Your Guide to Publishing in Literary Magazines
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Publishing in Literary Magazines 101
Literary copywriters want to share their work with the world.
You spend countless hours writing for others, and you love it! Writing helps people, and you’re good at what you do. But what about your own visions?
I highly recommend publishing in literary magazines. Literary magazines are a great way to get your creative work out there. What they lack in monetary rewards, they make up for in prestige. Publishing in literary magazines can boost your confidence and career.
Before you hit “submit,” there are a few things you should keep in mind. As someone who’s published in print and online literary magazines (more on that later), I’ve learned a lot about writing and publishing. The following are a few takeaways I’m eager to share with the literary copywriter community:
A Brief Note on Faith
If you want to publish in literary magazines, you’ll have to practice faith.
Faith is not something the religious or spiritual are born with. Faith is a skill. Like writing, faith takes a lot of practice. The writer’s brain is covered in scars. We’re a sensitive, critical, existential, and hopeful species. Faith tells us we can be received exactly as we are. It’s a delicate balance of innocence and experience. It’s your hard-won optimism.
You’re going to get rejected. You’re going to feel like there’s no space for your work. Literary trends/proclivities change. But you can’t let them stop you.
There is always room for another authentic voice.
Also, I’m not against you summoning an angel or demon to make your wildest dreams come true. There’s literally nothing fair about the publishing world. You’re lucky if you can glean meaning from it at all.
But man, is publishing in literary magazines worth it anyway!
Submit when Ready
Revise, revise. I can’t stress this enough. Knowing when a piece is ready for publication is one of the most challenging decisions a writer can make. I suggest you don’t go at this alone. If you have a piece you feel is publication-ready, get a second or third or fourth opinion. Make sure these are readers you trust. They must be engaged, critical thinkers who don’t care if constructive feedback hurts your feelings. I recommend you form a writing community of people who regularly write or read the kind of work you want to publish.
Don’t expect the editors to do your job. If deep down you know your story has a weak opening or underdeveloped narrator, don’t submit. Readers will notice and pass on your story. Most literary journals consist of a group of smart, dedicated, and BUSY volunteers. They are looking for reasons to reject your story because they’re pressed for time and only interested in quality work.
The Missouri Review, for example, receives 12,000 submissions a year. Chances are they aren’t going to accept an “almost there” story out of the kindness of their hearts. On rare occasions, editors will ask to see revisions of a story they really want to publish. Don’t count on this. Literary magazines are underfunded and, sadly, endangered. Only send them your best!
Submitting a polished piece of writing free of grammatical and developmental mistakes shows professionalism and prowess.
Research, Research!
You’re more likely to get your work published if you focus on a magazine’s aesthetic instead of its prestige. While you should always aim high, you should also be realistic. If you’re writing horror, fantasy, sci-fi, or erotica, then you want to submit to journals that publish the finest in that genre.
To me, the best pieces of creative writing are literary, meaning the story is conscious of craft and the human condition. Any genre work can be literary depending on the writer’s choice and skill level. Writers like Octavia Butler, Shirley Jackson, and Karen Russell do an incredible job of blurring genre boundaries. Their stories about robots, time travel, vampires, and teenage angst have appeared in the most prestigious literary magazines in the world.
Duotrope is an excellent resource for writers. This publisher listing service helps you track calls for submissions, agents, presses, and more. Membership starts at $5 a month and grants access to magazine stats like response times, types of rejection letters, and similar publications.
Know if you’re submitting online or print
By now, almost every literary magazine worth reading has an online component. Some journals are generous enough to publish the same content in print and online. Other magazines like Electric Literature or Split Lip Magazine are primarily online. Magazines like American Short Fiction and Green Mountains Review have separate content for their print and online publications.
Literary magazines are more likely to publish their shorter content online. Flash fiction and nonfiction (stories/essays less than 1,000 words) are regularly featured in online literary journals. Longer works tend to appear exclusively in print.
But a shorter word count doesn’t lessen a story’s power! Online fiction has gotten more attention in recent years, and the best make frequent appearances in prestigious anthologies like the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
I’m a reader for CutBank Literary Journal, and we love flash fiction! CutBank online features one flash fiction piece a week. Check out our submissions calendar for more.
Never Give Up
You’re going to get rejected. As writers, you’ve heard/experienced this before. But you don’t really understand the reality of rejection until it happens to you. Over and over again. Don’t take it personally. When it comes to literary magazines, the people who reject your work are also writers. They understand rejection and are the first to admit that a standard rejection letter is not always a reflection on the piece’s strength or originality.
Approach your work and the writing process with gratitude. You increase your chances of publication success the second you get down to work.
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Emily