Last Updated on July 4, 2020 by Nathaniel Tower
There are thousands of literary magazines accepting short story or poetry submissions right now. For writers, this means a lot of opportunity. It also means a lot of questions.
Here are some of those questions you’re probably asking right now about where you should send your writing for publication:
- Which publications are worth submitting to?
- Which literary magazines are the right fit for my work?
- Which magazines pay writers?
- What’s a good literary magazine for a new writer?
- Where should I submit my short story if I eventually want to publish a collection?
- And how many people actually read each literary magazine?
Those are just a few of the questions you might have about a literary magazine or publication before submitting your work. And you’re right to ask these questions. After all, you’ve worked hard on your short story or poem. You don’t want to spend time submitting it to a publication that’s going to shut down three weeks after accepting your work. Nor do you want to get published in a magazine that has ten monthly readers.
So how do you decide which literary magazines to submit to?
Ideally, you want to submit to a literary magazine that:
- Has a lot of readers
- Publishes great work
- Will be around for a long time
- Pays writers money
Of the thousands of literary magazines that exist today, only a fraction of them can claim to have all four of these characteristics. That means you may have to sacrifice something in order to get a short story published. What you sacrifice will be up to you and what’s most important to you as a writer. Maybe getting paid is more important than having a lot of readers see your work.
Using a directory service like Duotrope can help you find literary magazines, but it doesn’t tell you if those magazines are any good. At least not directly. You can use some signals within a Duotrope listing to determine the quality of the magazines, such as the acceptance rate, the number of responses, how long it’s been around, etc.
You can also try looking for reviews of literary magazines from other publications. Looking up reviews of a literary magazine can help you determine if a magazine is well-regarded, but it won’t necessarily tell you other important things you need to know like size of readership or the likelihood that the publication will still be around a year from now.
Here’s how you can evaluate a literary magazine before submitting your work:
The website is modern and professional
A literary magazine doesn’t need the best website in the world. But it has to look better than a default blogspot theme from 2001. If the design doesn’t look modern and professional, then that’s a sign the magazine isn’t investing in itself. Be careful about submitting to these journals that don’t look good.
And if it’s on a free domain (like journal.wordpress.com), then I definitely wouldn’t submit. That site’s going to be down in a month or two when the editor gets bored of the project.
The publication has been around for awhile (or looks like it will be around for awhile)
If a literary magazine has been operating strong for twenty years, then it’s probably a safe bet that it will be around for years to come. It also likely means that it has a decent readership behind it.
But that doesn’t mean you should ignore brand new literary magazines. As long as a new publication looks like it’s a serious venture (good website, strong staff, high-quality content, etc.), then there’s no reason not to submit. In fact, one of the best ways to make money selling short stories is by submitting to new publications.
They publish great stuff (and/or great writers)
This really should be #1 on the list. If the lit mag publishes great writing, then of course you should submit. Now, great writing can be subjective. So maybe the better way of stating this is to look for publications that publish work you think is great. After all, it doesn’t matter if everyone else likes it if you hate it. You don’t want your short stories published alongside writing you despise, do you?
If you’re not sure if you like the stuff they publish, then check out the authors they publish. If these are names you recognize from other publications, then that probably means this publication is legit. Go ahead and submit your work.
The lit mag has a large readership
This one can be really tough to gauge. After all, not many publications are posting their readership stats (and if they have a hit counter, then you’re probably looking at one of those default blogspot themes from 2001!). But this is really important. Regardless of how much great stuff they publish, you don’t want your short story or poem in a publication that doesn’t get any readers.
Here are a few ways you can evaluate the size of the readership:
- See how big their social following is. Is it a few dozen or a few thousand followers? More importantly, how much engagement does a new post get?
- Check their estimated web traffic using a tool like SEMrush. You can sign up for a free account and test a lit mag’s website to see how much search traffic they probably get. You can also see how many monthly searches there are for the name of the magazine. For example, it’s estimated that “glimmer train” gets 1,300 searches per month, and that’s only for the exact brand term. But keep in mind that a lot of those searches are likely other writers who may not spend time reading. And a lit mag with no monthly search traffic may have a lot of traffic from other channels.
- Check Duotrope’s stats to see how many people have recorded a submission. While the number of submissions isn’t necessarily an accurate barometer of how popular the magazine is with readers, it gives you some data to work with. If a lot of other writers are submitting to that magazine, it must mean something.
If any of the above numbers look good, then I would go ahead and submit.
Final thoughts on evaluating literary magazines before submitting
You’ve worked really hard on your short story or poem. Don’t throw that away by submitting to a low-quality literary magazine that has very few readers and may not be around much longer. Your writing deserves to be seen. Find a literary magazine that is going to get you plenty of exposure—and hopefully a little bit of cash as well.
How do you evaluate the quality of a literary magazine before submitting? Share your tips in the comments.
