Alternate Avenues for Short Story Submissions

Get your writing career moving!

Having spent about ten days researching two popular platforms (literary magazines and anthologies) for us writers to send our short stories, I am seeing that we need to turn to other avenues. The good news is that such alternate avenues do and have existed, some for a couple of decades.

First, some observations on literary magazines (lit mags) and anthologies:

• They are usually themed (heroic ghosts, uplifting holiday stories, etc.).

• Content is often a mix of fiction (stories, poems), nonfiction (essays, articles), art.

• Many have strict word limits for fiction and nonfiction and specific criteria for art while others do not.

• Many have different formats for submitting your work that you need to follow carefully.

• They have different lengths of time for responding (and some don’t respond at all), ranging from a few days to several months (I just waited four months only to get a rejection – sigh!).

• Some appear in print as well as an electronic format.

• Some pay but many don’t, and most will give you a free copy (some give you two copies) of the printed magazine (if there is one).

• Some will accept submissions that appear online (Substack, Medium, WordPress, or other sites that publish your work), but many want submissions that are totally unpublished, including online.

• EVERY SINGLE ONE does NOT accept art and text generated by a technology called “AI” (“artificial intelligence” which just means an advanced processing system) or similar content generators.

And most important of all, you are at the mercy of one or maybe two people to read your work and pass judgment on it. And you often have no idea who that person or persons are. How much merit, therefore, could their assessment hold? Well, for that you need to know their circulation numbers and unique hits for the electronic version of their publication. And that is something that is mostly well hidden.

A quick note: You have a better chance of being accepted in a newer publication such as Sonder, which I reviewed here,but it won’t be as prestigious as being accepted into a publication that has been around longer and/or has a much wider readership.

Now, on to those alternate avenues.

Website

Pluses: You don’t need a high-cost designer to set up even the most rudimentary site. And you have control over the content, not some mystery person.

Drawback 1: Being too hasty to post, resulting in a wealth of typos and even some awkward wording. We can tend to get over eager to post that wonderful story or poem. And catching our own typos can be very iffy, even for the best of us. Some authors have told me that typos don’t matter since people can read the content for free and should expect that. To that I say:

You’re putting up samples of your work – they should shine!

Drawback 2: Trying to get people to read what you have posted, no matter how good it is. There are hundreds of thousands of others out there writing their literary or nonfiction gems or creating wonderful art. We all compete for viewers, so be prepared to spend a lot of time promoting your stuff.

Three popular platforms:

• WordPress (two options: .org where you self host your site or .com where they host it)

• Wix (many see this as a sales platform, and it can be, but you can also use it to post free content)

• Blogger (caution: owned by Google, which tends to censure content)

If I have left out anything, please let me know.

Substack

This alternate avenue is set up to get you paid subscribers and thus make a little money from your writing. Sadly, the percentage of subscribers who will actually pay is usually rather small. But again, it’s a way to get your work seen and help build your name as an author. A popular approach is posting a short chapter at a time.

Medium

This alternate avenue is also set up to have people pay for what you post. You might make a little here but don’t quit your day job. And beware of Medium “zines” that generate money for the zine owner and none or very little for you, the author.

Bottom Line

Again, beware that posting something to one of the above might mean you can’t submit it to a story contest or to a lit mag or anthology publisher.

Don’t go into this to make money. You might get enough to pay for a gallon or two of gas, maybe even three gallons, which even so could make you feel good. Someone out there thinks your work is worth even a few dollars a year.

Go into this for the fun of it, to flex your writer’s muscles and hone your craft, and to get your name out there.

Speaking of your name, protect it. Don’t submit to anything that isn’t professional or that will edit your story and not give you a chance to review and question the edits (I was given an “accept the edits or withdraw the story” option and chose the latter due to the hack job they had done on the story).

And beware of contests. Most want a submission fee. You could end up spending more than its worth to you, even if you beat the odds and win a prize. Yes, you get bragging rights, but frankly if it’s a fairly unknown person or group conducting the contest, even if you win first prize, it won’t impress a publisher. It could, in fact, go the other way, which defeats the purpose of entering one of these contests, unless you just want that warm, fuzzy feeling.

Hope you found this helpful and have been inspired to start and/or continue writing!

See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined, with downloadable PDF.

Please check out my works in progress (WIPs). And thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I get no compensation for links to other sites and/or products in this post or on my site.