Writers doing no-no's; new editor at Poetry; review of The Drift; new workshop from SmokeLong Quarterly; jobs at Poetry, BOMB, Vallum; 200+ markets for your work...
Great topic, Becky. I'd like to suggest one for the future; the potential for a publisher rating site for authors. I get a little tired of submission pages having a string of conditions as long as the menu in a Chinese restaurant. I think we need something like a TripAdvisor where writers can rate their experiences with publishers as an encouragement/warning to others.
The multiple submission issue for anything other than an actual book is a huge pet peeve of mine. In today's world of millions of online magazines most with a readership of a couple of hundred subscribers if lucky it is totally unfair of these publications to want work that has not been submitted or published in another online magazine or personal blog site. They are not offering us pay at all, they cannot give us any huge exposure, so asking us to submit a piece one and at time to each magazine and then wait for a reply is ludicrous. This isn't the days of huge overhead for a print magazine. Every wanna be writer has pretty much set up an online magazine of sorts. So unless an online magazine has a readership of in the tens of thousands it is totally unfair to ask us to write for them for free, and most even charge us a fee for submission, and then think we should not be allowed to have our essay or poem printed in as many of these small magazines as we can at once. We need lots of these to expose our work and so should not be constrained. I'm reasonably sure that these sites of a few hundred readers are not going to overlap in terms of audience so why not allow us to simply submit to as many as we like and get published in as many as possible to get our work out there. I mean it's a huge difference between the New Yorker requiring exclusive rights to print and a small online mag of a few people. Sorry but this is a huge pet peeve of mine and I'm sure to many writers as well. The same goes for a personal blog site. Mine has all of 170 followers, so really this is will impact the readership of my piece on a totally different small online magazine? I don't think so.
We had a stipulation at Thrice that reprints were okay so long as we give full mention of the first publication in the credits. In the case of our latest iteration, we collected a basket of work by a featured writer and listed full credits of any first appearances. Especially proper because we were publishing a collection as a showcase. We've been lucky in that writers usually tell us in their submissions. Our guidelines said we will take stuff that has appeared elsewhere, but only if we could credit the other venue. But I guess I, personally, trusted the writer to tell me. Maybe being specific in the guidelines about this helped. I never ran into the problem.
Tangentially-related question about reprints: I've noticed that a number of writers promote their short, published pieces on Twitter/Instagram by posting screenshots/photos of the work in its entirety, versus only links to the pieces. These posts seem to do better in the algorithm than those with only links—however, is it kosher, or does it somehow take away from the lit mag by driving traffic away from them? If there's a contract and it stipulates that after being published by the lit mag you own the rights to your work and can do whatever you want, posting the piece seems fine, but if there's some sort of exclusivity in the contract, seems like the screenshot/photo would be a violation. (Maybe I just answered my own question, lol.) Does anyone have direct experience with this? Trying to figure out the best way to promote my work. I've always posted links, but I worry that I may be losing readers in asking them to perform the step of clicking to navigate elsewhere versus having the work right in front of them.
First, best to clarify distinction between "simultaneous subs" and "resubs of previously published work." Most mags address that question in their guidelines. If they don't speak to either of those questions, I assume it's a no-no. It's incumbent on us writers to figure out a submission logging system. I use the submittable submissions window for my account, even if the sub was via email or through Duotrope or one of the proprietary submission utilities. Here's how: 1 - Log every submission in Submittable, 2 - When you get an acceptance, go to Submittable and find out who else might be considering that work. 3 - Send each of those pubs a polite withdrawal notice. No "neener-neener" or "you really missed the next Nobel winner, dude" sort of language. Courtesy, courtesy, courtesy. We're writers, after all, not cretins. Most of us. Even if we ARE cretins, it's still no excuse to act like one. Keep it part of the mystery of your authorial persona.
I had to add this quotation from the notes section of The Best American Poetry 2021, edited by Tracy K. Smith; it's by Shane McCrae, who, the bio says, has published with Farrar, Straus and Giroux; he's gotten the Guggenheim, the Lannan, and an NEA, and he teaches at Columbia: "Although [the poem included in BAP] was selected from The Yale Review, where it was published in 2020 -- for which I will be forever grateful -- it was first published in The Baffler in 2019, for which I will be forever grateful. I screwed up, and as a result the poem was accidentally published twice ..."
Having never had a poem accepted by The Yale Review I have no information on whether they require their authors to sign a contract saying the accepted work is previously unpublished -- but I'd think it a pretty safe guess. So, not only did McCrae publish his poem in two different high prestige periodicals -- and likely certified that it was unpublished for the second, the poem was chosen for the BAP annual. Congratulations to him! I'm not going to hate on him for it. But it does remind one that you can do things that all those editors claim to hate you for -- and still do fine.
What is considered prior publication is too broad. Posting to friends and private facebook groups is considered prior publication by many. Posting to my own blog or poetry site is considered prior publication. I find that to be terribly naive.
May 10, 2022·edited May 10, 2022Liked by Becky Tuch
I was at a book fair a few years ago and picked up a copy of a literary magazine I was interested in, and by some stroke of coincidence saw the exact story that I had chosen to publish years ago in the magazine I edit (The Summerset Review). I think submitting previously published stories to places that specifically say they do not accept them is a rather dishonest thing to do, but it probably happens more than we might imagine.
I just had a client ask if she could publish a story on her blog while waiting to see if a journal accepts it (I'm an editor and I'm submitting the story for her). I told her, probably not. Publishing is publishing, even if it's self-publishing. Curious if any journal editors out there agree. And what if this writer immediately took the story down if it got accepted? And for that matter, assuming the blog is small, would anyone even look or notice or care? . . . Also, I know there's at least one journal out there that publishes previously published work. Second Chance journal? Something like that. I'll add a comment if I can find it.
Could be that a previously published poem was not sent out again, but rather was a poem simultaneously submitted but not withdrawn, that is, the poem was taken up by one literary venue and the poet neglected to withdraw it from the others to which they'd sent it.
I have had the experience of seeing a poem accepted by one ezine, then withdrawing it from others, only to have the poem accepted by a second ezine. The withdrawal email had been missed. The confusion was cleared up, and the poem did not appear in two places.
On the other hand, in my case, at least, that sort of problem has been so rare as to be hardly worth mentioning.
I'm surprised to see this from this mag. I'm widely published, 2018 and 2019 64 Best, two-time Pushcart nominee, various awards and such, and never even got a notification of receipt from the mag. I thought it had gone pandemic-defunct. It might be the case that people like me assume that if you're collecting for a MO or Midwestern "anthology," these poems you're submitting may very well have been published before. Maybe my interpretation of "anthology" or a regional or state collection is different than what the editor thinks. Anyway, there are various anthologies that take previously published material because that's sometimes in the nature of topical or regional anthologies. I say it's an editor's responsibility to be explicit about first publication rights, especially where the context may be ambiguous, such as an anthology. (By the way, I'm not the author complained of here--I have not even received an acknowledgment of previously submitted work from the mag.) Respect is a two-way street, and I acknowledge that this mag is swimming in a pool where about 10 editors blackball anything new, different, or NOT university-affiliated. I hope one of you will check out one of the three books I have published in two years' time without notice from the university-affiliated presses. You've got all those free hands in students, after all.
Great topic, Becky. I'd like to suggest one for the future; the potential for a publisher rating site for authors. I get a little tired of submission pages having a string of conditions as long as the menu in a Chinese restaurant. I think we need something like a TripAdvisor where writers can rate their experiences with publishers as an encouragement/warning to others.
The multiple submission issue for anything other than an actual book is a huge pet peeve of mine. In today's world of millions of online magazines most with a readership of a couple of hundred subscribers if lucky it is totally unfair of these publications to want work that has not been submitted or published in another online magazine or personal blog site. They are not offering us pay at all, they cannot give us any huge exposure, so asking us to submit a piece one and at time to each magazine and then wait for a reply is ludicrous. This isn't the days of huge overhead for a print magazine. Every wanna be writer has pretty much set up an online magazine of sorts. So unless an online magazine has a readership of in the tens of thousands it is totally unfair to ask us to write for them for free, and most even charge us a fee for submission, and then think we should not be allowed to have our essay or poem printed in as many of these small magazines as we can at once. We need lots of these to expose our work and so should not be constrained. I'm reasonably sure that these sites of a few hundred readers are not going to overlap in terms of audience so why not allow us to simply submit to as many as we like and get published in as many as possible to get our work out there. I mean it's a huge difference between the New Yorker requiring exclusive rights to print and a small online mag of a few people. Sorry but this is a huge pet peeve of mine and I'm sure to many writers as well. The same goes for a personal blog site. Mine has all of 170 followers, so really this is will impact the readership of my piece on a totally different small online magazine? I don't think so.
We had a stipulation at Thrice that reprints were okay so long as we give full mention of the first publication in the credits. In the case of our latest iteration, we collected a basket of work by a featured writer and listed full credits of any first appearances. Especially proper because we were publishing a collection as a showcase. We've been lucky in that writers usually tell us in their submissions. Our guidelines said we will take stuff that has appeared elsewhere, but only if we could credit the other venue. But I guess I, personally, trusted the writer to tell me. Maybe being specific in the guidelines about this helped. I never ran into the problem.
Tangentially-related question about reprints: I've noticed that a number of writers promote their short, published pieces on Twitter/Instagram by posting screenshots/photos of the work in its entirety, versus only links to the pieces. These posts seem to do better in the algorithm than those with only links—however, is it kosher, or does it somehow take away from the lit mag by driving traffic away from them? If there's a contract and it stipulates that after being published by the lit mag you own the rights to your work and can do whatever you want, posting the piece seems fine, but if there's some sort of exclusivity in the contract, seems like the screenshot/photo would be a violation. (Maybe I just answered my own question, lol.) Does anyone have direct experience with this? Trying to figure out the best way to promote my work. I've always posted links, but I worry that I may be losing readers in asking them to perform the step of clicking to navigate elsewhere versus having the work right in front of them.
First, best to clarify distinction between "simultaneous subs" and "resubs of previously published work." Most mags address that question in their guidelines. If they don't speak to either of those questions, I assume it's a no-no. It's incumbent on us writers to figure out a submission logging system. I use the submittable submissions window for my account, even if the sub was via email or through Duotrope or one of the proprietary submission utilities. Here's how: 1 - Log every submission in Submittable, 2 - When you get an acceptance, go to Submittable and find out who else might be considering that work. 3 - Send each of those pubs a polite withdrawal notice. No "neener-neener" or "you really missed the next Nobel winner, dude" sort of language. Courtesy, courtesy, courtesy. We're writers, after all, not cretins. Most of us. Even if we ARE cretins, it's still no excuse to act like one. Keep it part of the mystery of your authorial persona.
I had to add this quotation from the notes section of The Best American Poetry 2021, edited by Tracy K. Smith; it's by Shane McCrae, who, the bio says, has published with Farrar, Straus and Giroux; he's gotten the Guggenheim, the Lannan, and an NEA, and he teaches at Columbia: "Although [the poem included in BAP] was selected from The Yale Review, where it was published in 2020 -- for which I will be forever grateful -- it was first published in The Baffler in 2019, for which I will be forever grateful. I screwed up, and as a result the poem was accidentally published twice ..."
Having never had a poem accepted by The Yale Review I have no information on whether they require their authors to sign a contract saying the accepted work is previously unpublished -- but I'd think it a pretty safe guess. So, not only did McCrae publish his poem in two different high prestige periodicals -- and likely certified that it was unpublished for the second, the poem was chosen for the BAP annual. Congratulations to him! I'm not going to hate on him for it. But it does remind one that you can do things that all those editors claim to hate you for -- and still do fine.
What is considered prior publication is too broad. Posting to friends and private facebook groups is considered prior publication by many. Posting to my own blog or poetry site is considered prior publication. I find that to be terribly naive.
I was at a book fair a few years ago and picked up a copy of a literary magazine I was interested in, and by some stroke of coincidence saw the exact story that I had chosen to publish years ago in the magazine I edit (The Summerset Review). I think submitting previously published stories to places that specifically say they do not accept them is a rather dishonest thing to do, but it probably happens more than we might imagine.
I just had a client ask if she could publish a story on her blog while waiting to see if a journal accepts it (I'm an editor and I'm submitting the story for her). I told her, probably not. Publishing is publishing, even if it's self-publishing. Curious if any journal editors out there agree. And what if this writer immediately took the story down if it got accepted? And for that matter, assuming the blog is small, would anyone even look or notice or care? . . . Also, I know there's at least one journal out there that publishes previously published work. Second Chance journal? Something like that. I'll add a comment if I can find it.
Could be that a previously published poem was not sent out again, but rather was a poem simultaneously submitted but not withdrawn, that is, the poem was taken up by one literary venue and the poet neglected to withdraw it from the others to which they'd sent it.
I have had the experience of seeing a poem accepted by one ezine, then withdrawing it from others, only to have the poem accepted by a second ezine. The withdrawal email had been missed. The confusion was cleared up, and the poem did not appear in two places.
On the other hand, in my case, at least, that sort of problem has been so rare as to be hardly worth mentioning.
I'm surprised to see this from this mag. I'm widely published, 2018 and 2019 64 Best, two-time Pushcart nominee, various awards and such, and never even got a notification of receipt from the mag. I thought it had gone pandemic-defunct. It might be the case that people like me assume that if you're collecting for a MO or Midwestern "anthology," these poems you're submitting may very well have been published before. Maybe my interpretation of "anthology" or a regional or state collection is different than what the editor thinks. Anyway, there are various anthologies that take previously published material because that's sometimes in the nature of topical or regional anthologies. I say it's an editor's responsibility to be explicit about first publication rights, especially where the context may be ambiguous, such as an anthology. (By the way, I'm not the author complained of here--I have not even received an acknowledgment of previously submitted work from the mag.) Respect is a two-way street, and I acknowledge that this mag is swimming in a pool where about 10 editors blackball anything new, different, or NOT university-affiliated. I hope one of you will check out one of the three books I have published in two years' time without notice from the university-affiliated presses. You've got all those free hands in students, after all.