Markets for your fiction – how to locate them? A comparative analysis.

Steph P. Bianchini May 24, 2016 6 Comments

When I started, a couple of years ago, to write (again) fiction after many years of non-fiction / academic writing, I found myself a bit lost in terms of locating suitable venues. Of course, there are the journals /zines we all know and read, but it doesn’t seem realistic thinking you can get published in The New Yorker or in Asimov at your first try (not even at your 100th, if you’re a common mortal like me – but that’s another story). Even more difficult is if you write poetry, or other difficult (read: experimental) brands – or if you have a knack for flash fiction (like I do). So, how to find your target markets? Luckily for us, there are some excellent resources out there – and at least the ones mentioned here should be in the toolbox of every writer, genre or literary.

Duotrope (Paying – $5 / month)

This one has probably one of the most extensive online repositories of markets (5678 as of May, 24), and like the Grinder, it’s a submission tracker, meaning that allows you to build your own database of submissions – so you  know exactly to whom you have sent what, and when. After a while, it becomes essential to avoid sending the same piece again to an editor that has already rejected it. Duotrope has a weekly newsletter with new markets and deadlines, and a series of stats and functionalities -like Recent Responses- quite interesting (more on that in another post).

USP: it maintains a large database of literary journals, and it lists also non-fiction and poetry.

Cons: it’s not free, first of all. Also, there’s something worrying in their terms of use, in the sense that you don’t own any data there, not even yours … (I haven’t figured out yet what this means, exactly, but I don’t like the sound of it.)

The Grinder (Free)

Developed by Diabolic Plots, the Grinder is probably the first choice for genre fiction, and it has the advantage of being readable, with a friendly interface for market search, submission tracking facilities, and ready to use statistics, including Recent Rejections / Acceptances.

Cons: it doesn’t have poetry or non-fiction markets.

Note: The Grinder is getting upscaled – and there’s now a beta version that’s sooo cool, giving you a trove of statistics – including pending submissions and turnaround charts. Thanks to that, I’m designing survival analysis functions for some of my favourite markets (I know, it’s perverse, but after all I’m a statistician – it comes with the turf), and I’ll post something about them in the future.

Ralan (Free)

Ralan is a bit different from the other two, in the sense that is more a listing of markets than a searchable database. In the same logic, it doesn’t give you any stats, apart from average response time, or any information / rate about acceptances. And it’s not a tracker either. But it’s (still) worth considering because:

• it’s the only one that gives you the NAME of the editors together with the listing. Common wisdom would suggest that you familiarise yourself with a publication before sending them anything – but if you need to quickly double-check who to address your query / submission, this is the place to look for;
• it maintains a list of all “static” markets – discontinued, in hiatus or dead for good (you might need to know);
• it’s much quicker to browse, and gives you an overall view for category (pro / semipro/ token / less <1000 K words, and so on), which, again, sometimes it’s all you need.

There are other resources, of course, some of them even more extensive (think about the yearly Writer’s Market) and others quite specific, but the ones above represent a perfect starting point – one you can’t go wrong with.

Happy submissions!