submissions

As a follow-up to Sylvia’s guest post about Submitomancy, I asked David Steffen, who’s working on a similar project for a Duotrope replacement, to write about his Submissions Grinder. Here’s David:

The announcement in late 2012 that Duotrope was going paid caused a (relative) uproar in the writing community. The problem wasn’t that they wanted money. It was that requiring a subscription fee to use
the site drives away the most valuable asset the site has to offer–submission data. Everything else that Duotrope had to offer could be found somewhere else, but their submission tracker combined with market listings and statistics aggregation offered a tool for writers. Even for those people who are willing to pay $50, they are now paying $50 for what even Duotrope estimates will be perhaps 15% of their prior user base.

Anthony Sullivan and I have created a replacement, called the Submission Grinder (http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/), with the intent of milling your submissions into something useful… Because we’re hosting this new project as a subodmain of our zine Diabolical Plots (http://www.diabolicalplots.com/) we wanted the name to sound like something the mad scientist of our site art would invent and use.

We are starting out with the promise that we will never charge a compulsory fee for subscription. We think that’s the primary way where Duotrope has gone wrong, in driving away the data. We may open for donations at some point, and may run some kind of Kickstarter campaign. But rather than ask the world to donate to us for a theoretical product, we would rather provide a concrete product that people can use, soon enough after January 1st to allow a decent handoff, and then ask for donations from people who like what we have provided at a later time.

Phase One of our project is complete, in which the goal was to create something that could replace Duotrope’s functionality as close to January 1st as possible. And we’re there, with market listings, a submissions tracker, and compiled statistics. The site is in beta right now as we resolve some issues, but it gets better every day and there is daily development work being done on it. We are the first site aiming at the Duotrope userbase to become available for use.

The next phase involves adding new features that Duotrope has never provided, including new statistics based on only your own works, visualization of submissions data (rather than only numbers), and more!

Do you want to help? Here are ways that you can help right now.

1. Register on the site.
2. Did you get an export file from Duotrope? Import that into your account. You can pick up right where you left off and it gives more data to provide more robust statistics, as well as giving us new blank market listings for the markets you’ve submitted to (which we will fill in as time goes on).
3. Suggest new market listings.
4. Submit bug reports, and suggestions for new features/enhancements. We’re writers too, and anything that you suggest that would be useful (or at least something that appeals to statistics-lovers even if not
   strictly useful) will get us excited. The comment thread at this link would be a good place: http://www.diabolicalplots.com/?p=3176
5. Help us spread the word. The more the merrier. The more writers import and track their data, the more useful the statistics will be, the more useful the site as a whole will be, the more users will come. Blog posts, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Stumbleupon, posts on writing forums, emails to writer friends, sky writing, bathroom graffiti, any other way that you can think to share this link with the world.

I’ve seen a lot of cover letters in my time. Some ramble, some describe the story, others list thirty small publications, some are misaddressed or rife with typos.

So here’s a cover letter. It’s really all you need to say. Fill in the blanks yourself (and doublecheck to make sure you got the details right.) Italics indicate commentary and should not be included. And always, always – the market guidelines trump anything I say. Read AND follow them. Note: this cover letter is intended to be used when submitting short stories to magazines. You want a different one when submitting to an agent or sending a book to a publisher.

Dear {Editor}: (do make sure you’ve got the right name if you’re addressing them by name)

Attached/enclosed* is my story, “{title}”, ({wordcount}). (“Attached” if it’s e-mail; “Enclosed” if you’re sending by snailmail. Round wordcount up to the nearest 100.)

(The following paragraph is optional if you don’t have publications.)
My work has appeared in {market1 name}, {market2 name}, and {market3 name}. (List your three biggest or most prestigious publications.) In {year}, I attended {workshop name}. (Don’t list stuff if you don’t have it. If you’ve got contest wins that are significant, like Writers of the Future, list that here as well. Again, all of this is optional. This paragraph is intended to make the slush reader pass the work up to the editor by listing reasons you stand out of the herd.)

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your reply. (If you’re sending by snailmail and include a SASE, mention that here.)

Sincerely, (or the tag of your choice, just make sure it sounds professional. “Peace out,” while charming, may not sound as professional as it could.)

{Your name}

That’s it — that’s all you need. No accolades, no summaries, no previews. The facts and just the facts. Good luck!

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Part of today is going to be spent sorting through my spreadsheet of what stories are out where and getting stuff out. That’s one of the really tedious things about being a writer – all the paperwork.

So how do I track submissions and figure out where to send them?

I have an Excel spreadsheet. One page has short stories that are circulating, a second does the same with flash pieces, a third tracks sold stories, a fourth audio reprints, and a fifth foreign reprints. When a rejection comes in, I mark the story on the sheet as freed up and put it in bold red. Once it’s been submitted, I switch the color to blue. That lets me look over the sheet and get an idea of what needs to go out. Right now it’s looking pretty red, so I’ve compiled a list of five flash pieces and ten short stories that need to go out, making a note of the word count.