Edit like an Editor: A Wattpad Featured Guide ✔

Part iii. Marketing Your Work

Once you have revised and fine-tuned your short story or novel, you are finally ready to submit. For fiction, the premier market guide is Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, published by Writer's Digest Books. Not every magazine, journal, or book publisher is listed in this guide, but if you can't find what you need here, you can go online and find more markets for your work.

Submitting your work requires a careful process, and it takes patience and endurance. For both short fiction and the novel, be prepared to do further revision if an editor or agent asks for it. Be sure to keep track of manuscripts sent to various magazines, agents, and small press publishers, and the dates you sent them.

Submitting Short-Fiction

First, you need to study the market. Which magazines and journals are out there, and how many are a good fit for your work? Don't send your work just anywhere.

Second, be flexible on the method of submission: regular print or online.

And third, prepare for rejection. Be thankful for editors' responses, especially when they are encouraging.

Study the Market

It's important to study the market; i.e., to give your full attention to the kinds of work different magazines and journals are publishing. There are two ways to do this: Study blurbs in Novel & Short Story Writer's Market and read sample copies of the magazine.

Study the Blurb

Start with Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. You will find blurbs that cover literary magazines, small circulation magazines, online markets, and consumer magazines. Blurbs tell you the literary standards editors set for published work. One useful feature is the names of authors the magazine or journal has recently published. You can watch for these authors in other magazines and find out what they are doing to be successful.

Pay special attention to what's written under the "Needs" heading. Is this the kind of fiction you write? Also, heed notations stating that only regional writers can be considered, or if it's a Canadian magazine, only Canadian writers. Don't bother sending work after the state reading period; it won't get read. Some magazines, as you will note, read year round.

One last thing: Find out if the magazine accepts simultaneous submissions (work sent to more than one place) and multiple submissions (more than one story to the magazine you are submitting to).

Read Sample Copies

You can get a greater sense of the magazine by reading published stories than you can from simply reading an informational blurb. You will probably be able to read sample copies from a number of magazines and journals at a university or college library and possibly find some at your local library. Many magazines and journals also archive sample stories on their websites.

The kinds of fiction the magazine takes should become apparent. If it takes experimental fiction, is this the kind of experimental fiction you write? What sensibility do you gather from reading the work in this magazine? Does it seem urban or rural? Does it seem off-beat or sober?

Submission: Regular Print or Online

Submitting hardcopy stories takes time and is costly, but a number of regular print magazines still demand it. If you submit your work via regular mail, send a cover letter, the story, and either a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) or a return envelope with return postage. Don't send photos, your resume, or anything else. Doing so makes you look unprofessional.

A cover letter is important. Check the Internet for sample cover letters. When I was in college, I worked with my college's internationally published literary magazine for over three years. Whenever we received submissions with a cover letter, we were always impressed. It gives a sense of professionalism that subjectively boosts the manuscript over others that may not have submitted with a cover letter.