Early last year I realised that in order to maximise my chances of getting my work published I’d need to determine who published what, how to contact them and what to send them, i.e. publishers and submission guidelines.
You may assume that because it’s the 21st century (minus the jetpacks and moon base), to find such things you simply need to visit your favourite search engine, type a search string like…
SomePopularMagazine submission guidelines
…and up would pop that magazine’s submission guidelines page, and you could go about formulating your query, send it off and champagne would fall from the sky. Likewise, perhaps you don’t know what publications may print what you have written, so you find a markets website that provides you a list of publishers, what they accept and, in some cases, provides contact details and other critical information.
The problem is that most major publications do not put their submissions guidelines on their website and many markets websites are either light on the contents, out of date, or charge you a monthly or annual fee.
If you are in the UK or the USA there are two particularly good market websites: Writer’s Market and Writer’s Market UK (there are other large sites, but my understanding is that these two are typically the first port of call for most writers). However, this convenience comes at a cost: comparing like-for-like, the US website charges $39.99 per year and the UK website charges £25 per year. And if you publish around this globally-interconnected world, you may need to subscribe to a number of such sites.
But there is a cheaper, less technologically-advanced option. Believe it or not, these markets sites sell excellent printed copies of their directories. What’s more, they’re packed with the directory content for their own country and selected international publishers and markets, but also contain articles, guides, and information very helpful to people who are trying to break into a market or the industry as a whole. (As a site note, the Deluxe edition of Writer’s Market includes a year’s free membership to the website).
Yesterday I managed to buy myself a copy of both the 2010 editions of Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook (probably the oldest and best-respected UK directory) and Writer’s Market (US version) for less than what a subscription to one of the market websites would have cost me, delivered to my door.
If you’re in the position to be able to write such website subscriptions off on your tax return — or you’re prepared to make such an investment in your current position — then you have a powerful search tool at your disposal. Personally, I like to be able to flick through the book while I have my feet up on the sofa during writing downtime. It lets me note down a few good possibilities without taking up my keyboard time, which I prefer to reserve for writing where possible.
After you’ve found your target market in Writer’s Market, be sure to look up the publication’s website and double-check the contact information. Writer’s Market is a good starting point, but printed information of this kind goes out of date quickly.
Thanks for you comment. Yes, that’s an excellent point. Aside from contact details, I find one of the main benefits of the printed directories is being able to see a market’s expectations and policies. Calling their offices to determine which editorial role (Editor, Commissioning Editor, etc), and their correctly-spelled name, should be a pre-requisite to sending a query. If you haven’t bothered to find out the person’s name, you could perhaps understand their reluctance to deal with you.