Tag Archives: markets

2 Indispensable Sites for All Short Story Writers

Well, I’ve found these two sites to be a great help to me over the years.  It would have been a great deal more difficult to find markets for my first short stories without them.  I’m talking about Duotrope and Ralan.

Duotrope is a dynamic, online database of fiction and poetry markets.  You’ve written a story and need to find out who might be looking for stories of your type.  Go to Duotrope, enter search terms such as genre, subgenre, number of words, payscale (pro, semi-pro, token, or non-paying) and your choice of a few others to narrow your search, then click Search.  You’ll see a list of potential markets for your story.  Clicking on any of the markets takes you to a Duotrope page with details about the market, with links to the market’s website, any restrictions on submissions, and statistics such as response time and acceptance rate.  Those statistics come from regular writers submitting their experiences to Duotrope, not from the markets themselves.

Before Duotrope, writers would go to the library to look at a reference book called Writer’s Market, published annually.  I do recommend the book, but Duotrope is online and free.  If you find Duotrope helps you connect with a market, you should contribute some money to them to help sustain their operation.

Using Duotrope, you can come up with a prioritized list of where you’ll send your story.  That list is tailored to your story so you’re not wasting your time, or some editor’s, with sending a story not suited to that market.

One more thing.  Duotrope is not just for short story writers, like me.  It’s also for novelists and poets too.

The other site I recommend is Ralan.  It’s operated by an author writing under the name Ralan Conley.  The full name of the site is Ralan’s SpecFic and Humor Webstravaganza.  SpecFic is Speculative Fiction.

There are several interesting features of this website to explore, but the part I used most is Antho.  That section can keep you up to date on what short story anthologies are looking for submissions.  You’ll see each open anthology listed, a general description, any limitations on submissions, pay scale, and a link to the market’s website about the anthology.

I’ve blogged about writing for anthologies before, and now you know where to find the information to get you started.  It’s fun, every now and then, to check the Antho list at Ralan to see what the anthology markets are looking for.  Every so often, this exercise will spark an idea for a story.  So in that sense this site can help at both ends of the writing process, both before and after the story is written.

Duotrope and Ralan are crucial resources for a beginning writer in providing guidance about where to market your stories, and even getting a sense of market trends.  Have you used them and have an experience to share, or are there other sites you’ve found helpful?  Send comments to–

                                                                         Poseidon’s Scribe

 

January 22, 2012Permalink

For Heart or Market?

Today’s question:  should you write for your heart or for the market?  (Doesn’t it always come down to love or money?)  Beginning writers often ask this, invariably because what they want to write (what their heart is telling them to write) is not selling in the marketplace.  Moreover, when they look at what is selling, they see only cookie-cutter books in neat, well-defined genres, which are not the type of thing they wish to write.

Ideally, of course, the two are the same—what you want to write is exactly the sort of story that’s selling.  Even better is to anticipate the market, to be writing now what the market will soon want, but doesn’t know it wants yet.

Most often, however, your heart is tugging you away from what readers want.  And that takes us back to the question. Should you plug along, scribbling words you enjoy that will never be read, or compromise your integrity and crank out prolefeed for the masses, hating yourself for it every minute?

For short story writers like me, the answer is yes…do both.  Short stories are small enough investments in time that you can write some tales for the sheer fun of it, and others that are more conventional and salable.

You may find yourself facing the same choice at two different times with the same story.  Say you choose your heart and write your tale the way you want to, markets be damned.  That certainly keeps your integrity intact and you feel good about that.  Then you submit for publication and the editor likes the story but suggests significant changes to make it more salable.  Now you’re faced with a decision again—twist the story you love all out of shape to satisfy readers, or keep your writing pure and visible only to those who inhabit your desk drawer?

As we further examine the heart-or-market question, it’s important to go back to your own goals as a writer.  Do you write for the money or do you write because something inside says you must?  If the answer is nearer one extreme than the other, that may help decide which path to pursue.   Trouble is, you might have two equal goals and that just puts you right back on the horns of the dilemma.

One thing to bear in mind as you hone your writing talent is that both the market and your heart are moving things.  We know that reader’s tastes change, and the next hot fiction trend may veer toward the stories you love writing but couldn’t previously sell.  In the same manner (though harder to believe) your own tastes in writing may change.  Once your muse gets bored, you never know what oddball ideas she may whisper to you next.  You could end up writing in a genre you had sworn you’d never condescend to.

If both your heart and the market are changing, then at some point they may approach very closely, and you’ll find yourself enjoying writing for the market.  When that happens, ride the wave as long as possible!

I can’t answer the question for you, but perhaps I’ve provided some factors to consider as you resolve the quandary for yourself.  Look at it this way–what would writing be without some kind of internal battle, some titanic inner war over the course of the soul?  As always, Dear Beginning Writer, your lonely struggles are appreciated and acknowledged by–

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 24, 2011Permalink

The Worst Click

You’re a beginning writer and you’ve been writing and rewriting your manuscript.  For some reason, the actual product doesn’t match in grandeur the masterpiece you had in your head when you started.  The process of assembling the actual words, herding them together in some sort of order, made the whole resulting story seem more juvenile than you intended.  Not juvenile as in ‘written for juveniles to read,’ but ‘written by a juvenile who nearly failed English.’

You could go through and edit your creation one more time in hopes that greatness will finally emerge, but you’ve done that already repeatedly and it hasn’t worked.  It’s doubtful if one more edit will accomplish much.  Besides, you’re getting a little sick of the thing.  Your muse has flitted off, interested in different and ever newer pursuits.

Somewhere you’d heard that even the best writers let a manuscript sit for a time—a few weeks or even months—and then come back to it, able to look with a fresher eye.  In your case that’s not an option, since today’s the deadline for the anthology for which you’re aiming.  Or maybe you already did let the work sit for a while but it didn’t result in a better manuscript, just further loss of interest in the story.  In either case, this opus isn’t going to get any better than it is right now.

So you sit staring at the monitor, looking at an e-mail you’ve written to the editor.  The e-mail has your story attached—oh, you triple-checked that.  The file with the story is in the format preferred by the editor, again triple-checked.  The e-mail is short and upbeat.  Everything is ready.  All you have to do is click the ‘send’ button and your first-ever story will be on its way to an actual editor.

So what gives?  Why the delay?  It’s a single mouse click, for crying out loud.  What happened to that boldness you felt when you couldn’t wait to charge in and start writing the story?  Where’s that reckless abandon with which you stayed up until three in the morning last month to pound out the first draft of the final scene, typing “The End” in weary triumph?  What’s happened to reduce that bravely audacious writer to a quivering mass of doubt, consumed with fear at the sight of a Send button?

What if, you keep thinking, the editor doesn’t like it?  What if it’s the worst piece of tripe the editor has ever read?  It would be bad to receive a rejection, but devastating if the editor replied with something like, “It was enough for me to endure your opening paragraph, and how I wish I could have that precious time back.  I have many enemies, but none so vile that I would force them to read a single sentence of your work.  Not only am I rejecting your story, but I beg you, for the good of humanity, to take up another hobby—any other hobby.”

It’s that and a thousand similar scenarios that keep your finger poised above, but never quite clicking, the mouse button that would send your first story on its way.  I’ll write about dealing with rejections in a future blog post, but in this case you’re rejecting the story yourself before you even send it in.

Would it help if I told you that every writer goes through that the first time?  What if I said that no self-respecting editor ever sends a rejection full of personal put-downs like you imagined?  How about if I told you it’s only this first submission that causes such angst, that all the rest are far easier?

Since you face an irrational fear, one of your own making, there’s no works-every-time cure I can offer.  However, I suggest you dig deep inside yourself.  Remember when you started this quest?  You wanted to find out if you could be a writer, if you have what it takes.  This little moment of truth is part of the process, part of the writing game.

Chances are this submission will result in rejection, but that won’t deter the writer within you.  Oh, no, that inner writer will instead be spurred on, intent to do better next time.  That would-be (no, will-be!) author inside you laughs at rejections, even prints them out and saves them as badges of honor.  That confident scribbler within you knows that one day the act of submitting stories will be routine.  And on that day you’ll look back on this first moment of indecision and laugh.

So click ‘send,’ brave writer!  Hold your creation—your baby—aloft so the world can see.  You can do it.  I did, and survived.  As always, write to me here if you have some reaction to this post.  Now well past that first, worst click, I call myself—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 20, 2011Permalink