How to Submit a Story for Publication

So you’ve written a story, revised it, and are ready to send it out. Here are a few tips for submitting your stories for publication to literary journals and other magazines.

• Visit the magazine’s website to see what they publish. Read a few stories. Pay attention to their submission guidelines.

• If the literary magazine asks for a cover letter with your submission, make it brief. Your letter should mention where you’ve published in the past, and should include a very short bio. Your cover letter should NOT explain or praise the story. That is very bad form, and will likely result in your story being deleted before it is even read.

• Do submit to more than one place at once. This is called a simultaneous submission. Five is a good number to start with. Include the wording, “This is a simultaneous submission” at the end of your cover letter.

• Never send a publication a second story before the editors have responded to the first.

• Never call to check on the progress of your submission.

• Shorter stories are more likely to be accepted than very long stories.

• Always double-space your story, use one-inch margins, and indent every paragraph!

Here are some two great  resources for anyone looking to submit fiction:

• Newpages.com—litmags, publishers, and book reviews
• www.webdelsol.com–Contains many useful links to literary magazines and resources for writers.
• pw.org – the Poets and Writers website features ongoing calls for submissions

More great resources to check out before you submit:
• Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market (Writer’s Digest Books)–This is probably the best; it covers many of the better publications with detailed descriptions of tastes, editorial guidelines, payment, and rights.

• Pushcart Prize Anthology (Pushcart Press)–Annual anthology of the best of literary magazines and presses selected by editors themselves; you’ll not only find fiction in here, but a list addresses of prize-winning magazines and presses.

For current publishing contests, check out the Writer’s Chronicle, published by the Associated Writing Programs (www.awpwriter.org) and Poets and Writers Magazine (my personal favorite), which has upcoming deadlines for literary contests, as well as calls for submissions.

Some of my favorite literary magazines, in no particular order

• Fourteen Hills
• The Sun
• Other Voices
• Alaska Quarterly Review
• Mid-American Review
  Ploughshares
• Granta
• Boulevard
  Story Quarterly
• Quick Fiction Online
  CutBank
• South Carolina
• Review
  Missouri Review
• Bellevue Literary Review
• Mississippi Review
• Gulf Coast
• Identity Theory
  North Dakota Quarterly

Any publication is a boon and a definite validation of your talent, but here are the magazines that can really jump-start a career: The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Zoetrope, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review. It never hurts to send to the major magazines as long as you’re sending out a bulk submission.

Learn how to write short stories in my online course Master the Short Story.