A few months ago we announced that we were moving away from releasing weekly reviews of manuscript publishers. You can learn more about this here.
Since then, we have worked out a new publishing schedule. Because we are trying to be as transparent as possible as a company, I’m sharing it below. It also might be very helpful for readers who are focused on a particular goal and focus exclusively on submitting to only manuscript publishers or only lit journals.
Each week now, we have a different rotating feature, this is taking the place of the manuscript publisher reviews. Some of these features have already been a part of our publication for an extended period and some are new, but all are moving around on the calendar.
For a long time every month we’ve published a 5 paying markets list, and a round-up of opportunities for historically underrepresented writers. These used to be released on the first and second Thursday of the month respectively. Now we’ve shifted things and added more rotating features. The schedule below should help make everything clear. It may change in the future, but we’ve already started to put this in place and it seems to be working so far.
The First Thursday
This issue will always feature a new regular column that lists between 12 and 8 publishers open at this time. This list will always include at least four publishers we haven’t reviewed before, as well as publishers with limited submission windows that are currently open, and publishers that are generally open to submissions and are worth knowing about. Our lists have helped defuse the deluge of submissions publishers sometimes receive, so we are hoping this new format works better.
Emily Harstone will continue to write the new reviews, even though we are not sending them out directly, they will still be published on the website.
The Second Thursday
S. Kalekar’s long-running “5 Paying Markets” feature will move to this date. As many regular readers of this feature know, S. generally manages to squeeze in more than 5 paying markets on this list! This list prioritizes journals with short submissions periods that pay their authors.
The Third Thursday
S. Kalekar and Emily Harstone’s collaborative list of markets open to submissions from Historically Underrepresented markets will now be published on the third Thursday of the month. This list covers lit journals, anthologies, publishers, contests and various other opportunities primarily for historically underrepresented writers. Some of the opportunities listed are only open to a strict and specific demographic, say only Black Writers over the age of 50, and some are very broad and open to any historically underrepresented writers.
The Fourth Thursday
This and the following weeks schedule will vary a bit, because sometimes there are four Thursdays in a month, and sometimes there are five. When there are only four, this weeks regular feature and the following weeks regular feature will both be published together during the fourth week.
This weeks regular feature will be The Other Side of the Desk, which is both, my favorite regular feature (you can read one of the many wonderful past interviews here) and one of our least popular article series ever. It focuses on publishing interviews with people who work in the writing industry. It has so far included a publicist, an agent, and various editors. It really helps submitting authors gain perspective on how the publishing industry is (and isn’t) working.
The Fifth Thursday
This will always include a shorter list of literary journals seeking submissions. Usually around ten journals will be on the list and the focus will be more niche. Journals open to novel excerpts or longer short stories, etc. Some will be updates of lists that we used to release as special issues but didn’t do well in that format, and others will be brand new collections.
We are really excited about this shift (even if it involves more work) because it will allow us to continue to update some lists that have a more niche market, while devoting the attention to special issues that have more appeal to a broader audience.
As stated in the previous section which there isn’t a fifth Thursday in a month, this article will be published as part of the fourth weekly issue.
If you have any questions, or suggestions, please feel encouraged to email us at support@authorspublish.com.
Warmly,
Caitlin
