I think it can be depressing, you're right. I have no solution...I only have my stories out at contests right now - that's my carrot (or is it my stick, hard to know?)

I haven't submitted to a pro market, but from what I hear the slush is answered very promptly, sometimes less than ten days including mail time. Not to say that you would be slushed, but from what I gather response times are not bad. There are certain markets I will avoid at all cost now that I have experienced there response times. Duotrope has the cool feature of the response tracker, which helps to find markets and their trends. It also adds to the anticipation when your story breaks the mean of typical slush rejects. If you are like me then you will just love to see that your story made it four weeks longer than the typical rejection

I will have to agree with the more you have out to market the less you will notice, but I haven't yet reached that comfortable plateau.

The way I look at it, you might as well submit to the best first and then work your way down the list.

Once you've finished a story, don't let it take up any more of your creative energy (Heinlein?)

quote:

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I haven't submitted to a pro market, but from what I hear the slush is answered very promptly...

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Don't I wish. IGMS is routinely three months or more; RoF is was four months on my last (also my first with them) submission--or should I say rejection; Strange Horizons tends to be more than a month; Baen's runs around three months; Clarkesworld Magazine
one to two months; Pedestal Magazine runs over a month.

F&SF is fast though which is nice. I do appreciate their nicely worded rejections--they have such a nice slush reader but one of these days I'd like to get past him. LOL

Sometimes I think that a story I've just spent hours and much blood, sweat and tears polishing is my best story ever. You know, like EVER.

Then I remember that this story is leaps and bounds ahead of the story I wrote last (whenever - I'm not very prolific, so for me it's probably last quarter, or last year...)

So...using this logic, the stories I *haven't* written are going to be much better than the slop I'm writing now...

So, to further this line of thinking, sending the slop I'm writing now to sub-pro markets is probably a good idea, since I'll write better stuff next time.

LOL, I said it was wacky. Rather self-defeating as well. And as I said above, I'm not really submitting much other than to WOTF and the other contests.

I think there are semi-pro markets that have good reputations, and getting published in them would be a positive. I haven't done the market research myself, but I distinctly remember this part of King's On Writing book where he talked about the cover letter from an aspiring writer, and the one where the writer mentioned semi-pro markets where his/her writing had appeared, etc. King's assessment was that was a good stepping stone, a good way to make your way into the writing world. Of course he's biased because this is how he did it, but still - that image of the cover letter has stuck with me.

I'm not sure how to judge that.

Edit: annepin, I can't even imagine having 20 stories out. I hope maybe by the end of the year to have 10 or 12 out and even for that I'm not holding my breath.

Edit: Yes, I know I can get a list of markets off Duotrope and look at the magazines. I'm thinking more of the ones that people consider respected or a stepping stone to better markets.

Now, this is an interesting question, and part of it, I feel, drives to WHY you write. Is it for the money? Or is it for the love?

Now, as to picking a market for a specific piece, I have found that there are several things you can do to figure out if there are markets that aren't Pro that you want to sub to. I personally use Duotrope a lot. First, I narrow down my search to Token and Up (but I NEVER use the length search delimitor). Then, I run two concurrent searches, with two separate windows open (since Duotrope will squinch the serach results to the sreen size). This lets me sort for the same attributes in both pay and acceptance ratio. In this case, I scroll the Acceptance ratio to the bottom to see which markets have the lowest acceptance rate.

So for example, in doing that, I find that Wrong World (Pro rates) has a higher acceptance rate than Aoife's Kiss (Token rates). If I had something that fit (or had been pub'd at Aiofe's before), I might submit to Wrong World. Also, I look at the acceptance rate. If the market is Token, but does 100 subs a year, and its acceptance is 1.5%, then this is a market that may bear submission to. Its a challenge. And, it might be that since I write a lot of poetry, and much of it is literary, that I've found that in some cases, Pro market has nothing to do with what they pay.

For example, caketrain, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Beloit Poetry Journal are all in the top 15 for being the most challenging poetry markets on Duotrope. All are non-paying. If you've been published in Beloit PJ, I'm guessing you can get a chapbook published before you can say Walt Whitman.

See, I don't have the same "wanna send it to a Pro market" issue. Six months ago, I was happy to get a publication at all. Once I got that under my belt, I was happy to have a sale (ANY sale). Now, I don't submit fiction to any market that is non-paying, because in a lot of cases, those have a VERY high acceptance rate, and may not push your writing to where it should be. Also, since I've sold both poetry and prose at semi-pro rates, I feel that if I can't sell it at the Token or Semi-Pro level in its current state, that it needs some more polish.

I guess I assume that some day, in the future (hey, I'm only 39, so based on family characteristics, I've got 30 more years to write,) I'll write a story that simply shouts "F&SF" or "PodCastle." But I haven't written one of those yet.

Also, and this is just a personal quirk, I don't think that Pro pubs are really all that. In my humble opinion, most of the 20 or so that you have to get published in to get SFWA affiliation are closed to us mortals. (Cemetery Dance is pretty much who you know, and Subterranean magazine is invitation only.)

Good luck,

T2

My goal as a writer is to be a professional and, yes, that means making money at it. For me, it's not a hobby. There's nothing wrong with being a hobbyist writer, but it's not what I want.

I'm looking for professional writing credits from my short story writing. For that, the publication needs to carry a certain amount of prestige. You can say that of the SFWA markets. Other markets, I'm not sure of.

I don't do horror so Cemetary Dance is out anyway as is Subterranean and Brutarian. Not Asimov's, obviously. Strange Horizons is in effect 100% contemporary fantasy. There are about ten SFWA pubs that I submit to.

Frankly, at this point if I don't think that when an agent looks at they'll say "good credit" I don't bother.

There's a forum here on Hatrack that is a bragging rights forum, though for the life of me I can't recall the name of it right now. I also see where Liberty Hallers submit/sell to (the other online writing forum I participate in actively.) Between the two I feel like there's a good list to compile (though I haven't done the legwork to compile it, LOL) of respectable publications.

Link - Hatrack Writers in Print. Was bugging me so I had to go find it.
Hatrack Writers in Print

[This message has been edited by KayTi (edited July 12, 2008).]

[This message has been edited by KayTi (edited July 12, 2008).]

My first sub, in fact, was a micro fiction piece I submitted to AlienSkin. To my amazement it was accepted. This encouraged me to do something in which I was pretty skeptical about. (Writing But that first pub also opened the door in a way with that magazine and I have since sold a flash piece.

I guess what I am getting at is my next set of goals, novels and contests aside. I am trying to establish myself in the semi-pro markets. There are a few publications that I respect or consider good sales. I think by doing this, besides gaining more expirience, It serves to give you some credibility when you submit to the Pro-rate markets. Many say that they are graded on merit, but then why would they ask for your publication history on the cover? I think it will help open doors.

To me there is no shame in a semi-pro market, or even a token or non-paying market. As I evolve as a writer, I look back on the last stories as see how much improvement that I make in each, and I think I can make it to the big leagues one day. But I have too many new ideas to backtrack, so rather than revise an old reject, I usually send it to another market and write a better story. If one of the oldies makes it to a pub, even in a token market I will be happy because I know that the one I am curently on is far better and therefore will maybe make it up the tier.

First off, I'll eliminate anything that's strictly an e-publication---I got into this business trying to get into print magazines, and that's what, of late, I've decided to stick to. Similarly, I don't submit to anything that takes only e-submissions.

I like to see what kind of magazine I'm submitting to---if I've never seen a copy I'm reluctant to submit something to it.

What I'm writing is SF (more or less), so that eliminates the fantasy and horror magazines.

I avoid low-paying or no-paying markets, as well.

If something about a market makes me uneasy, I also avoid it. (You guys may have seen my comments about Writers of the Future 'round here, for example. But it's not the only one.)

I've probably forgotten some other reasons I might object to some market or other, but, right now, my list boils down to three: Analog, Asimov's, and F & SF.

Now, Asimov's and Analog are put out by the same publisher---however separate they are, I've come to dislike the idea of sending one manuscript to the same address twice. So I have to eliminate one, and I generally think my stuff is a slightly better match for Asimov's rather than Analog.

Generally I submit first to F & SF, and then Asimov's 'cause F & SF has a faster return time.

*****

Of course my views have evolved over the decades. At one time or other, I've submitted to nearly everything that falls into one category-of-elimination or other. And I may yet do so in the future. It's not set in stone.

Even reading the pubications doesn't tell me what I really want to know which is how they are considered by the pros. Even before I had sold anything, I didn't consider 4theluv to be a stepping stone to better publications. It has become painfully clear that token are of questionable value as well. But maybe that's not true of semi-pro or all semi-pro anyway.

Many people won't agree with his comments but considering that he is one of the top award winning science fiction writers and one of the editors of JBU, I think his opinion is at least worth considering: