http://www.sfwa.org/org/qualify.htm#Q5

That's not to say that some others not on their lists don't carry weight, but its a good place to start for submissions. Another place to look is to see where the stories in the "Best of" short story anthologies were first published, and in the back if they list some Honorable Mentions that didn't quite make it. One that's been around for a good long time and is quite respected is "The Year's Best Science Fiction" edited by Gardner Duzois, which is published yearly and has both sources for those republished and Honorable Mentions. Other anthologies probably offer similar listings.

Its also useful to keep in mind that most people arent even familiar with even the most high-profile of sci fi/fantasy magazines...that even includes a lot of people that read the genere.

I've submitted to a wide range of publications...some are online only, some print, many are both. I use duotrope, and search with the pay scale set to "token and up."

Dreaming of werewolves? ;-)

Fantasy & Science Fiction will take fantasy of course, and the others seem to me to take a little from time to time if there's a speculative element.

If you write horror (particularly short fiction) and you don't read Cemetery Dance, you are a heretic.

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I don't really know why it fell off the pro list

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That has to do with pay-rates, right? Rather than circulation? Though I assume that if circulation fell off, the mag could no longer afford to pay its writers what it used to.

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SFWA does it by a combination of circulation and pay. Even with great pay a market isn't considered to be pro by them unless it makes it to enough readers.

SFWA is kind of a stodgy, old organization that still hasn't fully embraced the Internet and its impact on genre fiction markets. They are getting better, but they've got a ways to go yet. Because of that, a lot of younger, successful authors don't even bother to join the organization, where at one time it was an almost must-do kind of thing.

From 1995 to 2008:

Analog dropped from a paid circulation of 70,000 to 25,999

Asimov's dropped from 59,000 to 17,102

F & SF dropped from 51,557 to 16,044

(Also the recently-suspended Realms of Fantasy dropped from 44,348 to 19,671.)

Now, there may be mitigating factors in some of this decline besides the sour economy or the Internet factor. (For instance, the death of Isaac Asimov in 1992 was probably a blow to both Asimov's and F & SF, where he was a presence and a drawing card.)

Wouldn't that be funny/ludicrous? Incestuous even?

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Well, the advice I recieved from an author published by Prime books whose work is availble from amazon and other outlets online was to not worry about the big-name publications right at first anyway, but to try and get some acceptances from smaller markets and then work up.

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No, no, no, no, no!

If I had followed that advice, I might not have a pro sale yet. Instead, all the stories I've sold (except two that went to non-paying markets as favors for friends) have sold to pro markets.

You want your story to be accepted by the best market that will take it. If you try a small market and get accepted, you'll never know if it would have sold to a major market.

Start at the top and work down. Even if you're not getting accepted at pro markets yet, if you're submitting regularly the editors will start recognizing your name.

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From 1995 to 2008:

Analog dropped from a paid circulation of 70,000 to 25,999

Asimov's dropped from 59,000 to 17,102

F & SF dropped from 51,557 to 16,044

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You want your story to be accepted by the best market that will take it.

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Actually, I want my story to be accepted. Period. The more money for it or whatever, the better but to me any paying acceptance is a credit and a milestone. Of course I'm not holding on to any illusions of like being able to live off my writing any time in the next year or so or anything like that.

Also, even ~submitting~ to the "big three" and most of the others on the SFWA list is more difficult. Most of them don't accept electronic submissions. Many of them also take a long, long LONG time to respond to submissions. Also, I do submit to some of them...I've been submitting to Fantasy Magazine since the begining and it is now a pro market. But for me at this point the "big three" are more trouble then they are worth. It basically costs money to submit to them in the form of postage, printer ink and special paper (I'm not even sure what "bond paper" is), they take forever to respond and most of them are not geared towards what I write anyway.

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No, no, no, no, no!

If I had followed that advice, I might not have a pro sale yet. Instead, all the stories I've sold (except two that went to non-paying markets as favors for friends) have sold to pro markets.

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With all respect, i think the advice of someone who is or very nearly is a professional writer holds some weight. Someone who went through the proccess, in that manner.

I take a bit of issue to anyone presenting their personal experiences as the sole way to go, or trying to completely negate the advice or experiences of others....I think one of the weaknesses of Hatrack is theres a lot of assuming that goes on about peoples intentions and desires.

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Start at the top and work down.

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With all respect, i think the advice of someone who is or very nearly is a professional writer holds some weight. Someone who went through the proccess, in that manner.

I take a bit of issue to anyone presenting their personal experiences as the sole way to go, or trying to completely negate the advice or experiences of others....I think one of the weaknesses of Hatrack is theres a lot of assuming that goes on about peoples intentions and desires.

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While I am sure the author who gave you that advice meant well, the advice is just plain wrong-headed--at least for people who are more concerned with building a long-term writing career than with seeing their stories published as quickly as possible.

And I'm not saying that because I think my method of building my career is the only correct one. There are a whole bunch of ways of building a successful career.

But the idea that you should first attempt to get published in smaller venues in order to work your way up the ladder is the result of people incorrectly analyzing the careers of previous successful authors.

If you look at many writers' bibliographies, you will see that their first publications were in smaller venues, and then they started selling to more prestigious markets until they were selling to the pro markets. But that does not mean they submitted to the markets in that order.

Why try to climb the ladder of success from the bottom if it turns out you can skip several rungs?

If you have the goal of making it into the pro markets, every story you sell to other markets without having tried the pros first is an opportunity lost.

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While I am sure the author who gave you that advice meant well, the advice is just plain wrong-headed--at least for people who are more concerned with building a long-term writing career than with seeing their stories published as quickly as possible

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And I consider it wrong headed of you to state your opinions/theories/experiences as universal fact.

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If you look at many writers' bibliographies, you will see that their first publications were in smaller venues, and then they started selling to more prestigious markets until they were selling to the pro markets. But that does not mean they submitted to the markets in that order.

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No, it doesn't. Also doesn't mean that they didn't do it in that order. Unless you have some sort of objective proof that most "successful" writers got their first sales in major markets and then started publishing in minor ones afterwards...

Stephen King started smaller and worked up.

This is a subjective business/pursuit. Therefore generally saying a certain way of going about it is "wrong" is itself incorrect and tends to make the person asserting such sound a bit arrogant.

Also, like I said...I submit lots of places. The main thing for me is the "big three" are extremely impractical because most of them don't publish what I write, and they don't accept electronic submissions. I submit regularly to Fantasy Magazine for example and have sent stuff to OSC's IGMS and the like. But the one that won't take email subs are just very impractical for me right now.

And i think the "big three" and their ilk are going to get less and less big as online markets move more and more to the forefront.

"In an appendix to The Early Asimov, the author lists the first sixty stories he wrote in the late 1930s and 1940s, and notes that eleven of them were never sold and were eventually lost.

"'Cosmic Corkscrew', Asimov's first story, was written between 29 May 1937 and 19 June 1938. The story, 9000 words long, was about a man who traveled into the future to find the Earth recently deserted. Due to the quantum nature of time, he could not travel back in time a short distance to find out what happened. Asimov submitted it on 21 June to John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction, who rejected it. The story never sold and was eventually lost." Wikipedia: The Early Asimov.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Early_Asimov

The above Wikipedia page has links to information on each story in the anthology, including submission histories.

When considering where to submit a story, I consider the following:

1. Which magazine(s) would publish a story like this?
2. Which of those is most prestigious or would I most like to appear in? (This includes whether it includes writers I admire, or whether it just has a damn sexy concept and looks good.)
3. Which pays the most?

Sometimes I write specific stories for specific venues. For example, Sein und Werden is a highly respected (in the UK small press circuit) non-paying, stapled zine which I love the look, feel and ethos of. All the writing inside is stuff I enjoy, and many of my stories would feel at home there. I intend to write a story for the mag, even though said story could be sold elsewhere for more, if I tried. But, to me, appearing in a magazine I enjoy and respect is more important in that instance, and I can always submit to a better paid/higher profile mag later on with another story.

One of the more intriguing fable-like anecdotes of a writer's journeyman struggles is Jack London's semi-autobiographical Martin Eden, 1909. After Martin succeeded as an author, he never wrote again. Instead, he submitted, and enjoyed sight-unseen acceptance for publication, his previously written and rejected work in reverse order of writing, until he ran out of material, then he went on a South Pacific cruise and . . .

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And I consider it wrong headed of you to state your opinions/theories/experiences as universal fact.

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That's your privilege, of course.

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Ah, the dangers of relying on Wikipedia...from later autobiographical works, as I recall, two of Asimov's "lost" stories turned up, rendering that entry inaccurate.

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Ray Bradbury later qualified his comments in a coda to the 1984 edition of Farenheit 451 about the novel's interpretation. The perils of censorship is what he said then. Later, in a rare interview with the LA Weekly in May of 2007, he said it's about how television destroys culture, which validated one of my interpretations.

http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/1

Anyway, Mr. Norwall, I'd appreciate if you could provide your source so I can update my files.

I collect publishing anecdotes and author's comments on their work. It seems to me as though a disproportionate number of publishing successes have interesting anecdotes, stories behind the stories, compared with other avenues of celebrated breakthroughs. That may be a product of and for promotional hype, but still intriguing. Superstitious as I am, I sense if I come up with a story with a story behind it, I'll be assured of success, fingers crossed, cross my heart, wish upon a star, rub a lucky crystal, pluck a four-leaved clover, pray.

Author's comments on their work, I collect for insights into how they present their stories' meanings and inspirations to the public. One common one that I've questioned is the "first ever" written story publishing success. Arguably, what they've written before didn't meet their definition of story after their breakthrough. At the least, I collect author comments in preparation for the day that I have fans who want to know what I have to share.

I'm not aware of any online publishing runaway celebrity, but the day isn't far off. Then the entire medium will enjoy a surge of interest. Long live online!

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At this point, I don't think there's any reason for me to keep arguing the point, as you seem determined to follow the advice this other person gave you. My main hope is that what I've posted will keep other people from following it.

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Well I'm not sure you fully get what I'm saying, and maybe I'm not totally understanding you either.

I think the main thrust of what he was telling me was not to worry or get discouraged. I think we've already determined that in practical terms, one way or other, most writers get published in "lesser" markets first and then break into the bigger ones, regardless of where they submit first, so in the end its basically six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I do think you seem to be setting any "non professional" story sale more or less at naught, and that despite saying theres many ways of doing it, you state your way, your opinions, your experiences as universal facts, something that always rubs me the wrong way.

Out of curiosity, whats your opinion on markets that arent on the SFWA list, but pay professional rates, like Beneath Ceasless Skies or Shock Totem?

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I have another comment about what's been said above. I don't think it's a big deal, to print out hard copy of your short story, stuff it in a manila envelope, put stamps on that envelope (and a self-addressed return envelope), and send the package out to one of the Big Three magazines.

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Well it can be a big deal when you have very little or no money beyond paying the bills. Printer ink isn't cheap. It'd wind up costing me probably about 10 dollars or so per story to submit postally. And since there are plenty of markets that pay the same rates and accept online submissions...

Plus, the main problem for me with the "big three" is only one of them would even look at my stuff anyway. Analog is strictly sci fi only. I looked all 3 up on Duotrope...Asimov's is also listed as sci fi only...the guidlines say they will consider "borderline fantasy"....but thats just borderline. I'm pretty sure it still has to be a science fiction story, and I write fantasy and horror so...

That said, if you always submit to smaller mags first, you'll never get into the big mags. How will you know when the time is to begin working your way up? If being paid for your writing is important (it may not be, but these are hard times), you could be potentially throwing away hundreds of pounds/dollars by not always trying the highest paid mags first. You also may never know if your earlier works may have found better/more suitable homes the first time round.

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/myrtle2.htm

In that article a writer will see how it goes with a manuscript at a serial publishing house.

As to literary versus . . . versus . . . Dr. Debra Doyle's anti-rant rant says much.

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/genre2.htm

On electronic publication;

http://www.sfwa.org/beware/epublishers.html

Just to list a very few articles hosted by SFWA available to the public on many, many things related to a writer's pursuit of publication.

Writer Beware index: http://www.sfwa.org/beware

Writing publications index; http://www.sfwa.org/writing

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That said, if you always submit to smaller mags first, you'll never get into the big mags. How will you know when the time is to begin working your way up?

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That depends on the person. I find it odd that a lot of people here seem to think theres some sort of infallible, automatic formula for this...

For me, I am submitting just about everywhere. The only places I don't submit are places that A) don't accept the type of stuff I write (since theres no point) and B) those that don't accept email submissions because the expense to reward ratio, especially as a beginer, make it kind of pointless.

The rest goes into another point...

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I also have to point out that, whilst it's rare, some editors see publication in non-paying or low-paying mags as not dissimilar to self-publication or vanity presses, whilst many others will just discount them as sales

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I'm really not sure what you mean by "discount them as sales." If you just mean in general, maybe yes (although I am not talking about, and I do not submit to, markets that don't pay at all.)

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Having some decent sales in your resume will at least make an editor sit up and read your story themselves, or all the way through, without passing it on to an overworked intern.

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Ok two things here. First, you realize you've set up a catch 22 right? Your basically saying the "decent" places don't sit up and take notice unless you have "decent" sales. So how then do you go about getting one?

Second, "decent" is again, subjective. I also have a friend (and fellow hatracker) who reads slush for an admitedly minor magazine, and has told me any paid sale in a person's cover letter makes him take notice. Editors are simply people, and like everyone have different tastes and criteria. What I've seen makes me think that a lot of the really big markets are a good deal less likely to buy your story or possibly even seriously consider it, when your totally brand new. But having a few lesser, paying sales especially those in the semi-pro pay range make that more likely.

All I'm saying...and the advice I was given is...don't freak yourself out or discourage yourself worrying about getting right in at the top floor. I mean if you start submitting and you already have 3 or 4 finished stories, whats wrong with sending one to a pro market, one to a semi pro and one to a token market?

If you start at the top and work your way down with *every* story, then you're giving yourself the best shot at getting the best sale and the best pay.

As for the catch 22 situation . . . I didn't say your story would never get read. I just said it would get passed to an overworked intern, or that it might not get read all the way through. This is more common than you think. I know editors for a number of pro, semi-pro and token paying markets, and they all do this. They will not always read every submission (at least not all the way through), and they pass stories by unknowns to interns wherever possible (if the interns don't get the stories first and then send the more promising ones to the editors after).

Unknowns also rarely appear from nowhere. They carry qualifications, references, and some kickass fiction to boot.

Also, your friend may take notice of any publication, but you'd be surprised just how many writers already have some form of publishing history. As editor at Polluto, I'd say 99% of people who submit already have sold stories elsewhere. In fact, I can only remember three first-time writers who've submitted (two of whom were from here, and one of those already had non-fiction publishing history). Everybody else I can remember has had at least one other sale. Often these are sales to journals or websites I've never even heard of, or that published one issue and closed, or which just accept writers to fill space.

If you make your writing good enough that an editor will sit up and read it, then try with the best mags first. It's worth a shot. You won't lose out if you don't make a sale for a while, because you will sell it eventually, but you always know you've given your writing the best chance it has.

Different folks, different genres, different venues, different lengths, different creative slants, different interests, different moments in time, different strokes, the number of strategies is likely an exponential multiplier of six million. I've considered hundreds of submission strategies. Both of which are what I believe Merlion-Emry's underlying points are. What anyone else might do is a matter of an individual's preferences and sentiments, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense for someone else's tactical strategies.

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The most sensible method is to simply start at the best paying, widest distributed magazine and work your way down.

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One writer's sensiblities are another's impracticalities. Just comparing apples to oranges, the total subscriber base for the so-called Big Three is less than 50,000. Fictionwise in their latest report has over a third of a million subscribers. That's apples to oranges because paper serial digests aren't e-books.

In the alternative, the entire creative writing racket from writer to publisher to marketplace to reader to author acclaim hinges on a laissez-faire guild apprenticeship system. Everyone has to start somewhere, including publishers. Top down or bottom up or in the middling middle, newcomers come along, popular writers become ascendent, old timers die off, and creative writing goes on.

Merlion-Emrys's argument seems a bit protean to me, frankly. It was presented first that smaller markets are a way to work up to the pro markets, then it was about genre incompatibility, then expense of paper submissions. It's not clear whether pro publication (in F&SF, say) is the ultimate goal. If it is, I don't think expense or inconvenience should be a barrier. At least from my perspective, $3 or $4 to submit a story is a very small burden compared with the time and labor required to write it in the first place. If the pro publication in a print magazine is not a personal goal, then of course there's no need to try.

I also have the strong impression that once you are writing stories that are basically free of serious problems, sheer luck becomes a huge factor - submitting to a market at just the time they are looking for something like your story, catching the attention of a reader or editor for some subjective reason, etc. I don't see a consistent difference in the quality of stories published in the pro and semi-pro markets. Both publish things I consider great and things I consider average or ho-hum.

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Well I'm not sure you fully get what I'm saying, and maybe I'm not totally understanding you either.

I think the main thrust of what he was telling me was not to worry or get discouraged.

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Well, that I could agree with. If what he meant was "don't worry that you're not being accepted at top markets at first," then that's fine. But if he meant "don't even bother to submit to top markets until you've built up a record of sales at lesser markets," then his advice is bad for the reasons I've outlined already.

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I think we've already determined that in practical terms, one way or other, most writers get published in "lesser" markets first and then break into the bigger ones, regardless of where they submit first, so in the end its basically six of one, half a dozen of the other.

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No, it's not. Because a story you submit to a smaller market first that gets accepted might have been your first sale to one of the big markets if you had submitted it there first. And you can never know that you're good enough to get published in the big markets if you aren't submitting to them.

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I do think you seem to be setting any "non professional" story sale more or less at naught, and that despite saying theres many ways of doing it, you state your way, your opinions, your experiences as universal facts, something that always rubs me the wrong way.

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No, I'm not. I think it's fine to publish in non-pro markets. I'm just saying that you should let stories trickle down to those markets, rather than submitting to them first. There are exceptions--for example, if the editor of a market specifically asks you for a story--but as a general rule it's best for your career as a writer to have your stories published in the best possible market. A strategy that deliberately bypasses the best markets that might have bought your story is almost certainly slowing the progress of your career.

Sorry if my way of stating this offends you, but if your goal is to sell to pro markets, the best way of achieving that goal is to submit to pro markets.

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Out of curiosity, whats your opinion on markets that arent on the SFWA list, but pay professional rates, like Beneath Ceasless Skies or Shock Totem?

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But if he meant "don't even bother to submit to top markets until you've built up a record of sales at lesser markets," then his advice is bad for the reasons I've outlined already.

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Sorry if my way of stating this offends you, but if your goal is to sell to pro markets, the best way of achieving that goal is to submit to pro markets.

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See this is the problem I have. People stating their own subjective opinions...about a subjective subject...as objective, absolute and universal facts.

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No, it's not. Because a story you submit to a smaller market first that gets accepted might have been your first sale to one of the big markets if you had submitted it there first. And you can never know that you're good enough to get published in the big markets if you aren't submitting to them.

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You missed my point, again. What I said was, we know that almost always, authors wind up building up acceptances at less-than-the-"top" markets before they ever get published in those at the "top." I get the logic of what your saying, but in the end, chances are you arent going to get published by a prestigious professional magazine or whatever if your a totally new un-previously-published author anyway.

Some people may decide to, at first, not tie up stories in high-end markets (which usually take longer on responses and often don't even give feedback) that probably arent going to accept them...since they are unpublished authors...anyway, and so go ahead and try to build a base first.

And what I'd like you to realize is....thats valid. No matter what your goals are. Just like your technique is valid.

Now me, as I've said several times, I've done both...I came into the game with a good deal of material and just started sending stuff out here there and everywhere. Simon's advice to me, I think, was coming from the point of of view that I just mentioned...your probably not going to get into big markets right off anyway, so you might as well 1) not worry about it and 2) diversify.

And thats also valid.

Also, my "arguement" is in no way "protean" at least not anymore so than that nature of this SUBJECTIVE area of discussion necesscesitates. However, we are discussing several different things at once here. But my biggest one is this

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A least sensible method of courteous discussion is to make and argue imperative and/or declarative statements based upon subjective opinions

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I think hatrack would be an even better place than it already is if more people would remember this.

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Eric has one strategy, Merlion has another, I have another. That's fine. We all choose our own path. If someone else's path doesn't agree with yours, it doesn't matter. They can do whatever they want to do, and so can you.

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Yeah, thats my point. But when you offer up your thoughts and people come in with "no no no!'s" and handwaving and say that your ideas are basically wrong and objectively bad advice, I begin to take issue.

If your going to state your subjective opinions as facts (or if you are actually to the point of truly believing that your subjective opinion is in fact objective reality) your going to have people react to it.