Duotrope

Charlotte Smith is definitely in the public domain, but I can't find the full text of Beachy Head anywhere (except in google books but there it is a bit garbled). I thought about typing it in for my illustrious readers, but it spans 35 pages of The Poems of Charlotte Smith. So I'm scrapping the idea for now. Maybe I'll choose one of her much shorter Elegaic Sonnets to share later.

Instead, I thought I'd call your attention to an excellent resource for poets (and fiction writers) who actively submit their work for publication. Duotrope's Digest makes submitting easy by helping you to research markets, meet deadlines, and organize your submissions. Close friend and translator Erica Mena-Landry told me about the website a few weeks ago, and I owe her a huge thanks. At first I was resistant—But I already track my submissions in Excel. I made a spreadsheet. It's colorcoded. Erica politely told me that there is no way my spreadsheet could do what Duotrope can do.

I didn't sign up for a free account right away. Instead, I searched to see what kind of markets (print and online magazines, small and large presses) they link to. They claim to list "over 2525 current Fiction and Poetry publications," but I wasn't sure whether these would be legitimate or get-published-in-our-anthology-and-you-and-all-your-friends-should-buy-one-for-$50 publications. Using their search function, I clicked the poetry tab because I'm a poet, then the theme GLBT because I was applying for the Astraea grant and it would limit my results, and finally the electronic sub type because I'm saving the environment one submission at a time. My results were mixed: markets like Manic D Press I'd heard of before, Breadcrumb Scabs I'd never heard of but looked really promising, and some listings were labeled ADULT and irrelevant for my purposes (but maybe not for yours).

To find out how Duotrope profiles the markets, I clicked the first listing, in this case 42 Magazine. I found a blurb discussing what kind of submissions the market is open to, the different lengths of work they accept, the medium the market is published in, payscale, how to submit, and how long it usually takes them to respond. This last field might also contain information on how many of Duotrope's members who have submitted have been accepted or rejected (not all markets have this information). In the top right corner is a link to the market's website where you can do what you normally do when looking to submit: read online work or order a sample copy if you're not familiar with the publication, read about the magazine, see who else has been published there, and closely read the submission guidelines. Think of Duotrope as a tool—it helps but you still have to do the work.

Another function is the site's deadline calendar, organized by the date the market is closing to submissions in general or that a particular theme the market wanted (for example "Genre Benders") is ending. Duotrope also lets you know how many days are left until the deadline, in case you can't do math; lets you link to their profile for the market; and, if you're a Duotrope member, gives you the option of tracking the deadline. So, say you really want to submit to Post Road Magazine and they stop reading submissions at the end of July, but you have no idea what to send in, Duotrope will put that market and its deadline on your control panel.

Your control panel also has your submission stats—how many poems you have out, how many you've sent this year, and how many this month. This information is obviously contingent on whether or not you use their submissions tracker. The control panel also has a favorite markets section (markets you indicated as your favorites; mine has Shampoo listed), ignored markets, and saved searches, neither of which I've used yet . . . but maybe if Shampoo rejects me again. . . .

The submissions tracker is easy to use. You just type the market into a search so Duotrope can find that market's profile, enter in the dates you've submitted, the genre (poetry or fiction only), how you submitted (electronic or postal), the status of the submission (pending response, accepted, and so on), and the titles of pieces you've submitted. The catch here is that if you haven't entered a list of your poems, you have to keep saving titles and going back to enter more. But by saving each title individually, you can see each piece you have out and if one is accepted and the rest are not, you can indicate that in your tracker. One cool thing the tracker does (after you've entered your submissions) is tell you how many days the submission has been out and how many days the market usually takes to respond. If you are past that number of days, it turns your pending response label red, meaning it's time for you to contact the publication and politely as where the heck your rejection is.

There are of course limitations to the site. One is that it only follows poetry and fiction, so if you write creative nonfiction, drama, reviews, or even poetry and fiction in translation (like Erica does) this site may not meet your needs. (I know Erica contacted them about the translation oversight and maybe when she's settled somewhere and reads this blog, she can fill us in on what happened.) A minor limitation is that its submissions tracker doesn't list whether the market accepts simultaneous submissions, so you can't tell at a glance if your poems are off the table or if they can be sent elsewhere in the interim. I've contacted them about this and if I'm lucky they'll add the field to their tracker.

I'd love to hear feedback from some of you who have used this site or others like it — what do you love about it? what drawbacks have you discovere? what did I miss?