How Do You Know Where to Send Your Work? Questions About Submissions…
A former MFA student wrote in to ask me advice about how I know which journals to send my poems to. It seems so overwhelming, she said. Well, that’s true for me too! Here’s part of what I wrote back – I hope you guys find it helpful:
What you are experiencing is something every writer experiences! I’m literally going through the same thing doing fall submissions – which journals would be receptive to my work? Which poems should I send to which place? It’s nearly impossible to guess correctly. The best asset I have is that I’ve been sending work out for over ten years, so now I know a few editors who like my work and tend to take it at a higher rate than other places – but mostly, I try to read new journals and send to new places, so I don’t even use my collected wisdom! There are so many journals out there – I use Poet’s Market and mark “likely” markets with little sticky notes – I use Duotrope and see if someone’s open to submissions this week that I haven’t sent to – and I shop around in bookstores and try to get lit mags that I’m not already familiar with. I did lit mag reviews for New Pages for a while, which was a great gig, because I was forced to read and review lit mags I would never have found in whatever corner of the world I was living in at the time. Also, I read lit mag blogs, which can reveal a lot about a journal and its editors – or at least its interns. Ploughshares, Missouri Review, and a bunch of other journals have blogs now, surprisingly. Check Facebook and Twitter too – I got to know my new book publisher by following their Twitter, of all things!
Definitely sign for Duotrope’s Poetry Weekly Wire – I get it and I always find one open market to send to from it, one I might not have thought of on my own.
The other thing to think about is that you want your poetry in a variety of markets – online and print, traditional and experimental, Midwestern, Southern, and East or West Coast – to build up a wider audience. So don’t just worry about prestige – also think of audience size, location, and predilections. Try to be diverse! You might also notice a pattern of certain kinds of magazines liking your work, too. Keep track of where you’re sending and when. I keep a photo album of rejections, in case there are notes or patterns or anything I should be paying attention to. (For instance, do journals in the Northeast like your work better than journals in the South? Do university-based journals or independent journals more consistently publish you?)
The best advice, as the lit mag world is constantly changing editors and formats and everything else, is to keep track of the lit mags you want to be published in in some way – either online, or in a library, or by ordering backcopies or hanging out at something like Minnesota’s Poetry Loft or Seattle’s Hugo House (they keep a huge library of lit mags there.) And, of course, picking them up at a deeply discounted rate (or for free) on the last day of AWP – since you’re going. (PS Tell me all about the hip new journals!)
What other advice do you have? Anything I missed? How do you decide where to send your work?
Finally feeling human again – and able to eat solid food – so I’ve finally gotten back to my neglected poetry work.
The leaves on the hills around Napa are starting to change, though it was still a sunny eighty degrees yesterday. Autumn means school starting, apple-related baking, and oh yes…a million and one poetry book contest deadlines. I was thinking about Eduardo’s recent post – about which book contests are worth sending to. One comment on his post – Anne Haines’ – talked about how she didn’t want to be published with a press who can’t get her book into academic libraries, which is an interesting condition that I really don’t know anything about. I’d assume that would be most big university presses? (Feel free to comment here, Anne!)
But it is a useful, pertinent question, as you print out your manuscript and write the check and fix the stamps – what criteria do you use to decide where to send your work to be published? For me, it would have to be a press I admired, a press at which I already liked the editor’s taste and the books they’ve done in the past. That’s my main criteria. Do you balance the number of contest entries versus open submissions? Because I’m sending out a second book, the answer is yes, first, because I admire and want to support presses who do open submissions, and secondly, because there just aren’t that many contests for second books. (On that note, here’s a great list of publishers with open submissions, thanks Rachel Dacus!)
It’s been three years since Becoming the Villainess came out, and I admit to feeling antsy, like I need to make the next step or I’ll feel stale, mired, bored. I’ve written a ton of work, work I still like and am proud of, and would like to get the work out into the world soon. (Can you say three manuscripts stacking up?) I’m not a super-patient person – to me, I’d rather have the book out there so I can quit obsessing and start working on the next one than wait six years to be taken by the “right” prestigious contest. The important thing for me is to get my work into people’s hands, working with an editor/publisher who is enthusiastic about my poems. I know that in some ways Eduardo is right – without a “big” publisher/contest win, without ads and reviews in the “right” places, it can be hard to get any attention for your book. It’s definitely an upstream swim. Promoting poetry is hard work. I still marvel at some of my students who will happily fork over xxxx number of dollars for my class to have their poems workshopped, but resist spending the $75 for books of contemporary poetry. And that’s MFA students, who should be interested in the stuff, right? Anyway, I know where Eduardo’s coming from, but I think there are a plethora of good publishers out there, and sometimes, whether you make a big splash or not, the poetry will fight for itself over time.
Besides book submissions, I’m trying to get back in the swing of regular poetry subs as well – something I’ve neglected for months, something about knowing I’m moving keeps me from sending out for fear it will get lost in the mail confusion. I know I write less when I teach and in the months around moving, but I want to write some new work soon, too – it’s been over a month since the last poem…
On top of that, I need to do some exploration of my new locale. Sunday we drove around Sonoma a bit. Yesterday we went to my new doc in Yountville and kicked around that charming area (Bouchon Bakery next door has discus-sized macarons in twenty flavors!) Today I want to drive out to St. Helena, since I haven’t been there yet. Hoping to meet some poets out here soon too. Already plotting my escape over to San Fran, though husband G says the city will be difficult to navigate on crutches…
