What Makes a "High Quality" Lit Mag Anyway?

Lesson 10 of 12: Sorry For The Inconvenience — A Submitter's Guide To Lit Mags

Update from Lesson 6 → Someone asked about whether to leave a note or send a message on Submittable to withdraw specific pieces from a submitted bundle that were accepted. I’ve always used notes, but I checked with an editor friend, and she said ‘messages’ are better.

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In this lesson, I will cover →

1. Some things to look out for if you’re concerned about over-soliciting and uncaring editors.

2. A breakdown of the qualities I look for in a lit mag

3. Red flags that can indicate low-quality lit mags.

4. Gold stars for lit mags that go above and beyond.

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Writing this lesson is probably a bad idea. Mostly for my own well-being.

It's like if you woke up one morning, got your family together, and said, "OK, so, I love you all very much. Now, here is a comprehensive breakdown of all the things you're doing that annoy me."

So, grain of salt — like, giant grain of salt chasing Indiana Jones through a tunnel — Almost nothing I mention in this lesson is a deal-breaker, and many of them are a direct result of the gratuitous lack of funding for the arts. But I am trying to be realistic about the question within the context of how it gets asked. Those curious about this sort of thing are usually the ones who have long-term goals in publishing. For those having fun or just testing the waters, a lot of this is overkill. If that sounds more like you, skip this lesson. Also, there is no “editor school.” A lot of teams, especially new ones, may simply not know or haven’t thought of one aspect or another.

OK, there. Salted enough? Let’s do it.

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First, let's cover a related question that has come up since I mentioned how some editorial teams, or members of them, can be disparaging toward their slush pile or primarily solicit works. Some folks asked how to find which lit mags are like this. I know some because editors and readers who work in those places tell me. But I am not interested in creating some sort of lit mag blacklist, so here are a few pointers.

1. If a lit mag makes it difficult for you to submit or find their guidelines → I've noticed several big-name lit mags that do this. They tend to be the ones who solicit a lot of work and leave submissions in their queues for outrageous periods of time. If you're at this game long enough, you'll get a sense for them. But a big red flag is when you go to their website, and they have no direct link to their guidelines in the navigation or in a drop-down. And, if you do find them, they are vague as hell. It means they aren't dependent on submissions. I consider this especially with long-standing, well-funded lit mags because you know they have the experience and resources to consider every aspect of what they are doing. So it's likelier than not that they solicit or have enough attention where they're not respecting the average submitter.

2. Read the bios of the folks they publish and look for consistent markers → Consider somewhere like The Paris Review. I'm going to pick on them because there is nothing I can say that would be damaging, and — well if you thought The Paris Review was pulling mostly from their slush pile, we need to have a talk about Santa. Even a cursory glance at their latest issue, nearly every writer I looked up had their own Wikipedia page with books and agents and all the woo-hoo awards you could want. Now, for example, let's look at SmokeLong Quarterly's Issue Eighty-One. A highly-regarded lit mag that could, if they wanted to, solicit loads of writers. If you peruse the bios on each of their stories, you'll notice that there is a range of qualifications. Some are simple, a few have MFAs, and most have solid credentials. But they aren't exclusive in any way. I wouldn't do this for everywhere you submit. Most lit mags are not soliciting the majority of their work. And most are quite passionate about treating writers well. But, particularly for those looking at career-advancing lit mags, this is something you'll want to look at.

   1. Note: I don’t begrudge lit mags from soliciting. But I do begrudge the pervasive lie that they don’t. Nothing else works this way. It’s not like The Patriots have an open try-out every year, claiming to pick mostly no-names then only put Tom Brady¹ (or facsimiles thereof) on the field and hope nobody notices. Just be transparent.

3. Can you actually read anything they publish without paying? → This is my favorite. It is so tone deaf it actually hits the same pitch as my screams of frustration when I see it. I don't live in the US. Many, many writers don't. I don't have a personal address where I can easily get mail. I don't always have $20 of disposable income. I think 'read us to find out what we publish' is 100% fair. But, OK, imagine you're going in for a job interview at Walmart, and the first thing they say is, "Go grocery shopping, and after you check out, we'll talk." The combination of this requirement alongside calls for writers who have been underrepresented and systematically oppressed is, as it turns out, in The Bible as one of the signs of the end times. It's like that trick where you rub your belly and pat your head at the same time except they’re managing to both spit in your face and laugh at you without blushing. Have I gotten my point across without having to actually say, "Get fucked?" Good. See, I don't always need to use vulgarity.

So, that is how I judge whether a lit mag is likely to give my submission serious consideration and doesn't just solicit most work (beyond when I'm informed directly via juicy gossip). You can also find editor interviews on Six-Questions, and Becky Tuch often interviews editors of top-tier lit mags in her newsletter (I am always amazed at how kind and passionate most of these folks are).

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Now: Quality

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When I am analyzing a lit mag for quality, I have several things in mind.

• Longevity → How likely are they to be around for the long run? (i.e., I don't want my work to be published in a mag that's going to go defunct in six months)

• Ambition → How likely is this lit mag to become more well-recognized in relation to my goals (career advancement, community, readers, etc.)

• Commitment → What are the signs that show me this lit mag is committed to the role they've taken up in a thankless world? Is it a half-assed side project or a few MFA grads trying to publish their friends and get some clout? Or are they taking this seriously?

• Quality Control → Do they care about how they present themselves and the writing they publish to bring the most amount of success for their writers and themselves?

• Respect → I consider the editor/writer dynamic to be a mutually beneficial relationship based on respect for what the other is trying to accomplish. Plenty of writers don't respect this, but this course isn't about how writers should behave so, idk, get a therapist.

• Audience Engagement → Are the folks involved in the lit mag trying to find an audience, or have they fallen into the cynical narrative that readers are an endangered species?

Each of the factors I'll go over will have a different weight depending on what your goals are. I will add my personal thoughts for each, but they are only examples. Decide what matters to you.

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Red flags

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Get out your “Hell No” lists!

A lot of these points are extremely unfair. For example, if a lit mag has a website hosted without a unique domain, they have proven nearly 3x likelier to go defunct. This, I am aware, is unfair. Web hosting costs money. Not everyone can afford it. Finding, setting, and maintaining a unique URL takes a certain level of technological know-how. Not everyone has the time to learn. My goal with this is not to shame or target any lit mag but to inform writers about the reality of what they're getting into (he says, lighting a match as he wades into a pool of gasoline.)

So, that’s that. Now, this.

• Unique domains → (What I mean here is "litmag.com" vs. "litmag.wordpress.com") So, yes. First, lit mags without unique domains are more likely to go defunct. That's the best case. Worst case, your work is going to be presented alongside ad-banners, disclaimers, and all sorts of nonsense platform hosts use to compensate for providing a free service. Honestly, if I ever have enough money, I'll just go out and pay for every lit mag's unique domain who can't afford it. It is totally unfair, and several lit mags I love don't have them, but statistically speaking, it tends to be a bad sign.

• Masthead → I flat-out refuse to submit anywhere without a masthead. It is always a bad sign. They are way more likely to go defunct. Worse, they are more likely to charge fees and never respond or publish questionable works. This is hands-down the biggest red flag for me, and I'll cut any lit mag from my list when I see it. No masthead means no accountability. There is no accountability when they run a scam contest or publish harmful content. No masthead is probably the only factor that, to me, is a binary one. A little snarky in guidelines, OK. Haven’t upgraded the domain, but well designed? I’m in. But, “I’m a cool human — pinky promise!” Nope.

  • Side note: For me, this extends to anonymity around companies, nonprofits, contests (especially contests), and any organization within indie lit. You can find a lot about where the money goes by using something like ProPublica or GuideStar. I went down a rabbit hole of watching where hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic aid money went within indie lit. Woof.

• Communication → When I see that lit mags don't list reading periods or have a "when we get around to it" vibe, I take that as a sign they're not so serious. Especially if they are loosey-goosey with their reading periods. This isn't just a pet peeve. It is the number one marker for indicating a lit mag's likelihood of going defunct or getting abandoned. I mean, why wouldn't it? Much easier to simply leave a lit mag to fade than to disappoint a load of people when an exact date rolls around. Also, if a lit mag uses their guidelines as an opportunity to air their grievances about writers, I'm out. That'd be like going to sign up for a YMCA membership and having the representative give you a monologue about how many people at the gym smell and how, "Good gosh, you better not smell, too."  It's tacky.

• Presentation → This is an extremely under-valued aspect of a lit mag. Not how beautiful their covers are or how fancy their masthead is. But how legible is your work? How easy is it to access and read? Now, not just on desktop, but mobile as well. If you want people reading your work, you don't want them jumping through hoops, swiping away ads, or squinting at teensy text. Honestly, I'll take the ugliest website over one that makes it difficult to access and read the work they publish. It'd be like going to a restaurant where everything gets served inside puzzle boxes. A lit mag like this is doomed to fail within the context of what a lit mag is designed to do: be read by other humans.

• Typos and editing → Some folks take this really seriously. I’m not that bad. But when there are loads of typos in guidelines or a clear lack of editing done on published works, it can only be a bad sign. Editors and writers are partners. It’s always been this way. We like to think writers just ooze genius prose perfectly presented, but that’s a childish fantasy. Writers need editors; editors need writers. Editors not editing are not holding up their end of the bargain.

• Maturity → I say maturity here rather than age because, though age tends to be a factor, maturity is what is more important. Does the editor use their power as a lit mag to start Twitter beefs, promote their personal brand, and neglect to read and publish works on time? Does their “about” read like the introduction to a half-baked blog? This can go on forever, listing out the various ways folks can be disrespectful through a lack of experience rather than malicious intent. But it’s worth considering. The editor who starts fights is more likely to leave you with published works associated with a lit mag that develops a bad reputation. Even when I agree with them, I’m less likely to submit. This is why, even if you hate social media, it’s worth checking what a lit mag is doing over there. You might find, regardless of how well they’ve presented themselves on their website, that on social media, they present more like noble raccoons defending a particularly fetid hunk of cabbage. Nothing sucks more in indie lit than watching your hard work devalued over a bug that crawled up someone else’s ass.

• No Payment + Fee → I’m not a no-fee evangelist. But if a lit mag is charging fees without paying their writers, this is not a good sign. No matter how you look at it, if writers are paying $3-5 per submission and a lit mag can’t manage to pay at least $20 to published writers, at best, they are awful budgeters (doesn’t bode well for a healthy future). At worst, they are scamming folks.

• Inconsistent publishing → When I see three issues published one year, two the next, one the next, and then they had to take a break for a year, I’m kinda like…OK, so you don’t want to meet up for dinner then? If that’s how you felt, why didn’t you just say that in the first place?

• Contest Happy → By this, I mean that a lit mag launches a lot of contests. And is always advertising their contests. I will take a lit mag with a $3 fee over a lit mag with many contests any day of the week. Most contests will not garner you any more prestige than publishing in a really good lit mag. They’ll just cost you more money. They have become the cynical default for funding a lit mag, and so everyone has one these days. I think it’s fair if they’re done well, but they pull attention — pull reader’s attention away from the regularly published works, pull editors’ attention away from the slushpile, and all of a sudden you’re getting twenty-five emails a month saying, “HEY DID YOU KNOW WE’RE HAVING A CONTEST!?” Cause you know what happens when that lit mag emails people about you’re work? Those people see it and go, “Holy fuck, I thought I blocked these people already!” And rightly proceed to block them. 1-3 contests a year is alright, but if you see a lit mag with more than that, consider their motivations.

• Response time & acceptance rate statistics (Chill Subs, The Grinder, Duotrope) → Tracking submissions is important not only for yourself but for the writing community in general. They give us statistics. The main statistics are acceptance rates and response times. You can find these on Chill Subs, Submission Grinder, and Duotrope. I’d recommend Chill Subs or Submission Grinder because Duotrope is a paid subscription. Also, according to their terms and services, you are not allowed to move your data to a new platform once you start tracking there. However, if you export your submissions from Submittable or Submission Grinder, you can upload them directly to Chill Subs’ tracker to get you started. All stats are free there. You can also google a lit mag’s name + “acceptance rate” to see if it is publicly listed anywhere. It’s important to remember that not everyone submitting tracks them, and those who do are more likely to underreport rejections. So if you see it 20%, it might be more like 12%, 10% might be closer to 5%, and anything under 5% is likely in the range of 1-3%.

  • Red Flag: Too accessible → Low acceptance rates (under 3%) can be an indicator that a lit mag curates very intentionally. As in, they are looking for something specific. That makes it easier to analyze a lit mag. The work they publish is likely to be more cohesive, and easier to spot where your work might fit. Careful curation also shows me a lit mag puts effort into quality over quantity. They are selective and pay attention. While going through the motions of publishing 40% of what gets submitted might take time, it isn’t always time well spent. I only consider all of this when I am targeting career advancement.

  • Red Flag: Too competitive → I love a lot of accessible lit mags because they publish more off-beat fun works and have great communities. I also think they can be more accessible to audiences. Extremely competitive lit mags can be dicey. It can mean the editors are overly picky (as in, they’re super focused on their narrow definition of craft), and they are far more likely to be one of those soliciting works. If a lit mag is more accessible, with a 10%+ acceptance rate, it likely means they’re reading everything, and nothing is getting bumped for a bigger name.²

    • So, really, there are pros and cons to high and low acceptance rates, depending on what your goals are. So you might consider either end of the spectrum to be a red flag in terms of the type of quality you are looking for. I find the sweet spot to be 3-12%.

  • Response times are fairly straightforward. I don’t just look at how long they take, but how long they take relative to how long they say they take. If a lit mag says three months, but the stats put them closer to 9 months with a significant amount of non-responses, that is a red flag for sure.

So those are the main red flags I look for in a lit mag. One thing you’ll notice here is that I don’t mention anything about judging the quality of the writing. There are a couple of reasons for that. One, I’m not qualified. Two, I don’t like most literary writing. And three, the lit mags I like to read aren’t always those I target for submissions. Sometimes they overlap, but not always.

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Gold Stars

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As important as red flags are, I think it’s more important to recognize when lit mags go above and beyond. So, here are some signs you can look out for and some insights on why they matter.

1. The opposite of all the things above → To save me the trouble of just listing out the opposite of everything above, just consider that covered.

2. Nominates for prizes → You might not know this, but nominating for prizes is a hassle. To nominate work for Pushcart, you have to take physical copies of each piece, put them in something called an envelope, roll them up into a bottle, then chuck it downriver and pray. Or something like that.³ So, I don’t so much care if a lit mag nominates because I love prizes, but because it shows me that the editors are looking for every avenue and willing to do extra to create more success for themselves and their writers.

3. Diverse Editorial Boards → The world is full of stories from all sorts of people. Editorial boards that reflect that are going to have a richer and more far-reaching appeal.

4. No fee + payment → Payment, in general, I see as a great quality. But when a lit mag has no fee and pays, I have a lot of respect for them. It usually comes out of the editor’s pocket.

5. Transparency → By this I mean both in terms of finances and their submissions process. Booth is a fine example of this regarding their finances.

6. CLMP membership → CLMP is an organization that provides resources to lit mags that help them achieve more things and raise money. It’s not a make or break for me, but when I spot it, I feel more comfortable that the editors have invested a bit extra into long-term success.

7. Submission Process → I have a secret crush on lit mags that have a clean and easy submission process. Clear directions, consistency between the portal and guidelines, embedded submission forms, cover letter examples, and all sorts of goodies. There are no industry standards. That means what you’re seeing is the standard an editor sets for themselves. Keep that in mind.

8. Promotes writers → If a lit mag of any size has a page dedicated to those who’ve published with them, they are OK in my book. If they have whole author pages with links to the writer’s work, they are beautiful humans who deserve all the marshmallows you can fit in an old Amazon box and send to them.

9. Joy → This is quite subjective, so you can take it or leave it. I love seeing lit mags where it looks like the editors enjoy what they do. They put a lot of care in and have really human faces with real human smiles. Everyone on their masthead isn’t pensively looking out a window, and their about makes them seem like, hey, maybe they fart sometimes. Like that Joan Osborne song, you know? Just a slob like one of us.

10. What other people say → There is a reason folks call it a community. Talk to other writers. They don’t bite. Well, some do. But most will be so happy to talk about the experiences they’ve had with different lit mags. Find someone who submits similar work as you, and you’ve found a gold mine of useful information to find the best lit mags. Folks often ask me how to connect with other writers. Here’s the secret: email them. I think the internet has tricked us into thinking most people want to be left alone or that we’re all secretly the exact opposite of whatever the other person believes. I don’t know. But if you just shoot people an email saying hi and mentioning some of their work, a lot will be happy to connect.

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Some folks misconstrue “high-quality” with prestige. I don’t. Plenty of well-known lit mags that will get you all the attention and brownie points in the world kinda suck. If you only want prestige, go to Garstang’s Top Literary Magazines, copy-paste the Top 100 or so, and stay there. Never deviate. Every year, copy-paste and do the same. Get in your box.

But I will say most of the prestigious lit mags have dominated every aspect of the industry for decades. And look at all of these readers we have!

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By this point in the course, you should have found at least a few lit mags you’re curious about. Or maybe you’ve been at this a while and have some long-standing favorites. Consider all of the points above, go to their website, and start examining them not just as a lit mag but as an organization responsible for the health of an industry. What are they doing well? Where could they improve? What are some other gold stars and red flags in your book that I didn’t cover in this lesson?

1. Sorry, literally the only sports team and player I know. Not a sports guy. I know you’re surprised. I give off big locker room energy.

2. like KYLE, for example….get it? cause it’s all caps so it’s bigger…

3. mail….you have to mail it