You’ve spit-shined that short story, non-fiction piece or poem. Great! Now what do you do with it? How do you find your way through the thousands of magazines and journals, and keep your sanity trying to keep track of it all? There are the trusted Writer’s Market guides published by Penguin that come out annually. But, often, the information there is a bit dated by the time the guide goes to press. Even some of the listings from the highly respected Poets & Writers magazine have not been updated since 2017. Small presses, literary journals and many magazines open and close to submissions continually throughout the year—some on a rotating basis. And what about anthologies that pop up? A wonderful tool to keep track of all of this is Duotrope. It’s an online service at https://duotrope.com. (Disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated in any way with the company. Just a happy user.)
What it is
Currently Duotrope monitors 7,211 fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art publishers and agents. It is an up-to-the-minute site with several features that I find I can’t do without. This includes a submission tracker for all my submissions, monitoring and reporting on a publisher’s status (temporarily closed to submissions, defunct, open, contests, etc.), a calendar of deadlines for anthologies, various reports that group publishers by certain criteria such as fastest response times, most difficult to break into, fledgling publishers, etc., and a search function that allows you to search by genre, audience, publication medium (online/print) and other criteria. It also emails subscribers a weekly update of the deadline calendar and any new info about agents, and publications. What’s not to swoon over? All this for the price of $50/yr.
What it does
It works! I’ve been a subscriber less than a year and I have, finally, managed to keep track of my submissions. Plus, I’ve placed eight poems with seven different publications and secured a poetry chapbook contract. You can understand why I’m excited about it. And I’m not the only one who loves Duotrope. They say their awards include: Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers, Predators & Editors’ Truly Useful Site Award, and listing in The Write Life’s 100 Best Websites for Writers for 2019.
Other features
Duotrope has many more features than I can cover in this posting such as guides, interviews and statistics that are gleaned via user’s submission trackers. That is, when someone notes a response (pending, accepted, rejected) that information goes into figuring the response time of a publisher. Also, from monitoring the submission trackers, Duotrope notes (anonymously) when some writers are published in more than one journal. For example, writers published in Rosebud might also appear in Pacifica Review. This is helpful to get a feel for what kinds of publications your work might fit into. A non-subscriber can see some of the information online, but the helpfulness is limited. I do hope you give it a try—it’s another good tool for the writer’s toolbox.
A taste of some of the reports you can access once you subscribe
Fiction Publications
- Overall Response Statistics
- The Top 25: Slowest, Fastest, Challenging, and Approachable
- Top 100 Slowest to Respond
- Top 100 Fastest to Respond
- Top 100 Most Challenging (lowest acceptance rates)
- The Most Non-Responsive (least likely to send a response)
Poetry Publications
- Overall Response Statistics
- The Top 25: Slowest, Fastest, Challenging, and Approachable
- Top 100 Slowest to Respond
- Top 100 Fastest to Respond
- Top 100 Most Challenging (lowest acceptance rates)
- Top 100 Most Approachable (highest acceptance rates)
Nonfiction Publications
- Overall Response Statistics
- The Most Personable (most likely to send a personal response)
- The Most Non-Responsive (least likely to send a response)
- The Extremely Challenging (no acceptances and at least 100 responses)
- The Uncharted (no submission reports yet)
- The Lesser Known (fewer than 10 submissions reported)
Getting to know Duotrope
- About Duotrope: https://duotrope.com/about
- Features for writers and artists: https://duotrope.com/about/features/
- Guides for using the site: https://duotrope.com/guides/#creators
