Short tutorial on getting published
By mdmkay (home page)
When new writer’s fail to be published it is often because they break the golden rule of being published. YOU HAVE TO SUBMIT TO BE PUBLISHED. It looks so easy on paper but to put it into practice is one of the hardest things a writer has to do. There are a lot of things you can do to help you get over the sting of rejection and actually increase the chances you will be accepted for publishing. For this article I’m going to discuss getting short stories, articles, or poetry for magazines that from here on out will all be referred to as articles.The very first thing you need to do is to make sure that the article you’ve written is “publishable”. You do this in several ways. First and foremost make sure you have gotten all presentation errors dealt with (typos, punctuation, grammar, capitalization,…etc). Second, post your piece for critique on a writer’s forum, present it to your writer’s group for critique, or give it to beta readers to critique (not members of your own family but friends, teachers, or someone who can give you an unbiased response). Third, do your research. PDB has our very own magazine database, Writer’s Market, other searchable databanks to find magazines that are looking for the type of article you’ve written. I can’t even begin to tell you how much time and heartache you’ll save yourself if you do your research and rule out all the editors that you know up front will reject you. Resist the urge to spam editors. It just wastes your time and postage and it can really get you off on the wrong foot with some editors for a long time. Fourth, make sure you have a professional submission package with targeted editor and SASE. Five, after it is sent and while you are waiting get busy on your next project/projects and don’t worry about the rejection or submission until it comes. Remember, you can expect 25-35 rejections on some projects before you get published but if you don’t gather those rejections you aren't doing the work you need to do to get accepted. In my experience if you start out with magazines that have a lower pay/reader scale and e-zines you have a better chance of being published even if their isn’t any payment. It also helps increases self-confidence and builds your reputation to start out with.
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