Last Updated on July 9, 2024 by Nathaniel Tower
I’ve made a lot of mistakes as a writer.
When I was first trying to get my writing published, I had no clue what I was doing. And this was back in the day when the majority of publications only accepted submissions via mail, so every mistake I made cost me time, stamps, envelopes, and a trip to the post office.
Things are a lot easier today, at least in terms of the submission process, but there are also a lot of new challenges that come with electronic submissions.
Some of those challenges include increased competition (hey, if it’s easier, then more people are submitting), submission fees (yup, some places require you to pay to submit), and weird formatting requests (yeah, make sure you send the exact file type with the specific spacing they want).
Eventually, I figured it out and published over 200 short stories, two novels, and a short story collection.
The tips you are about to read aren’t just coming from a writer though. They are also coming from someone who ran a literary magazine for almost a decade. After receiving tens of thousands of submissions, I can probably say I’ve seen every mistake in the book.
Here are the biggest mistakes writers make when trying to get published:
Not knowing the type of work a publication wants
Whether you’re submitting your work to literary magazines, book publishers, or agents, you need to know the type of work they want. That requires you to do some research and to read some of their past work.
A lot of writers take a shotgun approach where they send out their writing to as many publications as possible. They don’t stop and think about who might actually want to publish their work or represent them.
If you don’t know the type of writing a publication wants, then your chance of getting rejected goes way up. And since the chance of getting rejected is already well over 97%, you are making things pretty much impossible for yourself.
A few quick tips here: don’t send poetry to a fiction magazine. Don’t send genre fiction to a literary magazine. Don’t send a novel-length manuscript to a flash fiction publication. And don’t send your detective novel to a science fiction publisher.
All of those things should be pretty obvious, but the majority of writers don’t follow this simple piece of advice. If you send the type of work a publication wants, you will increase your chances of an acceptance by a lot.
One other tip: don’t send something that’s almost identical to what they’ve recently published. While you need to make sure your writing fits their style, genre, and length, they also likely want a little variety.
Not formatting their manuscript properly
Some publications are very particular about how they want to receive submissions. Almost every publisher has posted submission guidelines. An easy tip for you: read the guidelines and follow them exactly.
If they want you to submit your manuscript as a PDF attachment to an email with your contact information not included in the file and the font size no larger than 12-pt Arial, then that’s what you need to do if you want a chance at having your work published. Don’t like it? Then don’t submit. I promise you that no publication will accept your work if you don’t follow their guidelines.
While almost every publication has specific submission requirements, very few specify exactly what your manuscript should look like. In these cases, you should always use a standard manuscript format to make your writing look professional and easy to read.
Failure to follow guidelines and submit your writing in the proper format will always lead to rejection. At my literary magazine, we had one simple formatting requirement: all manuscripts had to be double spaced. This was purely for readability. We automatically rejected any manuscript that wasn’t double spaced.
Not polishing your work before sending it out
A lot of writers seem to think they can send out rough drafts for publication. They have the mistaken notion that a team of editors is going to perfect their writing before it is released to the world.
This isn’t completely off base, especially for a major publication. You will have an editor, and they will make sure your story or novel is just about flawless before it goes live.
That said, the submission editors aren’t going to tolerate sloppy writing. They want to see near-finished products, not messy works-in-progress. Before you submit any writing, you should complete your draft, perform at least one full round of revision, and do a thorough proofread.
It’s also a good idea to send your work to a few beta readers before you submit it for publication.
The only thing that gets rejected faster than a submission that doesn’t follow guidelines is a submission that clearly wasn’t proofread before it was sent out.
Not withdrawing your work when it gets accepted elsewhere
Most publications accept simultaneous submissions (be sure to check their guidelines before assuming they do). This is the practice of sending the same piece of writing to more than one publication at the same time.
Every publication also expects you will withdraw your submission the moment it is accepted elsewhere. This is really easy to do with electronic submissions managers like Submittable. In the old days, this was a huge pain because you had to send a letter in the mail, and by the time they received that letter, they may have already reviewed your manuscript.
Whenever you send out your work for publication, you should log that submission in a submission tracker. This will make it easy for you to withdraw that piece from all other publications if it does get accepted.
If you ever fail to withdraw a piece that gets accepted elsewhere, you risk setting a very bad impression with other publications. Just imagine this scenario: you submit your story to Magazine A and Magazine B. Magazine A accepts your story, but Magazine B hasn’t responded. You don’t tell Magazine B about the acceptance. A few weeks later, Magazine B sends you an acceptance letter. Now you have to tell them your story was already accepted, and you have wasted their time.
That’s not a good look for any writer.
Being unprofessional, disrespectful, or rude
I hate that I have to include this, but this is one of the most common mistakes I saw writers make.
A lot of writers had the attitude that it was a privilege for me to even have the opportunity to read their work. What they didn’t seem to realize was that they were asking for their work to be published in my magazine.
This resulted in unprofessional cover letters that addressed me or my magazine incorrectly. It also led to a lot of rude responses to rejection letters, many of which should have been sent to the police to launch an investigation for death threats.
It’s okay to reply to a rejection email, but don’t insult or threaten the editor when you do. Replies to rejection should be courteous and grateful the publication even took the time to read or respond to your writing.
If you submit anything disrespectful, I promise you will be blacklisted. And not just by the single publication you pissed off. Editors talk to each other. The writing community is much smaller than you think. One disrespectful email to an editor might result in you being blacklisted from just about every publication on the planet.
Final thoughts on getting published
If you want to get your work published, you need to follow this simple formula:
- Create something worth publishing
- Submit it to a publication that publishes that type of writing
- Follow all their guidelines when you submit
- Make sure your work is polished and professionally presented
- Don’t be an asshole
If you avoid all the publishing mistakes mentioned above, you will dramatically increase your chances of getting published. Given how competitive the publishing world is, you don’t want to take any shortcuts.
Did I miss any big publication mistakes here? Share your thoughts and your biggest tips for getting published in the comments.
