Markets

I mentioned in a previous post that I got "Novel & Short Story Writer's Market" recently and was overwhelmed by the huge number of entries. But its better now. I want to get paid for my writing, so I went through all three big lists of short story markets, literary magazines, small circulation publications, and consumer magazines and put every paying market into an excel document. This was about 150 markets. Then I went through and eliminated the markets that only work with established writers, and the ones that only publish things I will never write, like Christian magazines. This narrowed it down to 85 markets.

At this point I did a "save as" and began yet another round of eliminations. This time I chose a specific story of mine and eliminated all the markets that would never publish it, based on length or genre. Now I am down to 33 markets, two of which are consumer magazines. The next step is to sort the markets into the ones that seem best for this story, and the others that are not an excellent match. This will determine the order in which I send out these stories. Also if a magazine does not accept simultaneous submissions then they will have to have their own round of submissions. I suspect this may be true of the consumer magazines.

But right now I am going to submit my story to my writer's group, so it can be brimming with as much awesomeness as possible before I start sending it out. Wish me luck!

Publishing

My copy of "2008: Novel & Short Story Writer's Market." just arrived in the mail today. Now I have to sort through the several hundred listings to find short story markets that will accept me and pay me for my glorious work. That way when I attempt to sell the brick I mentioned in my last post I will have some publishing experience to prove my merit. Apparently being the self-proclaimed, Grandmaster of the Universe won't be enough to catch an agents eye.