on them were filtered through the lens of “shit I find neat and/or useful”. But I also figured I probably wouldn't be the only one to find said shit neat and/or useful, and putting them together into a blog post seemed like a useful way to trick myself into actually going through my notes before they just got shoved into a folder and forgotten about—so here we are. Read on for some random but hopefully beneficial advice. I also did a similar post for last year’s conference if you’re looking for more random writerly advice.
I always find it ironic that professional editing—an industry solely devoted to words and language—has so much confusing niche terminology. I say this as someone who edits professionally, both as a freelancer and through Scribble House. One person’s content editing might be another’s structural edits, and whether these are interchangeable or mean slightly different things usually depends on who you’re asking, too.
Part of the problem is that these terms aren’t standardized, and slightly different ones are often used depending on the context. What a fiction editor calls “line editing”, the editor of online news articles might call “copy editing”, and there’s similar overlap between terms like content editing, structural editing, and developmental editing.
I’ve completed another novel draft, which means I’m at that delightfully terrifying stage again: pitch time. A process I’ve yet to unlock the secrets of; the last novel I shopped around has yet to find a home. Granted, the manuscript itself could be to blame—it’s a beast of a novel, around 173,000 words, which is a hard sell even in hard sci-fi land—but I suspect there are also still plenty of things I could improve about my query packet and process.
One strategy I haven’t yet attempted is doing live pitches. I go to a lot of conferences where this is an option but have always talked myself out of signing up. I’m enough of an introvert that just thinking about selling my project face-to-face in real-time makes me want to find some dark corner to hide in. The thing is, I don’t want to let myself miss opportunities just because something makes me uncomfortable. So I’ve resolved to start taking my shot with live pitches.
Like the good Virgo I am, this means I’ve also been doing a lot of research into just what’s involved in live pitches and how to get the most out of them. I don’t have any first-hand advice to offer on the subject yet, but I have found some very helpful (and reassuring) advice from people who are actually experts in this whole thing. I figured I’d share them with folks here in case anyone else out there is in need of some live pitching pointers.
I’ve been publishing short stories for long enough that some of my early publications now no longer exist. That’s especially annoying when it’s an online journal. If it was a print publisher, or even an ebook, that’s still an extant artifact you can show to your friends, or readers could theoretically stumble across in some other way. Once an online journal goes dead, though, they often disappear from the web completely, and any stories or poems they published along with them.
Now, some of these early stories, I’m not too mad that they’re not available anymore because, in hindsight, they were…rough around the edges, I’ll say. But some of them are stories I still believe in and would love to keep sharing with readers—and not just the ones who happen to stumble across my website or blog.
Rather than get depressed over these publications disappearing, I’ve decided to take this as an opportunity to find them a second home—one that’s even better than the first place I published the story. I knew when I started that this would be a challenge since the majority of journals and anthologies won’t consider previously published work. That said, I’ve been surprised by just how many high-quality markets do consider reprints, now that this is something I’m paying attention to.
Here are a few of the places I’ve found that can make a great home for previously published stories (and poems or essays too, in most cases, although I was focusing on them from a fiction standpoint). It’s certainly far from a comprehensive list, but can at least give you a place to start if you’re looking for reprint markets.
I just wrapped up my first experience at the In Your Write Mind conference hosted by Seton Hill University’s popular fiction program—quite literally, in fact; I’m on the train back to Pittsburgh as I write this.
You might think, given how many writing conferences and such I go to in a typical year, that the experience would be predictable by this point, but the truth is that past experience has just taught me not to assume anything. Conferences and conventions vary wildly in just about every respect. I’ve been to some that last a single day and others that last 4-5, conventions with 10,000+ attendees and others with less than a hundred. Most have book fairs or exhibit halls, but not all; some are mostly panels, some mostly workshops, some mostly readings, some a mix of all three—and the value I’ve gotten from going to those activities has been just as wide-ranging.