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The submission withdrawal process, round 3

Published by Kelly on October 11, 2010

I got my first short story accepted for publication, which is super fantastic, but always comes with the horrible chore of withdrawing the manuscript from everywhere else you sent it that hasn’t rejected it yet. The first time I found out a poem of mine was getting published, I was completely overwhelmed by how much work it was to complete this chore, and how rude some of the publications were. Last time around, I got some interesting responses, including the following:

  • “Umm… we don’t have your stuff.” Hmmm… that probably means I put it in an envelope and was too cheap to mail it off. My bad.
  • “How dare you! We don’t accept simultaneous submissions!”  Oops… I must not have read the fine print. But you really should if you want work from real writers.
  • “Mail daemon: undeliverable.” Update your mail server if you want submissions.

This time around, I was much more prepared. I made sure I read the fine print over again for everyone I sent to, to make sure I hadn’t been violating their rules in the first place. I also prepared an email template, so I wouldn’t have to think about what to write every time. So I was both mentally and resourcefully prepared. These are my findings from this round of submission withdrawal:

  1. It was far, far easier than last time. I had sent my poems to about 3 times as many people as I had this manuscript, which significantly lessened the chore.
  2. I had sent this manuscript to a total of 18 publications. Of those 18, 1 accepted it, 6 rejected it, and 11 still had it under consideration.
  3. The range of dates for submission were from March to September.
  4. Of the 11 who still had it under consideration, the longest period was 7 months.
  5. One of the publications who I had still recorded as pending had rejected me without notification.
  6. I was able to withdraw 4 submissions myself using an online manager.
  7. I had to email 6 of the publications I had submitted to.
  8. There was only one snail mail submission that I had forgotten to mail, and I knew it without having an embarrassing response email.

Lesson learned: keep good track of your submissions, and be prepared when you get lucky and one of them picks it up.

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My first short story publication!

Published by Kelly on October 11, 2010

Happy Columbus Day, everyone! I got an email late last night that Line Zero, a new quarterly arts journal, is going to pick up Two Steps Forward! I almost didn’t believe it, but I took a look at the site this morning and on the post with the finalist announcements was my name.

http://linezero.org/literary-finalists/

The issue comes out in November and I can’t wait to see it. This is a brand new journal, just opened for submissions at the beginning of September. I heard about them on Twitter, I think. It just goes to show that it pays off to keep track of emerging players in the market and get in on the ground floor!

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Screw you, spell check! Oh wait, that IS how you spell Wednesday…

Published by Kelly on September 8, 2010

Tonight I was plugging away at some submissions/future rejections, and I noticed something both disturbing and embarrassing.  It has been over 3 months since I moved, and I got tired of manually typing my new address, and I figured it was probably time to give the query letter templates the once over anyway.

The query letter for The Redheaded Stepchild misspelled protagonist. The query letter for Two Steps Forward misspelled Forward. Twice. And it’s in the title. It also referenced The Other Dentenia Zickafoose when it should not have. It’s no wonder these magazines have dismissed without a second thought. That, and “I’m not what they’re looking for.”

There are few things I hate worse than writing query letters. I’m sure many of my fellow writers feel the same pain. We’re writers; we want our work to speak for itself. I have part of marketing degree, and I still hate marketing myself. So I spend some time trying to say what I want to say, and save it to a template so I don’t have to think about it every time. Apparently, I’ve been too lazy with this as of late, and as much as I hate, I know that a good query letter is important and a necessarily evil on the route to being a novelist. I encourage all you writers out there to spend 15 minutes to take a look at your query letters, just to make sure they are in tip-top shape. And that the title of your piece is not misspelled.

I am equally annoyed when I see outdated or incorrect information on a publisher’s website, or worse, a 404 or a bounced email.  Since most literary journals are run by colleges, I know they don’t accept submissions during the summer.  News flash – it’s back to school time, so you’re probably accepting submissions again. And if your submission banner reads “We are currently not accepting submissions. We will begin accepting submissions in July 2010” and it is now September 2010, there is something wrong with that.  If you say your next edition is coming April 2010, it should be posted by April 30, not still hanging around as a “coming soon” in November. You want me to not be lazy, do my due diligence, see what kind of work you typically publish and then craft my query letters accordingly? Do yours. Update your goddamn website.

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I Write Like: I caught the virus

Published by Kelly on July 19, 2010

The “I Write Like” phenomenon has been certified viral on the interwebs this month. In case you’ve been living under a rock, it’s a site where you post a few paragraphs of your writing, click a button, and then it tells you which famous writer your writing is most like. It claims to analyze your word choice and your writing style and compare it to that of famous writers.

I am typically far behind the curve when it comes to trying a fad. Case in point: I only recently discovered what sticky bands are. Case in point: a TV show usually has to be on for about 3 seasons before I will watch the first episode. So in internet time, I am just about in the third season of I Write Like, and this is what it said about me…

First, I uploaded the first 3 paragraphs of Two Steps Forward.

I write like
Raymond Chandler

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I’d never heard of Raymond Chandler, so I Write Like took me somewhere that I could become familiar. Once I read his title list, I realized some of the titles sounded familiar and I was sure I’d seen some of the covers before, but when I went to read the first pages of a couple of his major titles, I didn’t see the resemblance to Two Steps Forward whatsoever. Maybe it’s just me.

Still, they recommended trying it a few times, so then, I tried it with the first 3 paragraphs of The Other Dentenia Zickafoose.

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Well, I certainly know Stephen King, but I don’t think I have read anything of his besides On Writing since I was in junior high, and what I remember of Steven King most is the terrible movies like Cujo and Pet Sematary that used to frighten the hell out of me when I was a kid and later disappointed me as an adult. So I sought out the first few pages of The Gunslinger, one of his later works, and sure enough, it was pretty similar in both structure, syntax, and word choice to The Other Dentenia Zickafoose. Maybe I should put that in my query letters.

Finally, I analyzed the first three paragraphs of my novel, The Redheaded Stepchild:

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

=I’d never heard of Cory Doctorow, so I searched the Amazons (the site, not the geographical region) for a book that I could search inside to see if I Write Like was full of shit, or if it was accurate enough to pass. I landed on Little Brother, and perused the first couple pages. Lo0 and behold, it sounded a lot like the beginning to The Redheaded Stepchild, but from a male perspective. If only “teh suck” had been a known phrase when I first starting writing this thing in the before time.

I still find myself thinking: Really? 3 different people? A friend of mine tried 4 different works of hers and got the same result 3 of the 4 times. Of the people that I have compared my work to, none of these three has been one of them. Maybe I just adapt my writing style to the type of story I am crafting. Then again, I could just be a random spaz. Also, I apparently write like a dude. Maybe someday some dude will find out he writes like Kelly Hitchcock.

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Findings from 2011 Writer’s Market: the economy sucks.

Published by Kelly on July 15, 2010

I’ve been deeply entrenched in the process of moving, and had an adventure on moving day that is definitely short story-worthy, but slightly before that I received the 2011 edition of the Writer’s Market for my birthday. I have only perused it a couple of times since I took it out of the Amazon box, but two things in particular struck me about what I have seen:

  1. There were a lot more markets last year. Sure, there are a few new ones, but it’s pretty obvious that the shitty economy has hit publications hard, even the ones who don’t pay, which is almost all of them. Which brings me to two…
  2. Some of the markets that were paying last year (as indicated by the $ icon) are not paying this year. The interesting question to ask here is – are they not paying because they can’t afford to, or are they not paying because they don’t have to?

Let’s face it, the editors of these publications know they are not going to be financing anyone’s lifestyle by paying for their work. Sure, your New Yorkers and Atlantic Monthlies are going to keep paying writers because they want the gourmet stuff and because they have the readership and subscriptions to pay for it. But your Northern Oregon Literary Reviews know that writers have options. They can post their stuff for free anywhere. It’s the prestige of being an author published in an actual literary journal that writers are really seeking, not the money. So why pay for it? Here’s a short list of jobs at which you could make more money than poet submitting to literary magazines:

  • Lemonade stand attendant
  • NFL cheerleader
  • 10-year old receiving allowance
  • Street beggar

But the ways writers get noticed and make money is changing fast, and these journals are starting to pay attention, which means some of them are running scared, while others are rising to the challenge. Anyone want to take bets on whether there will be a Writer’s Market in 2021?

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Smashwormazonapple

Published by Kelly on June 2, 2010

Lately my RSS feed has been completely overwhelming with information about how the world of publishing is changing for new authors and how the world of traditional publishing and book printing is slowly going the way of the buffalo. So much so, in fact, that I am befuddled by what road I should take in the publishing of my book.

I read about Smashwords some time ago and thought it was the most innovative thing to happen to publishing since the online submission manager. As a geek in my day job and a fan of open source software, I liked Smashwords’ willingness to use open file formats and shun DRM. In a different way, I also respected their position that they would let anyone (yes, anyone) publish using their services, because they believed that good writing has a way of standing on its own and rising to the top. As writers, we always want to let our work speak for itself on the basis of its merit, but end up having to market ourselves as a circle that fits into a square peg. I even liked the founders’ story of how they tried and tried, and failed and failed, to get published the traditional way. And the best thing, Smashwords is free. Pretty cool, huh?

But then the more I looked around, the more I realized it’s not the only service of its kind out there.  There are loads. Now more than ever, authors have a chance to call their own shots instead of hoping for a deal, any deal, even a shitty one, from a traditional publisher. Amazon has its own service for self-publishing, and just last week, even Apple (yes, THE Apple) announced they would be offering similar services. Granted, you have to have a new Mac, an iTunes account, some spare cash laying around for an ISBN, and be okay with having your work laced with DRM; but hey, it’s a service for authors, and you’ve got the giant that is iTunes out there pimping your stuff.

The more I learn about all the different options available to me, the less sure I am of which direction I want to go next:

  1. Do I keep stuffing envelopes and spending a small fortune on postage trying to get a traditional book deal?
  2. Do I give the middle finger to the traditional publishing industry and jump on the new self-e-publishing wave?
  3. Do I strike some kind of middle ground?
  4. Do I follow another direction I haven’t even looked into yet?

I don’t really know. Awhile back when I was writing the post about SASEs, I came across this blog ran by a midlist horror author who has seen a great deal of success being at the forefront of ebook publishing, both through traditional and nontraditional means. His insight has astounded me, and made me wish I had more time to keep up with the changing face of the industry, although with the rate at which things are changing my guess is not even the absence of a full-time job could help me do that (plus, I kind of need my full-time job).

About the only things I know for sure – One, I should probably get an agent. I really need someone whose full time job DOES entail keeping up with industry trends. Two, when hell freezes over and I finally do get someone willing to take a chance on my book, they’ll have to pry my digital rights from my dead fingers. Three, I should write a marketing plan for my book. More and more, authors have the onus of marketing and promotion, and I should probably know how to answer when someone asks me how I plan to help market my work. Besides, I haven’t written a marketing plan since college and the practice couldn’t hurt. I also happen to be friends with the Kansas City area marketer of the year who I can probably rope into helping me. Four, I need to keep editing. My book is never as ready as I think it is.

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