Hey, so I'm relatively new to the literary world. I was wondering where short stories generally go -- stories that are too short to be novellas. Do they get published into books or would you be better off writing a collection of short stories and trying to publish that? I guess I'm asking more about the marketing of short stories. Forgive my ignorance. Thanks!
Submit them to magazines. Read this thread for links to databases of short story markets. Duotrope recently started charging money (something like $50 a year), but Poets and Writers is still free. My advice is to look through some magazines to see if your story would be a good fit. Aim for the highest paying/most prestigious magazines and work your way down. I should also mention that short story collections don't sell very well, which is why publishers don't usually pick them up. So submitting your stories to magazines is your best bet.
I have been submitting my short stories to literary magazines for a little over half a year now. What I've concluded is a) they should call it the lit mag rejection process because, well, you typically face a lot of rejection before getting a piece into print somewhere and b) there are many literary magazines out there--some print, some digital and some both. Before submitting, I recommend familiarizing yourself with the market (read a few issues or stories from the archives) and their submissions guidelines. Many literary magazines now use the Submittable for handling submissions, which also serves as a useful tool for tracking everything in one place. Here are a few literary magazines that I subscribe to, read and submit to on occasion: The Missouri Review Boston Review Indiana Review wigleaf You'll soon notice that many (not all) literary magazines are associated with writing programs at various universities across the country.
Is it OK to send short stories to various magazines? it seems to me to be a perfect way to developing oneself as a writer.
You should check the submission guidelines for the individual magazines. Some will allow simultaneous submissions, but many won't. They don't want to go to all of the trouble of reading your story, perhaps by multiple editors, only to find out you've already sold the story to someone else.
I do this often, always making sure that simsubbing is permitted by the market I am sending my work to (as jeepea noted above). Just don't get discouraged early on if the rejection emails outnumber the acceptances--all part of the game.
are you asking if it's ok to submit them at all?... or if it's ok to submit to more than one mag at the same time? answer to the former is of course it's ok... what else would you do with them? re the latter, it's ok only if each magazine you send to says they allow simultaneous submissions... if they don't, don't!
Of course you are allowed to submit your stories to as many magazines simultaneously as you like. They are your stories and so you have full copywrite over them. However, most magazines want previously unpublished work, so if you submit simultaneously and two or more magazines accept the same story, you cannot accept pay and publication from all of them. One thing you can do is rewrite each story slightly and submit it to multiple magazines or contests, that way you can technically get each of them published. This would be a decent tactic if you are just looking to make money off of your writing, but if you want to get published so you have a good resume of published writing, it might make you look bad if you have several published stories that are clearly just clones of each other. Christopher Fielden has a good database of magazines that accept submissions and short story competitions. As I haven't been a member here for long enough I can't include links, but if you google his name along with 'short story magazines/competitions' you will find them. Always read their submission guidelines and make sure you post within the word count and genre they are looking for. It is good practice to read their previously published material to gain an idea of what they want. If you don't do this then you really reduce your chances as you'd just be blindly carpet bombing stories.
'copywrite' means to write copy... 'copyright' is what you are referring to there... and owning the copyright has nothing to do with simsubbing to venues that specify they only want exclusive submissions... you can, since nothing would stop you from doing so, but certainly shouldn't if you don't want to be blacklisted and possibly even sued... there's nothing 'decent' about doing such a dishonest thing... and don't care if you're caught and blacklisted, and/or worse... ...'look bad' would be the least of one's worries... ...sorry to say, i have to assume you either don't know the writing/publishing business, or don't care if you overstep moral and ethical bounds... but it's not good practice to offer newcomers to the writing world such bad advice...
Woops, yes I meant copyright, thank you. Well, yes it does. You have full creative control over what you do with your work, so what I am saying is you can send them to as many people as you want because it is your work to do what you want with it, but that doesn't imply that the editors will accept you doing this. However, I have read in the rules and guidelines of various magazines and competitions I have submitted to that they don't mind if you submit to multiple sources so long as you withdraw from the other sources should they accept yours. Then again these were Australian publications and I don't know if they follow the same guidelines as other countries. I am a newcomer as well and have never published anything before, so I'm just offering what I have read online. I haven't been here long enough to add links but if you PM me I could show you where this advice has originated. I agree with you 100%, which is why I would never personally do such a thing, but I figured I'd throw it out there anyway as someone who wrote an ebook on 'how to win short story competitions' and has a website that hosts them explicitly stated that it was fine to do so.
