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 love my writing group. A lot of us have been in the group for over 10 years, by this point, which means we know each other’s writing well—and that’s usually a good thing. Knowing the perspective each person is coming from helps to interpret their comments and put them in context, which makes it easier to fix the issues they spot without losing my voice. Their comments are also more likely to have that voice in mind since they’re so familiar with it.

That said, though, there are times that feedback from my workshop group might not be the most productive thing for the piece I’m working on. Sometimes it’s helpful to see how a story is reading to people who don’t know my writing, like when I’m playing in one of my established sandboxes and want to verify that it makes sense as a stand-alone, or if I’ve already workshopped the piece with the group and need a fresh perspective on how it reads after incorporating their suggestions.

Whether you don’t have a regular workshop group, or are looking for supplemental sources of creative critique outside your usual circles, here are some places you can get feedback on fiction without leaving the comfort of your house.

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’m going to take a second for a minor brag first, but I promise it’s relevant: I’ve had a pretty solid first half of 2024 when it comes to submissions. So far this year, I’ve gotten 53 responses from publishers: 50 rejections and 3 acceptances, for an acceptance percentage of 5.7%—about a full percent higher than my typical average. Adding in the 4 article pitches I’ve had accepted and the fact that Cryptid Bits came out in February, and I think it’s safe to say 2024 is shaping up to be my best year by far as a writer.

Even aside from the publications, though, one of the main things that has me feeling like I’m building momentum is the fact that 13 of those rejections (roughly a quarter of them) weren’t just the standard form letter. This included a short-list from Andromeda Spaceways, a long-list from The Masters Review, and a personal from Missouri Review, all places it feels good to hear a nice no from.

Being a writer—or at least, being one who actively tries to get work published—means hearing “no” a lot. I’ve been at this for a while and have developed a fairly thick skin, but even so it can be rough sometimes when the rejections stack up. I’ve had spans where I’ve gotten a dozen or more form rejections in a row, sometimes multiple on the same day, and it can be hard to muster the motivation to send work out again when I’m in one of those stretches—the doubt and imposter syndrome start to creep in, and this is when I’m most likely to self-reject myself out of opportunities, or to question why I’m even doing this in the first place.

A lot of literary magazines have basically the same deal. There are slight variations in the genre, length, and vibe of the things they publish, but you’ll find the submission guidelines of most journals are 90% identical (sometimes even repeating the exact same phrases), and their format is equally homogeneous: prose and/or poetry, published either in a book-like form or as web pages.

And not that there’s anything wrong with that. A straightforward, expected format keeps the reader’s focus mostly on the work itself, and that’s where it should be. But I’m always excited when I’m scrolling through open calls and I stumble across a market that breaks this mold. Even if it’s not a place any of my current work will fit, I find I’ll often add these to my list of journals I go to just as a reader—which is a much shorter list, that’s much more difficult for a journal to land a place on, than the magazines I read with the goal of deciding if my work would fit in their pages.

So for other folks out there who appreciate places that do things differently, here are a few journals that stand out from the rest for you to be hip to if you’re not already.

Conventional wisdom says to read a journal’s back issues before you send them work so you can get a sense of what they publish and whether your stuff’s a good fit. The same advice is often given to folks shopping around a chapbook or book-length manuscript: read what the press has done before. It’s good advice—when it’s possible. That’s easy for free online journals, for instance, and even many print journals, small presses, or paywalled online publications have free samples available.

In other cases, though, the only way to read past issues is to buy them. While I’m in favor of supporting small publishers in theory, my budget and bookshelf space also aren’t infinite. Granted, there are other ways around this conundrum. You could only submit to places that do have work available on line, for instance, or you could just say fuck it, send your stuff anyway, and hope for the best. There are other ways to get a sense for a journal’s tastes too, though, ones that don’t involve spending any money. Here are some things I’ll often do when I want to scope out a journal, anthology, or press to decide whether it could be a good home for my work.

Getting feedback from a workshop group or beta reader can be a great way to refine and polish your writing in preparation for submitting stories or poems to publishers.

Journals that have a feedback option, on the other hand, offer you a different kind of insight. It’s a way to hear straight from editors who choose the work for journals, anthologies, and other publications. At minimum, they’ll give you some insights about why they rejected the piece, and usually they’ll offer some other tips about areas you can improve, to increase your odds of getting an acceptance the next time you send it out.

One of the cool features of publisher databases like Duotrope, The Grinder, and Chill Subs is that they give real-world data about journals, like the average response time and acceptance percentage. This info doesn’t come from the publishers, but from submitters who use the submission trackers on these sites.

The response time part of this is usually pretty helpful. Even if there are only a few reported responses, you can get a sense from them of how much the journal’s response time varies, and a rough time-frame—at least whether you’ll be waiting a few days, a few weeks, or a few months.

The acceptance ratio can be a trickier wicket, however. When you’re looking at this kind of data, having a small sample size can dramatically skew the results. Who you’re sampling to collect that data makes a difference, too.

Editing a literary journal gives me a unique insight into the publisher’s side of the process. Even so, though, that’s just one journal, and while I’ve read for a few others in the past, I also know that each market has its own unique process for reviewing submissions and deciding what to publish.

Luckily, a lot of publishers are also very open and transparent about what they want to see from submitters. One great place to find this info is using Duotrope’s Editor Interviews. For anyone who’s not familiar with Duotrope, it’s a searchable listing of presses, journals, magazines, contests, and other places publish creative work, and is a handy tool for figuring out where to send stories and poems.

Like most things in the world, the publishing landscape has changed dramatically since the dawn of the internet. That change has happened at an inconsistent pace, though. Some established publishers stuck by their old school print-subs-or-bust guns until the 2010s (and print subs are clinging on by their fingernails even today), while other journals have been online only since the early aughts.

This inconsistency has led to some conflicting advice for writers submitting their work. Some things that used to be must-include formatting or info is now seen as antiquated, and including it makes you come across as out of touch or ill-informed.