Authors Publish started five years ago today. To celebrate, I am going to share 5 of our most helpful Special Issue articles. Before I do that, I am going to talk a little bit about the journey Authors Publish and I have taken in the last five years.
When I started Authors Publish, it was just supposed to be a short experiment. I was teaching at an University during the year and I had the summer off, so I thought why not do something with it? I was already helping my husband, Jacob Jans, with his online business, which focuses on freelance writers. But a lot of those freelance writers had creative goals too, and that is where my interest has always been, in creative writing and getting it published.
For the first two years of Authors Publish I kept teaching at the university level, and when the time came to choose between the two jobs, I chose Authors Publish. However by that time it was already a different business than the one I started.
A lot of things have changed since we started out, actually. At first we only reviewed literary journals and offered writing prompts, but it became clear rather quickly that we needed to review manuscript publishers. I have grown to love having the ability to make it clear what publishers should be avoided.
When the longtime watchdog site Preditors & Editors stopped functioning a year later, I was really glad that Authors Publish was able to become one of the places that fit into the gap they left.
In year two, we started publishing eBooks (with Submit Publish Repeat, now in its fourth edition), and in year three, we published our first Guide to Manuscript Publishers (now in its third iteration). We also started publishing Special Issues, which let us fill in the gap length wise between eBooks and shorter articles. In year four, we were able to find a copy editor that is a really good fit for all of our publications, and we also went from having two regular contributors (outside of myself) to three, with a fourth in the wings. What hasn’t changed is that we have stuck to our guiding principles since the day we created them.
As we continue to grow and change, we thank you for your ongoing support, your kind words, your helpful feedback, your critical feedback, and your readership. If you have any suggestions for the future of Authors Publish, we would love to hear them. Just send us an email at support@authorspublish.com.
Gratefully,
Caitlin Jans
20 Respected Literary Journals and Magazines that Publish Creative Writing
Getting published in any of these literary journals can change your whole career as a writer.
How to Start Getting Your Work Published in Literary Journals
Breaking down the process of submitting. This article focuses on giving new submitters a strong start.
20 Literary Journals for New Writers
A wonderful list, put together by S. Kalekar.
35 Writers’ “Rules for Writing”
A comprehensive list of a wide range of authors’ rules for writing, from Jack Kerouac to Joyce Carol Oates.
All of these publishers accept submissions without an agent.
