Mid-Course Q&A Round Up for 'A Submitter's Guide to Lit Mags' (Plus Write or Die 101 as a whole)
Halfway point Q&A on all things lit mag submissions & write or die 101.
We are two weeks into WoD101 and have already become Substack's 21st most popular educational newsletter! Thank you all so much for your support and participation. Since this is a new strategy for writing education, it’s always easier to show than explain.
So, here we are, two weeks into our first course: Sorry For The Inconvenience — A Submitter’s Guide to Lit Mags. This course is done by me (Benjamin Davis), so it’s a little different. Mainly, it’s 100% free.
In March, I will hand the reigns over to
A lot of folks had questions about starting a newsletter in the comments of Lesson # 2: Why Are You Submitting To Lit Mags In the First Place?Well, good news! That’s what Courtney’s entire course will be about. We will introduce it fully next weekend, but here’s the pitch:
Every Writer Needs a Newsletter: Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career → Podcast extraordinaire and very online person, Courtney Kocak will teach you how to start a successful newsletter to supercharge your writer’s platform.
After that, Andrea Firth will take over to teach a course about how to write a compelling personal essay. And so on, with new instructors each month for the rest of the year (and beyond). You can find all of our upcoming courses here.
Now, if A Submitter’s Guide To Lit Mags were a guest instructor’s course, this is the point in the month where the rest of the lessons would be for paid subscribers only. A paid subscription is $10 per month or $100 per year. This paid membership is not just for one course but for every course. So that’s 12 writing workshops/courses for $100.
For example, if you sign up for Courtney Kocak’s course on newsletters here:
You are in for the whole year (yearly) or for however long you choose to pay for WoD101 (monthly). Your first month’s payment always goes to the course instructor.
So, that’s the deal. For any free subscribers, you will still get the first two weeks of every course. Usually, as is the case with my course, those will be more informative than generative or analytical. Let’s take my course as an example.
(Free) Lessons 1-6: A comprehensive deep-dive into the essentials of submitting to lit mags.
(Paid) Lessons 7-12: Organizing your work, strategizing your processes, and learning to analyze lit mags for the best results.
Again, my course is not paid at all. Just an example of what it would look like were it a usual WoD101 course.
So, yeah, that’s how all of this works. I know just sending out an explanation-heavy email, in the beginning, didn’t quite capture it, so I thought, now we’ve got going, this would be a good opportunity to break it down.
Now, let’s dive into the comments so far and clear up anything folks were unclear about or insights from folks who went above and beyond what I wrote in each lesson. I am going to avoid any questions that will be answered in the second half of this course and instead focus on those I feel add value to what we’ve already covered.
From
- “When you write these summaries of works for yourself and, as you said, also to add to cover letters, do you write the brief descriptions on what they're about face value or what they're ~really~ about?”
For blurbs about your work in cover letters: First, I only rarely include them if they are relevant (usually if there is a theme). Second, if you choose to include a blurb I wouldn’t show all of your cards. Face value is fine. You don’t want to give away your whole story. You want the editor to experience it as a reader would and weigh their decision based on the impact it has. Whollop is a word that comes to mind.
From
- “I've seen editor interviews and articles about lit mags mention including one's bio in the cover letter to be a pet peeve. Would you say that is an outlier preference and we are safe including bios in cover letters?”
This is an outlier. The majority of lit mags ask for a bio in your cover letter or in a separate input box on the Submittable form.
From
- And have you noticed almost any "genre" on your list can be prefaced by the word "literary" too in terms of a journal's guidelines? What's with that? I guess they're asking for the genre specifications with extra helpings of "craft" mixed in ... or they're trying to transcend the genre "stigma"?
I think when editors preface any subgenre or genre with ‘craft’ they are indicating they care a lot about the writing itself. Not only that you can tell a good story. Or they read it in a book once and want to sound fancy. But probably the former.
From
Author bios with lit journal creds in them are also great if you're trying to nab feature perfomer slots in your local poetry /spoken word community. I'm going for that too.
Excellent point. I live abroad, so I don’t get to attend any local events. If you do, this may be of interest to you.
From
Hey Benjamin, one of the challenges I struggle with in submitting to lit mags is the nagging sense that any time I invest doing so would be better spent honing my craft instead.
Yeah…yeah.
From
Writing can be so exhausting and difficult that when it isn’t enjoyable and I’m not getting recognition, I wonder what the fuck the point is. No one’s holding a gun to my head but myself (a proverbial gun, to be clear).
Existential crises are entirely normal. Encouraged, even.
From
I have a submission that is just 'sitting there' - with an online lit mag that states a four week response on average but not only has it already been nine weeks, but I re-submitted after seven weeks (needed to add one publication to the bio) and they do not accept simultaneous subs. So I'm just stuck with not being able to submit that entry anyplace else ...
I don’t hold lit mags too strictly to their response times unless they don’t accept simultaneous submissions. In that case, once the response time has elapsed, if I reach out and nobody responds, I’ll submit it elsewhere. Respect goes both ways.
From
Can we submit opening chapters from a novel if re-worked to feel like a complete story? I've heard of writers doing this, but I don't know if this puts you in a rights conundrum down the road, or makes the novel less appealing to sell?
99% of the time, this is no problem. But if you are concerned about losing any rights to your work, be sure to look at the lit mag’s rights on their webpage. And, if they have you sign a contract, review it carefully.
Also, I had an emailed question from a subscriber about where you can submit nonfiction as fiction.
I think yes. Fiction as nonfiction is the big no-no. But if you have a story stranger than fiction with all of the elements of a good story, why not?
From
I wonder if I could bother you for some advice. I submitted a piece of flash CNF was accepted. I signed a DocuSign on 10/18/23. The editor said that he wanted an interview to go along with the piece and asked me for my contact information. I sent that and got no reply. Since then I Send emails by personal email, submittable , And the publications contact form, All with no reply. And this is a reputable journal. It has been accepted, so I can’t submit it to anybody else. What should I do?
I discussed this specific case with Mark in the comments, but more generally, I give lit mags a lot of leeway once my piece is accepted. Usually, six months to a year before, I’m like, OK, what the fuck? If you have signed a contract and been accepted, it will publish 9/10 unless the lit mag goes defunct.
From
Ben, how does Chill Subs determine a lit mag’s “vibe?” Do they self identify or do you have certain criteria?
There is no science to it — sort of why we call it "vibe." It is the only filter editors can't access because then all would be fancy or top-tier. So you might call it a general eye-balling. But for the Top-top vibe, you're looking at <1% acceptance rates, and the next tier probably <8%. Then, in the mid-tier 10-30, and then several more fun and accessible mags in the rest.
Lesson 4: Everything You Wanted To Know (and Plenty You Didn't) About Lit Mag Submission Guidelines
From
I have a question sort of relating to etiquette around what qualifies as "previously published." Sometimes I have a fragment or scene that I really like and think could stand on its own, but could also become part of a longer piece later on. Is it considered bad form to publish a fragment as like a flash piece or something, and then later incorporate it into a longer story? Would the whole new story be considered "previously published" if a small part of it had appeared as a flash or prose piece?
This would be entirely OK. As I see it, the longer story is a totally different monster. That would be like a novel getting turned down for being based on a short story. The reverse may cause some problems if a lit mag gets to Googling.
From Swati - If you have time/interest, I'd love to hear about etiquette/expectations around encouraging rejections. I'm in the frustrating (and admittedly humble-braggy) spot of getting lots of personalized, warm rejections, semi-finalisted, long-listed, short-listed...but not making it into the mag. I haven't seen much if any advice in this space. Some specific questions: I don't respond to friendly form rejections (why bog staff down with extra email) but do respond to personalized notes. Should I be responding to all/none? Are there editor pet peeves to avoid when trying one of those places again? If I get specific, gushing praise on a story from all sorts of magazines followed by "not right for this theme" "no space in this issue"...is it bad form to try the rounds again with the same story (repolished) a few years later? I'm thinking specifically for MFA/undergrad mags with high editor turnover, but also generally. If I've submitted every good story I've ever written (that fits their guidelines) to a magazine I love, and gotten longlisted or great feedback with each, but no pubs...is my only option to appear in that mag to (groan) write more? I took me a decade to get 6-7 stories to a publishable place, and I really want to see these stories find homes before I start revising/polishing/obsessing over new work.
First, I never respond to rejections. But I don’t think that’s a rule, just a preference. Second, I have never met an editor who doesn’t love seeing the same writer try again and again so long as they are polite and follow guidelines. Third, technically that is a no-no (resending the polished work), but if you change the title and it is years later, fuck it. I’ve never done it because there are just so many excellent lit mags. I’d have to go through 100 rejections before I decided to try circling back around. And then, well, maybe it would have more to do with my story. I do think if you go beyond polishing and fully rewrite a piece with a new title and significant edits, it isn’t an issue.
From
- "It DOESN’T matter if you’ve been published before. Over and over, I hear editors talk about how much they love being a writer’s first publication." I believe you, but also: don't editors love writers who come with a big social media following?
The writing world is small enough that if a lit mag were chasing big social media followings, it would become quickly apparent, and they’d get a lot of shit for it. If a lit mag is going to target people for the sake of prestige points, they will solicit them. And usually, they’ll target for industry brownie points over TikTok followers. So for the purposes of submitting to slushpiles, it doesn’t matter.
From
- I have a niggly "Submittable" question. I had to withdraw one poem from a journal today due to it being accepted elsewhere. I never know whether to use the "Message" option or "Notes". Can you advise, Ben?
I use the “Note” option on Submittable. If any editors out there disagree, please let me know.
From
- Rightly or not, I have the feeling that university run journals are looking to publish student writers, or MFA candidates & may not be interested in poetry outside of those parameters. What do you think?
If you think of a university-affiliated lit mag as an assignment for the editors and readers, their job is to create the best lit mag with the best content. Not simply publish their peers. I have been published in several university-affiliated lit mags and my student days are…long gone. I think MFA students tend to populate university lit mags more because those are the ones they target, and what they’re writing tends to be similar to what those running the lit mags are taught is “Good.”
From
I do have a question about whether or not you think editors should put something in their guidelines that they will respond back to a message within a certain time period (not the question about don’t query them until….)? I have had been ghosted by magazines that say, “In Progress” on Submittable but it’s been six months or more. I’d like at least a response back at 6 months saying it’s “still in process of being considered”. What do you think?
I do think that editors who have that note seem more considerate. Like, by saying, "You can email us about a submission," it is acknowledging they can get behind and want you to know they are attentive to this. But gosh, I've had plenty of way too long responses. I have one in my submittable that is over 3 years old at this point. From a lit mag that is still running! I think a response in six months would be nice. But also, if it takes a year, just say it takes a year. If a lit mag has no response time or says they won't respond unless it is an acceptance, I don't really bother. I tend to not report these things only because I don't know what is going on behind the scenes. Editorial boards are not trained professionals. They are just people. Maybe they had a life event that set them back. Maybe the university cut funding. Maybe it changed hands. I tend to just move on unless it seems like they have a pattern of doing this. There is a newer website called Blacklist Lit that is documenting this sort of thing if you want to check them out.
From
- To answer one of your questions for the comments: Does it matter when in the reading period you submit? That depends on the magazine, of course. If the magazine saves every submission until the reading period is over and then makes decisions, then no, it shouldn't matter. If a magazine (usually with a longer submission window) reads and makes decisions as they go, then it can matter when you submit. Some magazines may fill an issue and then stop accepting work (not nice if there's a fee). Even magazines that read every submission are still likely to be more overwhelmed with submissions as their deadline approaches. In theory, it may not make a difference when you submit. In practice, it might. Submit too early in the reading period, and you might be forgotten. Submit late, and you might be overlooked because they're overwhelmed or nearly full. My best advice is to submit early in the reading period, but closer to the middle than to the end — if you can remember and time it right. But for journals who close submissions after X number, I want to be there on the first day if I really want to be considered. And I might submit right at the deadline if I have to, but I'd rather not be so last-minute. If I know a magazine waits until all submissions are in before reading, I might not stress about when I submit, though how can I know whether they read in the order submissions came in or whether they read in reverse order or alphabetical or what? That's why I shoot for the middle of any reading period if I can. Unless the magazine gives me more insight in their submission guidelines, of course
I thought this was an interesting perspective. The mental gymnastics involved and the number of variables it requires makes me skeptical. Also, trying to nail reading period mid-points all of the time would give me a headache. Still, it is well-thought-out and interesting.
From
I think one of my biggest annoyances is when you submit a story, for whatever reason, you're somehow automatically subscribed to their (spammy) email updates. That is a surefire way to make me run for the hills. Give me that option first, please, and thank you.
Yeah, also, Submittable allows for an ‘opt-in’ method of email collection, so there is no excuse. Contests are the worst about this.
*This was originally titled “How To Do Cover Letters Real Good,” and, well, it turned out not everyone has enough runway for that joke to land. So I updated it.
From Corinne Hughes - I think since I haven’t been published a ton, I can get away with feeling out my bio. But I’m wondering when it’s time to have a solid one bio…?
I find my bio is always evolving with my publications and life circumstances. Probably, once a writer has an agent and books getting published in fancy places, they likely have someone else writing them for them. Until then, I think they can be fun to experiment with.
From Question time! If I haven't been published yet, but my work has been accepted for publication, should I or should I not include that in my author bio? Like so: "Her work is slated to appear in Best Magazine Ever."
Yes! Include it.
From
if a journal says it wants to prioritise underrepresented writers, and you’re in one of those categories, where would you put the info - cover letter or bio?
I would. I don’t fall into any of those categories. But if I did, I would. Or indicate it in my bio.
From
Two rules for cover letter: Just don't be rude. And don't lie. Two rules for bio: Be brief. And don't lie.
100%. He had a load of other good advice in his comment but pulled this because it truly is the golden rule(s).
From
Re: bios, if you have "many" publications but no books, how many mags would you list? And how do anthology citings stack up against mags?
I usually don’t go over 3-4 publications, depending on the length of the name of the lit mag. For anthologies, I’d book, “…and their work has appeared in [anthology], [anthology], [anthology].”
From
If I have a very anemic social media presence, is it better not to include links to those accounts in a cover letter? I rarely post anything; I use most platforms to follow other people or stalk my kids. Not as creepy as it sounds (hopefully).
We will do a whole lesson on writing platforms later this year. In the meantime, there are several simple options writers can use to direct folks to read more work. A LinkTree or simple one-pager website is all you need.
From
- On the subject of bios (which are often included in Cover Letters) -- I'd recommend against saying that you've been **nominated** for The Pushcart Prize or Best of the Net. You should personally feel good about this, however, it's common enough to be uninteresting in a bio. If you were included (as in won) that's a different story.
There are different schools of thought on this. I don’t include mine in my bio but don’t judge folks who do. I find more and more people who don’t like this as time goes on.
Again from
- Once considering the work for publication, the Cover Letter should only be a reassurance that this person is who they say they are, if you're trying to make sure your lit mag has diversity, if you're concerned a persona poem (or a story or an essay etc) might not be appropriate coming from someone whose personal background doesn't align with the content/perspective (right to write concerns). There are more concerns and worries, of course. These are just a few.
Yes, this is a great point I should have mentioned in the lesson. I’ve found cover letters are mostly used after an acceptance to get info about the person and make sure they didn’t threaten to murder the editors if they don’t get accepted. (Though many lit mags ask me for my bio again after getting accepted even when I put it in the cover letter, so…)
From
Two questions for editors - I've got three submissions (3 different places) where it's been well past -over 3 months - when two of these places have said 1 month for the time they respond (as stated on their websites). I've reached out to all three twice......and crickets. Personally, I think it's rude and unprofessional. Honestly, I'm about to withdraw all three pieces. The other question is, is it worth paying extra for feedback? I've done and all but once have gotten some good constructive criticism.
Oof, with feedback. That is a tough call. I know some editors truly put their hearts and souls into it. But I tend to treat feedback the same way I do drugs — if someone else had a good experience with this batch, I might give it a try. Otherwise, I tend to avoid those and would hire a freelancer directly. I know some lit mags that offer them but just outsource to freelancers and take a cut. So, be wary. Ah, and response times. Yeah, that is unprofessional, but at the same time, it is important to remember that not all editorial teams are 'professionals.' Many are volunteers or hobbyists, and their unpaid passions can be the first thing cut when times get tough.
From
Particularly interesting to see how many hands (and eyes) touch most of the submissions. This is why I tend not to mention a specific name in the greeting to my cover letters: I always imagine it's weird to have Geoffrey the assistant editor open my submission and read "Dear Shannon" (the editor in chief).
Yes. When it comes to addressing specific editors in a cover letter, I’ll only name them if they are limited and/or genre-specific. With huge editorial teams, it is better to address the readers. ALSO: When you submit to a contest with a guest judge, it is rare that the guest judge actually reads your work. It still gets filtered through readers before it gets to them. So, addressing them is pointless.
And now the floor is open! If you have any follow-up questions from the past six lessons that I missed or that are just coming to you now, please comment them below, and I will answer them. I want to get everyone up to speed before moving into the half of this course, where I will be referencing concepts and definitions from these first few lessons. Remember, if you’re unsure about asking your question publicly, you can always email me: ben@chillsubs.com. Also, feel free to ask any questions you have regarding Write or Die 101. We know it is a bit of a jumble. Transparency is important to us, so no question is off the table.
Stellar February course so far, I can't wait to carry the torch for March!
A fellow poet told me about your substack. I’m a very beginner at all this. I find most of your posts overwhelming, long and too chatty. I do not want a story, I want the facts in a simple concise order. And it would really be good if you separated the styles of writing. Just a poetry info posts. And short stories and any thing else as separate posts. Or a beginners section.
I have found some helpful info, and thank you for that! Simple direct thoughts from a beginner poet!