I've had two acceptances so far this month. My poem "Dreams" has been accepted by The Stray Branch with a publication date of Spring/Summer 2013, and my poem "Coffee and Tea" will be appearing at The Orange Room Review for the February issue.
These two acceptances are very representative of my market selection process, and I'd like to take a few moments to share my philosophy with you. Like I'm so fond of saying, you can't get published if you don't submit. If you send everything you've ever written out to every single publication out there, the odds are someone will take something. But, since that's so time consuming, it's much easier for a writer juggling family and friends and school and work and all the other things you do to target your pieces. I've found Duotrope to be the easiest way to do this... Writer's Market is also a very valuable tool.
Most writers are able to identify their best work and separate it from the complete drivel and the "okay" poems. (I'll be saying poem throughout this post since that's what I'm using to demonstrate, but this post can just as easily be applied to fiction or creative nonfiction.) If you just can't tell the difference, do two things. Read published poetry from the magazines you most respect, and find a group of writers who can critique your work. There are some poems, like my poem "Dreams," which are just not as good as others. That doesn't mean there isn't a place for them, though. Usually, if I've either gotten more than 15 rejections or I just know that a poem doesn't have what it takes, I utilize Duotrope's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly list. This list will show you zines with the highest and lowest response times, and the highest and lowest acceptance rates. When I have a poem like "Dreams" sitting around for a while, and I'm very fond of it but know it's not Rattle or Tin House material, I check out the listing of "The Approachable". This is a quick and easy way to clean out the backlog of poems sitting in a drawer. You get a publication to add to your resume and the satisfaction of knowing that people will be reading your work.
With the ones you just know are destined for greatness? Read the publication before you submit. It's as easy as that. Editors continually say the biggest reason for rejection is a submission that doesn't match the publication. If you send a poem about zombies to a magazine that is looking for submissions about flowers and fluffy bunnies, you're wasting your time and the editor's. Another Duotrope feature I love is located on the bottom of the info page on each magazine. You'll find "Users accepted here also had work accepted by..." This is a great way to find new magazines to submit to. I find it's best to have a top 10 or 20 list; the magazines you really love and want to see your work in. I'm currently working to get a piece into Contrary. The site features amazing writers (Sherman Alexie had three poems in the Winter 2010 issue) and as soon as I have a publication-ready piece, I send it to Contrary first. I wait till I get a rejection from them, then submit it to a handful of higher end magazines. Then, wait about a month, and I go ahead and submit that piece to another round. The 30 day waiting time allows the tougher 'zines to have a head start. There's nothing like sending a great piece to a 1st choice publisher and a 2nd choice publisher and getting the yes from the 2nd before the 1st gets a chance to respond.
Again, the best thing you can do to make sure you're selecting the right market is to read the magazine. You should be doing this anyway, because the EASIEST way to improve as a writer is to read as much high quality work as possible. Writer's workshops and critique groups are a great help too, but I firmly believe that nothing will improve your writing without changing your own style more than reading, reading, and reading some more.
Hopefully this helps you. Please feel free to leave a comment with any tips or suggestions on how you find the best market for your piece. Do you write the piece for the market or write first and then find the market that's the best fit?
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