As you all know, there are many literary journals out there, and there's no way to sift through them all. I was wondering if anybody knew of any journals that I could possibly submit the following type of short story to. It is already finished and revised to what I consider my best possible work. It is about a man who is captured by some sort of organization (exactly who they are is not revealed). He is tortured for information as to the whereabouts of a bomb that he allegedly planted somewhere. The only problem is, he is innocent, and of course, his captors don't believe him. It can get a bit graphic in spots, but I wouldn't consider it gory. There aren't any appendages that get removed or anything. There is some profanity and somebody gets shot. That's about the worst it gets in that regard. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
You should check duotrope.com for market listings. You can sort by genre, which will help you narrow down the options. Once you find a few magazines you think are a good match for your work, read through their stories (if you can) to see which one publishes stories similar to yours.
The only problem I have with duotrope.com is that it is hard to figure out if a journal is reputable or not. The only means of figuring thi out is that it will say "fledgling market" if the journal hasn't been around long. I suppose I could google each of them, but that seems like quite a lot of guess and check.
You do realize that this reads as "I'm lazy," right? First problem: If by "reputable" you mean something other than "they pay writers a good wage for their work," then you've lost a lot of us. Only the very newb and very paranoid worry about such things as editors stealing ideas, editors stealing stories, or editors printing stories without the author's permission. Second problem: If by "reputable" you mean "I want a journal that will pay me for my work and has a decent sized readership," you just need to search Duotrope for thriller / horror magazines or e-zines that pay pro rates, and then look at what each journal's webpage has to say about pay rates. Some will pay the minimum pro rate of 5 cents / word; some will pay more. And in many cases, the websites of larger magazines will show their circulation numbers too. If a magazine or e-zine is paying pro rates and isn't listed as "fledgeling" then it's a good bet the magazine is reputable in terms of having a readership. (If it didn't have a readership, it would likely close soon.) The biggest problem, though, is that you seem to be telling us that you want information, but you aren't interested in spending an hour or two looking this information up yourself. This does not bode well. If you don't care enough about your story to research the markets you're sending it to, you don't care very much at all, do you? And if you don't give the proverbial rat's arse, why should we?
I see where you are coming from, but you've got to understand that I'm not opposed to doing work. It's just, the prospect of google searching 400 journals individually seems like a waste of time. There's got to ve a way to barrow it down. You've shown me how to do that by telling me what to search for and other things to look for such as rates.
Also look at the writers they publish. You might end up recognizing a couple of them, and that will tell you how reputable the magazine is. Generally, the highest paying markets are the most prestigious, though this is not always the case.
