A friend asked me today about getting published in literary journals and magazines, and I want to share my response with all of you. I love helping people get started with getting published, and talk about it often with my friends, so this blog post almost feels past-due. Luckily, the friend who reached out to me today did so over email. I actually have my response written down! No more excuses to put off sharing my advice here, with all of you.

The specific question my friend asked, was: As someone who has never been, or tried to be, published in a literary magazine or journal, where do I start?

This was my response:

One of the best resources for breaking into lit mag publishing is NewPages. They have all kinds of guides, resources, and lists of open calls. I especially like their linktr.ee, and actually keep it bookmarked. My suggested step one would be to poke around and read through some of their stuff. Also, one of my favorite articles about getting published in lit mags is from Electric Lit: Lit Mag Submissions 101 (Electric Lit is also a great general resource to keep on your radar).

Another great article on lit mag publishing is from the Jane Friedman blog: Simplify Your Submissions to Literary Journals. I would personally recommend a strategy somewhat halfway in between the two in these articles, which is what I get into below. Also, I don’t keep to anything as strict as either of these articles recommends, as far as regularity of submissions and prioritizing journals and whatnot. I just submit what I want to, where I want to, when I feel like it.

Step two is to make a Submittable account, if you don’t already have one. This is the system most mags and journals use for submissions. Totally free to use for you! You can also browse open calls on submittable, using tags like theme and genre to sort. However, I find it a little tedious to navigate, and that the filters are not always super accurate.

Step three, write yourself a little generic cover letter template and a short bio. You can do a couple of different lengths of bio if you want. Journals will either not specify length (beyond “short”), or generally set limits between 50-150 words. Personally, I just have one and I edit it if a need to. As for the cover letter, you will want to personalize it for each submission, but it can really be very very simple. Both my cover letter template and bio are below as examples of what I mean:

Bio: Nic Job is a student of the world, and spends as much time as they can traveling and observing. Cultures, places, people, and themself. They are a human who likes humans, and all of their beautiful, tangled-up, ordinariness. You can find them on Instagram @nicjwrites, and their Website, Life’s Looking Glass of Words. (https://lookingglasswords.wordpress.com)

Cover Letter: 

      Dear [Journal’s Editorial Team, or specific person if I know who will be reading my submission],

Thank you for considering [piece title (genre, word count)] for publication in [journal name, sometimes issue or special call if it’s significant]. I appreciate your time and consideration.

Best,
Nic

In both/either your cover letter and bio, you don’t have to mention you’ve never been published. Journals will generally assume that is the case if you don’t list publishing credits. You also don’t need to list all of your publications. In fact, it’s probably best not to (one submission we received for a journal I read for at the moment included a complete list of something like 30 publications, and I just found it rather pretentious). Pick a few you particularly like, or are particularly proud of, and say something like ‘and others.’

For your bio, you don’t have to include little quips, but they are fun. You don’t have to include your school, but it’s not bad to. Same with where you’re from. You don’t have to mention socials or websites, but are welcome to. This is also all stuff you can add depending on the journal. For instance, my bio for my submission to The Orange Couch (DePaul University Writing Center’s literary magazine) says I’m an MFA student at DePaul, even though I don’t normally include that. For more samples of common bio trends, look at the author bios in your favorite mags.

Cover letters are the same! If the call mentions they are looking for specific types of authors, you can mention how you fit that in your cover letter. If it’s a themed submission, and you feel it necessary, you can add a sentence or two about how your piece fits the theme. If it’s an emerging writer’s call, you can add a sentence or two about how this would be your first publication ever. It’s all flexible! But the golden rule is K. I. S. S. – Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t overcomplicate things 🙂

Step four, read some journals, poke around some journal lists (like the ones on Electric Lit and NewPages, or Poets & Writers, even twitter and instagram), get some familiarity with what’s out there. I’m not saying study journals and read whole issues (unless you have time to, which is awesome!) but poking around and reading some at least gives you some ideas of what you like, and what kinds of journals you’d like to be published in. Maybe you’ll even find some “goal” journals. Getting published in SmokeLong Quarterly or Brevity someday is a dream of mine. 

Step five, find some journals and calls that look promising. For instance, Oyster River Pages has a great emerging voices call right now, and journals like Club Plum and Pithead Chapel are established and reliable, but small enough that getting published in them is not a complete shot in the dark (also, they are personal favorites of mine haha). Also, publishing in little youth mags or new, less established journals and school journals is a great start, and nothing to look down on. Poke around for those as well! 

Step six, submit! Submit, submit, submit! Most places expect you to submit simultaneously (one piece, submitted to more than one journal), but all should say something about it in their submission guidelines. Read the guidelines. Then read them again. Then put together your submission, fill out the form, etc. and triple check that you are adhering to the guidelines. There are journals that will reject submissions not respecting the guidelines without even reading them. Most journals get so many excellent submissions that they simply don’t have the time for submissions that don’t meet their guidelines. So don’t shoot yourself in the foot! But also, it’s not that big a deal if you mess up a submission or two, especially at the start. Heck, I misspelled a journal’s name in my cover letter once (still mortifying to think about)! Obviously, they rejected my submission, but that’s okay. 

You will get rejected. You will get rejected again, and again, and again. That’s okay! That’s normal! That doesn’t mean your writing is bad or you won’t ever get published or anything like that. You will continue to get rejected for as long as you are submitting. You will get more rejections than acceptances. 1) Writing is super subjective, and 2) they get lots and lots of submissions, many of which are very excellent. I collect my rejection letters and have fun judging them on how kind or brutal they are. (Not very many get any brutal points lol).

You will also get published. Eventually, you will get a yes. Keep at it, bolster your faith in yourself. Take every opportunity to show off to people who love you and will validate and bolster you when the rejections start to feel insurmountable. Keep writing. Keep searching for feedback. Keep growing. You’ve got this! 

For my thoughts on submission and reading fees, see Lit Mags and Reading Fees: What is the Solution?