Are You a Writer or a Poet?

Have you considered submitting your work to literary journals? This page presents tips for finding markets, and provides links to three paying journals.

The Advantages

Whether you’re a novelist, a poet, or a short-story writer, you can benefit from having your work appear in literary journals. These journals publish a variety of literature, including micro fiction, short stories, poetry, and essays. Some also provide extras such as author interviews and book reviews.

Occasionally you will find journals published by brick-and-mortar publishers. Did someone say book deal? Yes, it could happen.

The Basics

Formats vary from online-only, to online-plus-printed-copy, to printed-only. Some produce podcasts in addition to or instead of the preceding options. No matter what the format, you gain extra exposure for your writing — especially beneficial if you’re fortunate enough to find a market in a popular journal.

Many offer no compensation. Others might pay a set rate per page or up to fifty cents per word. Some sites will accept previously-published reprints at a reduced rate. You can often sell reprints to dedicated podcasts.

But how can you find the best fit for your writing?

This blog post explores a couple of ways to exploit the capabilities of Google.

How It Works

Suppose you’re trying to locate a paying market for young-adult fiction.

Try searching for (including quotation marks):

submissions “young adult” fiction

This will give you thousands of results. Some will be literary journals, and others will be publishers. Good start. However, many of the websites you find will be non-paying markets.

Let’s try a search for:

submissions “young adult” fiction “we pay”

The results will be better, but you’ll still find sites saying “we pay in gratitude” or “we pay in copies.”

We’re getting closer. Here’s another search:

submissions “young adult” fiction “we pay” “per word”

Now the number of results shrinks dramatically, and every search page is full of the targeted results you need.

Do you prefer sites that accept submissions in standard manuscript format? Add “standard manuscript format” to your search criteria.

Mission accomplished. Or is it?

You might spend hours combing through the first few sites you find. At some point you’ll discover that the search results decay in quality as you progress. You might decide to try again in a few days or weeks. You already have enough websites for your submission spreadsheet, right?

Wrong.

Literary journals disappear. Sometimes they change genres or close permanently to new submissions. If you’re a prolific writer, you’ll discover you need more markets as the rejections pour in — and they will.

Why should you manually sort through pages when Google can do the work for you? Once you have a few searches that produce the desired results, ask Google to send you an e-mail whenever Googlebot discovers a new page matching your criteria.

Go to Google.com/alerts and enter your search in the bar at the top of the page. Then follow the instructions. You can register several alerts if desired — especially useful if you write in multiple genres.

Now let Google keep watch in the background while you do what you love to do: write.

Note: Many sites charge a small submission fee per story or poem. Read the submission guidelines, paying attention to all details. Unfortunately, the guidelines vary from journal to journal.

Here Are Three Paying Markets to Get You Started

Chicken Soup for the Soul is looking for short stories and poetry. You’ll find several themes for upcoming editions posted on their website. They want inspirational, true stories about ordinary people having extraordinary experiences; stories that open the heart and rekindle the spirit. If they publish your work, you’ll be paid $200 one month after publication of the book, and you’ll receive ten free copies of the book in which your story or poem appears. You’ll also become part of the Chicken Soup for The Soul family and will be entitled to buy cases of your books from them at half price. Visit their website to read about further benefits.

Silver Blade Magazine seeks speculative fiction. They want something unexpected and well-written. Technique, voice, characterization, and language will all play a part in their decision to publish. Amaze them with your writing, use of language, sense of story, and memorable characters. Give them a tale readers will not be able to forget and will eagerly recommend to others. For previously unpublished works, Silver Pen pays a flat fee of $15 for novellas, $3 for flash fiction, $8 for short stories, $8 for single poems, and $15 for Featured Poets (by invitation only). Silver Blade will pay half of these rates for previously published works. A $2 bonus will be added for authors who accept payment via PayPal.

Flash Fiction Online accepts multiple genres, 500 to 1000 words in length. No first drafts, but well-written, critiqued, and polished manuscripts. They want their publication to be accessible to a variety of ages, so please, no erotica, porn, or graphic sex or violence. They don’t publish profanity either. However, you don’t need to remove profanity to submit to them; just be prepared to modify it if they accept your flash. They pay $80 for original fiction ($.08 per word minimum) for previously unpublished works and $.02 per word for reprints.