By F.I. Goldhaber
Reading submission guidelines is an essential step in getting one’s creative work (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scripts, comics, art, etc. ) published by magazines, journals, and webzines. I’m hardly the first (and won’t be the last) writer to tell you that. But, I can offer some additional reasons (and ways) reading submission guidelines can help you get published.
Although not all publications will do so, many reject any submission that doesn’t follow their guidelines. This often eliminates a large percentage of slush, giving those who follow guidelines precisely an advantage.
Submission guidelines can also reveal a great deal about a publication that probably won’t be found on its “about” page.
The old adage about product warnings — the silliest warnings on labels are the result of someone who actually tried that — often applies to submission guidelines and can give you a hint as to how jaded an editor might be. For example, if an editor specifies in the submission guidelines that they will not accept work written in crayon, it’s probably because they actually received at least one submission written in crayon at some point in their career.
The level of detail included in the submission guidelines can indicate how long an editor has been accepting submissions (either at that publication or others). In my experience the shorter the submission guidelines, the more likely an editor is new and hasn’t experienced all the ways that submissions can become problematic.
Unfortunately, not listing details can also create frustration for submitters: Do they want a .doc file or will they take .rtf or .pdf? Single space or double? How many poems do they prefer to see and do they want them combined in one file or sent separately? Missing critical information can indicate the editor has never read any other publication’s guidelines and/or has never submitted creative work themselves. It also can indicate whether a publication might be more likely to fail after the first issue.
Another problem that has arisen relatively recently, even among experienced editors, results from the use of submission systems (e.g. Submittable, Duosuma, Moksha, etc). Often editors don’t realize there are, or don’t adjust for, defaults with the system they’re using. So the submission guidelines might state that the editor only wants the poems they’ve requested in a single document. But Duosuma, for example, is set up to allow (or require) a poet to submit each document individually. This lets you know that the editor is either new to that submission system or hasn’t paid attention to its structure.
Submission guidelines are often fluid documents, altering as the publication, who’s editing it, and who’s reading slush changes, making it important to read them each time. That also makes it advisable to record the submission guidelines in place when you submit (producing a pdf of the webpage is usually easiest) so you have proof of whatever rights were requested and payment was offered as it applies to your work. Given six months to a year can elapse between submission and acceptance, that record protects your ability to fight egregious rights grabs put into place after you sent in your submission or avoid not getting paid. Recording the submission guidelines also allows you to easily see what’s different and that will give you insight about staffing and focus changes at a publication.
Because guidelines are fluid, there are frequently discrepancies between those listed on a publication’s website and its submission system’s page. This indicates that the guidelines probably changed since the submission system page was set up and whoever was responsible for the one did not have (or take) responsibility for updating the other. When that occurs, I recommend recording both the website and the submission system guidelines. I sometimes also, depending on how problematic it is, send a separate email to the editors alerting them to the discrepancy.
Finally, it sometimes quite literally pays money to read a publication’s submission guidelines. I have a couple of short stories in which cats have speaking roles, so I keep an eye on “furry” markets. I spotted this explanation in an essay by Mary E. Lowd, the editor of Zooscape, linked to from the guidelines page: “the word ‘furry’ isn’t really about fur …. ‘furry’ is really a shorter, catchier, much easier to spell, stand-in for ‘anthropomorphic.’ … You can also anthropomorphize rose bushes, toasters … clearly, the definition of ‘furry’ is a lot less limited than people often assume.”
That definition is certainly broader than I ever imagined. After reading that essay, I sold reprint rights to a previously published short story, “Rebellion“, written from the point of view of a pipe organ, something I otherwise would never have thought to submit.
Bio: As a reporter, editor, and business writer, F.I. Goldhaber produced news stories, feature articles, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits across the U.S. Now paper, plastic, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. http://www.goldhaber.net/
