So, I was talking to my friend Anne (of Sky Shark fame) last week about short stories and anthologies and how I thought I would try a few more, and she said, “Wow, you know way more about this than I do” and hence I am writing this post. To share my knowledge with the world, or at least that small part of it that occasionally wanders by.
As we discussed in a recent post, short stories are nice for a variety of reasons: they take less time to complete, it’s easier to juggle multiple submissions, and responses are more frequent.
So. Let’s say you’re looking for anthologies accepting submissions, or you have a short story you’ve written and would like to research markets for it. Where do you go?
I’ve got three websites for you.
1. Duotrope
We’ve discussed this one before. Duotrope, aside from keeping an eye on anthology, short story, and poetry markets, allows you to keep track of your submissions. Markets can be searched by genre, length, or alphabetically. It will also tell you acceptance stats, pay rates, and link you to the market’s website. This is good for all genres.
2. Ralan
Ralan focuses on speculative fiction, though it also has humor, poetry, and greeting card markets listed. Ralan divides markets by pay/non-pay and has separate categories for anthologies and books. It also tracks response times based on the site owner’s personal experiences. (The Black Hole also tracks response times for speculative fiction markets.)
3. Absolute Write’s Paying Market Forum
Absolute Write is full of useful bits (certainly not least their Bewares, Recommendations, and Background Checks forum, where every publisher or agent known to man is covered) and one of the most useful is their Paying Market forum. Often you can find markets here that are not listed elsewhere because publishers will come to them and advertise their anthologies, new imprints, contests, etc. They also have a Non-Paying Market forum. What’s nice about AW is you can get an idea if something is a major fraud before you waste your time on it.
Hopefully that helps. Anyone have anything to add to the list? I write speculative fiction, so that’s where my experience lies, but if anyone has any recommendations for other genres, that would be great.
