This is adapted from my [guest post] at the Furry Writers’ Guild on the same subject

Seeing your story rendered in ink and paper is a goal for many writers, but how do you make that happen? The business of publishing can seem opaque and intimidating. There’s a lot you’re expected to know, and the purpose of this guide is to equip you with the tools and knowledge to get your writing out there.

This post is specifically about shorter pieces. This includes:

  • Short fiction (micro, drabbles, flash, short stories, novellas, novelettes)
  • Creative nonfiction (same lengths as above)
  • Poetry

For this guide, an individual piece will be referred to as a “piece” or “work.”

Longer, “book length” work or collections of shorter works that are book-long (like a poetry chapbook or a short story collection) go through a different process. You can find info on that [here].

0 | Is this the right path for you?

Every writer has different measurements of success, and that’s okay. Just like how there’s writers who can’t imagine ever self-publishing their work, there’s writers who can’t imagine the opposite.

So, you need to ask yourself: do I want to go through this process? Is this the best thing to do for me and this specific piece?

Traditional publishing doesn’t make you a “realer” or “better” writer than someone who doesn’t, and that’s important to remember. You can self-publish some pieces and traditionally publish others. Do what works best for you!

1 | Have a piece to publish

You can’t sell a piece if you haven’t written it! Make it the best possible version you can, and then get feedback from your fellow writers and make it even better. The amount of editing the editor will do is likely minimal, focusing on making your grammar and punctuation match their “house style,” not fixing the ending.

Once that’s done, you’ll make the specific files you’ll be submitting. 90%+ will ask for—or expect—“standard manuscript formatting,” which means Shunn’s standard modern formatting [link: https://www.shunn.net/format/story/]. You’ll put your legal name on the top left and your byline (pen name, if you have one) under the title. Save the file as a .docx and name it something like [My Awesome Story – John Smith].

[You’ll find Word templates to make these files on the previous page!]

Make a copy of that file and remove your name from the file name. Remove all the personal info from the document (byline, personal info on page 1, and name in the header). This is an “anonymized” version of your story, which some markets request to limit bias caused by assuming the gender, religion, nationality, etc. from a person’s name or where they live, or if they recognize your name (as a friend, family member, you’re famous, etc.).

Some places will ask for something different, like a PDF file or the font to be in Courier. When that happens, make a separate file somewhere else (like your desktop) so you don’t constantly fiddle with the main file (and forget to change it back!)

If you write poetry, make files for each individual poem, and then make some “packets” of 3-5 poems, which should be under 10 pages total. You essentially stitch together the separate files into one, bigger file, which is what you’ll submit in most places.

2 | Find a market

This can be an anthology, a zine, a literary journal, a website, an eBook, a podcast…I’ve even seen places that publish stories as games on Telegram or performances on stage, or those story printers you see at BART stations! These all fall under the term “market” and all follow the same process, unless they specifically say otherwise.

There’re several resources for finding markets:

Writing communities (like ours!) share opportunities with their members, too, or might even have their own. If you find a market that’s perfect for a friend’s story, send it to them!

Once you find a market, look for their submission guidelines (could be under “about,” sometimes called “writers guidelines”) and see what genres, tones, subjects, and wordcounts they’re looking for. Some markets are very narrow—especially anthologies—and others are very broad. If you’re unsure if your piece fits the tone or subject matter, sub anyways! The worst they’ll do is say no, and they’ll never say yes if you don’t give them the chance.

Some places accept AI-generated writing, use AI-generated artwork, and/or require writers to pay a fee with their submission. Some markets have strong political opinions or are tied to specific groups, like the Church of Scientology. Whether or not you want to submit is up to you. Would you be proud for your story to be in that market? Is this market promoting ideas you’d want alongside your name? When your story is published in a market, they profit from it. Are you okay with them benefiting from your (under/unpaid) labor?

Finally, some markets only publish stories from specific writers, such as women, LGBTQIA2S+ folx, POC/BIPOC, people with neurodivergences or disabilities, immigrants, or inhabitants of certain countries. They may want to amplify certain voices, for example. Many Canadian markets must publish a certain percentage of Canadian writers in order to get government grants (tell your local representative that we should have this!). It’s up to you if you feel like you belong to one of those groups. And if you’re not a member of one of these groups, please don’t lie about it. There’s plenty of markets out there, and it won’t be good when people find out.

3 | Submit your story

You’ll need to find a couple bits of important information from the guidelines to do so:

  • The method of submission (email, Moksha, Submittable, their own form, etc.)
  • Any specific requests for the file (file type, anonymized, etc.)
  • Wordcount (It’s okay if you’re above/below the limit by a word or three)
  • When you can expect to hear back from them (can be specific date or after X days/weeks/months)
  • Payment (if it’s not listed, it’s probably unpaid)
  • What rights they want (I’ll go into further details about this in the acceptance step)
  • If they accept simultaneous and/or multiple submissions
  • If they accept reprints/previously published work

Sometimes, you might encounter something you don’t like, or isn’t a good fit for your story, so it’s okay to pass on a market at that time. Many markets have themes for specific issues, so check back later for a new theme that might fit your story better!

A simultaneous submission is when you have open submissions to multiple markets for the same piece. Many places accept them, but those who don’t usually have good reason. If you’re caught secretly simsubbing, it won’t make the editor happy, and that’s not something you want. If a market doesn’t say either way, you could assume they’re okay with it, but it doesn’t hurt to do some googling or even asking them on social media.

Multiple submissions are having multiple open submissions at the same market, for multiple pieces. This is expected with poetry, and some flash fiction (1,000 words or less) markets, but is almost always forbidden for longer works. If a market doesn’t mention either way, you should assume they’re not okay with it. And if they do allow it, only sub 2 or 3, not 20.

A reprint is a story that has already been published in some form, like social media, your website, a display site (Wattpad, etc.), or another market, even if it’s no longer available/posted. Most markets wants work that hasn’t been previously published, because premiering great writing is what gets readers! Payments for original work tends to be much higher than reprints, but you can resell a reprint an infinite number of times, so you might end up making more money through reprints, if you keep at it!

[“Published” means “in a form/place where anyone could theoretically find it.” If you’re a member of a private forum or group and share a story for critique, or print out a copy for a critique group or share it with a friend for feedback, this dos not count as previously published. If you’re unsure about your exact situation, it doesn’t hurt to ask!]

Most places ask for a cover letter. It’s nothing like the one you need for a job, or even a query letter for a novel. It’s so simple, I have an Excel script to write one for me!

Here is an example:

Dear editor,

Please consider “Moth{er}” (2700 words). It has been previously published in Another Name for Darkness on December 9, 2023 and I have the rights to have it reprinted elsewhere.

I have stories published in Inner Worlds, The Nonbinary Review, and The Razor, among others.

Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Chase Anderson

It’s the bare minimum needed to help an editor make a decision and track your submission in their system. No explaining your story, no begging for an acceptance. Don’t overthink it.

If the story hasn’t been published before, you can state that if you want.

If you don’t have any previously published work, that’s also okay! You can leave out that part. If you have several, pick the most important/impressive two or three and say “and elsewhere” or the like.

If it’s relevant, you can mention any groups you’re a part of, like the SFWA, HWA, etc., but it’s okay if you aren’t!

They might want content warnings for your work; include them, if applicable. They might want you to say how your piece fits their theme, or an “identity statement” if you are a member of a certain group. All of the specifics are in the submission guidelines.

Some places will want a “brief bio.” This is in the third person, about you, and either up to 50 or 100 words. Write both and keep them on hand. Here’s my <100-word bio, as an example:

Chase is a weird, queer, digital storyteller who writes weird, queer stories full of magic and monsters. He dropped out of chemical engineering to pursue a journalism degree and escape calculus. He draws inspiration from biology, chemistry, history, and whatever his neurochemicals are doing today. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he wrangles spreadsheets and identifies his coworkers’ backyard birds. Find his writing and more at chasej.xyz

You can list all the places you’ve been published, your job, your hobbies, anything that might be interesting about you. You don’t have to say the exact city, state, or even country you live in. But you should include where people can find you online!

I know this feels like a lot, and some of these requests seem silly. But markets must sift through hundreds, if not thousands of stories to pick a dozen or so to publish. Breaking or ignoring a rule might give them a reason to reject you and move on to the next thing.

4 | Wait

This is what most of your time will be spent doing. Some places will get back to you in a few days, others a few months. A couple places even take a year or more. Databases like The Submission Grinder aggregate data from many submissions to calculate average response times. Sometimes these are a lot longer or shorter than what a publisher says. So, wait until the longer of the two passes before you do something about it.

As soon as you submit something, you should record it. The minimum should be the name of the market, the name of the piece you sent, and when you should expect to hear back (calculate the specific date instead of writing “in 90 days”). Feel free to add whatever other data points you feel are important. Use a spreadsheet, a notebook, whatever works for you. You don’t want to accidentally simsub or multisub or send the same piece to a market twice!

[There’s a link to a spreadsheet for this on the previous page!]

In the submission guidelines, you might have seen something about querying. This is different than querying an agent; this is when you ask for the status of a piece. You send a message such as:

Dear editor,
I would like to inquire about the status of my short story [story title] submitted to [market] on [date].
Thank you for your time.

Chase Anderson

They might say “We’re working on it” or “it’s being held for additional consideration” or even “our records don’t show your submission, internet gremlins must have eaten it.” Which happens sometimes, and it sucks, but all you can do is send in your piece again and reset the counter. Life happens and editors might fall behind, or they received way more submissions than they expected. Or the email got lost, it happens.

Some markets won’t respond if they reject your piece. This also sucks, but publishing is a lot like job hunting. You will be ghosted, so try not to take it personally. A market might also not respond to you because they closed shop. Check their website and social media to see if they’ve posted anything in the past 12 months. If not, you can assume you’ll never hear back.

But while you wait, don’t keep refreshing your inbox. Go do something else, like writing your next piece! It’s very easy to obsess over the data and hype yourself up that a long wait means it’ll likely get accepted when there’s no reason to think that.

Pick a day of the week or month where you’ll spend an hour or so looking for new markets and checking up on your old submissions. Even if you only have one piece out and it’s not being simsubbed, you can make a list where to send it next. You also might find a brand-new market with a theme or prompt you really like, which will inspire you to write something new.

5 | So, you got a rejection

It’s going to happen. A lot, probably. I even got one the first time I edited this! And it might hurt, and that’s okay. Even if you’ve gotten hundreds of rejections, a specific one might hit extra-hard, for whatever reason.

Be kind to yourself, and remind yourself there is way more good writing out there than any single market can buy. They have to say no to stories they love all the time. Like job hunting, there are so many factors that determine acceptances and rejections, and you’ll never know (and cannot control) most of them.

And it’s also possible to drive yourself into an anxious mess by reading too much into a rejection. Here’s the one I just got (with names removed):

Dear Chase,

Thank you so much for submitting to [market]! While your submission was not selected for publication, we sincerely appreciate the time and trust it took to send your work our way, and hope you’ll keep us in mind for future work.
Take care and, as always, keep writing!

Warmly,

A. Person

This is a “form rejection,” which is going to be most of your rejections. “Doesn’t meet our needs” or “wasn’t quite the right fit” or “not what we’re looking for” is vague, and that’s by design. And not every place will say “best of luck placing it elsewhere” or “we hope to see more from you.” That doesn’t mean they hate you or your story! There isn’t any secret to glean from these, it’s not that deep. They have to send out dozens of these each day, there isn’t time to go into specifics.

But if you do get a personalized rejection, that’s a good sign! They took the time to say specific things they liked about your story or what they think can improve it. That isn’t permission to send in a revised version of the story, though, unless they explicitly say so.

You might even get a “We loved X, Y, and Z, but there is only so many spots, and, unfortunately, we have to pass on this.” This means you probably made it to the very final round. And this is a very good sign! Your story is a good one to get that far. It’ll find a home soon.

You might disagree with criticism in a personalized rejection, and that’s okay. Just because an editor didn’t like a part of your story, it doesn’t mean everyone won’t like it. Editors have personal tastes, and not every story is going to land with every person. But if they highlight an issue and you feel it’s a valid criticism, feel free to revise your story so it’ll be stronger for the next submission.

It does get easier the more rejections you get. But they can still hurt, a lot. It might be a piece you’re really proud of, or one you wrote specifically for that market, or you’re having a bad day and this is the fifth rejection you got that afternoon. It happens, and that’s okay. Do something nice for yourself. And, remember: it’s all about having the right piece end up at the right editor at the right market at the right time. It can take dozens, if not hundreds of no’s before you get a yes.

6 | You got an acceptance!

You may now jump up and down and post a bunch of emojis in the group chat.

Once you’ve calmed down, let’s read the acceptance email closely. Are there edits they want first? Is there a specific date they plan to publish it? How about a contract?

I know that sounds scary! But you probably don’t need a lawyer, especially for the amount of money involved. Unpaid markets might not have contracts, but you’re going to want one for larger amounts of money. At least get information about payment, publication dates, and needed editing in writing.

Here’s some terms you’re likely to see in a contract, and what they mean:

  • First [X] rights: This market will be the first place to publish this specific piece in [X] way (e.g. digital, print, anthology). These are more valuable than reprint rights and pay more.
  • English/Spanish/etc. rights: The right to publish the piece in the English/Spanish/etc. language.
  • Serial rights: The right to publish your piece in a periodical (i.e. a magazine or newspaper)
  • [country/region] rights: The right to publish a piece in a certain country/region.
  • Worldwide/global rights: Thanks to the Internet and eBooks, this is a lot more common. It means anyone in any country can theoretically buy/read your story.
  • Audio rights: The right to adapt your story into an audio format, like an audio book or podcast.
  • Perpetual/archival rights: The piece can be accessed for forever in some way. Theoretically; the website might go down some day or the publisher goes out of business. This is common with websites and print on demand books, and many small presses will eventually close up shop.
  • Exclusive [X] rights: This market will be the only place that can publish your piece in [X] way for a specific period. If your piece comes out on January 1 and there is a 6-month exclusive period, it means no other place (even your own website) can publish that story until July 1. There’s usually an explicitly stated exception for “best of” anthologies. If you are chosen to be included in one, ask the editor for permission. They’ll probably say yes!
  • Non-exclusive [X] rights: You’re free to publish your piece in other markets in [X] way as much as you like…as long as no one else is requesting exclusive rights at the same time, of course. Reprints are almost always non-exclusive rights only.
  • Reprint rights: This story has already been published elsewhere.
  • Contributor copy: A free copy of the publication that’s sent to you. Very common with magazines, but might not be possible if you live in a different country than the publisher. ask if you have concerns.

They’re probably going to stick a bunch of those into one string, like “First English worldwide serial and audio rights,” and that just means each of those things apply at the same time.

If there’s something in there you don’t like or have questions about, don’t be afraid to ask the editors about it. Or other writers. Don’t sign something you don’t understand or don’t feel okay with signing. You have a product they want, and this is a business transaction. Only do business in a way that feels fair.

Example: There is a Buzzfeed spinoff YouTube channel that I shall not name who was requesting people to submit stories for one of their series for them to read and illustrate. They want you to sign off your rights when you submit the piece (🚩), and they want rights to the work in perpetuity (normal-ish enough), across the universe (🚩), and the ability to make derivative works (which can include big things like movies)(🚩) and they won’t need to pay (🚩🚩) or even credit you (🚩🚩🚩) for it. Did I mention they didn’t even pay you for the story in the first place?

As you can imagine, the stories they got were terrible and/or written by staff members of the channel. Why should a writer do free labor to submit a story that could be turned into a movie that makes millions of dollars and they receive neither payment nor credit for it? If a place has an awful contract and they won’t change it, or there’s anything you don’t like, you can turn them down! And don’t be afraid to warn your friends, so they don’t have to go through the heartache of turning down an acceptance.

If your story was simultaneously submitted, you’ll need to withdraw the story from other markets. I usually wait until I get a contract I am okay with signing before doing this, in case it falls through. Submission systems will have a button to withdraw, but in other situations, you’ll need to send a withdrawal email. Check the submission guidelines page for an email address. If there isn’t one, you could use the submission email address.

Here’s a template for a withdrawal email:

Dear editor:

I would like to withdraw my short story “TITLE” from further consideration, as it has been accepted elsewhere. I submitted it to you on DATE, 202X.
I apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Chase Anderson

Ask the editor when you’re allowed to publicly announce the acceptance. Some want to keep the table of contents private until it’s settled, others are cool with you telling people ASAP. Once you get the okay, post to your heart’s content!

6.5 | $$$

Did you know you can get paid for your short writing? It’s not like the days of yore, where Harlan Ellison could sell one piece a month and afford to live in NYC. It’s more like you can pay your student loan payment, if you’re very lucky.

A market might want you to pay a fee when you submit. A lot of them also do not pay you, either, but that might be worth it to you if it’s a prestigious journal. Submission fees are more common for literary fiction and poetry, and almost unheard of in science fiction, fantasy, and horror (SFFH i.e. “genre”).

A market might also pay you! This can either be a flat fee ($5-$100 or more) or by word (half a cent to 12 cents+). The SFWA standard is 8 c/w, so there’s a good number of SFFH markets that offer that or better. Generally, you’ll only get a number that high in literary or poems if your piece is short and they have a high flat payment.

Poems are different. Some markets pay per line (like $1/line) or per poem ($5-$100+), but overall are paid less because they are shorter. Poems in SFFH markets also tend to be paid more, too!

Don’t be afraid to follow up about a payment. You’re likely to be paid via PayPal, but there might be other options, depending on the market. This is technically income and needs to be reported, and saving/paying taxes is on you. I save 25%, unless it’ll only be a buck or two, then I don’t bother haha. And I report/pay all of it at the normal tax time with my W2. It might make more sense for you to report/pay quarterly! Please talk to an actual tax professional about this.

Regardless, keep track of the amounts, dates, pieces, and methods. You’ll want to see it all add up!

7 | It’s publishing day!

Your story is now out in the world! Now it’s time to tell everyone about it!

  • Your social media channels (Facebook, Twitter and Twitter alternatives, etc.)
  • Your website (either as a blog post or a listing on your bibliography)
  • Your mailing list.
  • Communities you’re a part of, like your local critique group, etc.

Include a link to where people can read or buy your story and a little tidbit about it to draw them in. If there’s any relevant content warnings, it would be kind to include them, too. Save a copy of the publication for yourself, like a PDF or a print out, in case the website ever goes down, and save the link in a spreadsheet or bookmarks folder so you can find it quickly in the future.

Final Thoughts

I know this seems intimidating, but once you’ve prepared your materials, it’s actually quite easy! The worst part is waiting.

But don’t sit on your hands while waiting for a piece to sell. Write the next story, and the next, and the next one. The more pieces you have, the more submissions you can send, which means more opportunities for one of them to become an acceptance. Plus, with every piece you write, you get better as a writer, which further increases your chances of getting published.

Publishing can be a real emotional roller coaster; without those lows, the highs won’t feel as sweet. And once you get off, you’ll want to run back to the line again.

It’s all a numbers game, so you gotta keep trying! A single piece can rack up dozens of rejections before getting an acceptance (I think my personal high score is over 50), so don’t give up!