Just when I thought I was being smart and finally getting somewhere, I meet some fellow writers and have my confidence shaken.
I nearly made it to a Vision Writers’ Group meeting in Brisbane last week. I travelled 250 km especially for the event and then got the time of the meeting wrong! (Which led to 20 minutes of running around the State Library of Queensland trying to find a meeting room full of people I’ve never met before, who might just look like writers, because the State Library keeps no record of who has booked its rooms for what periods!)
Fortunately I owed one of the writers some money, so he hunted me down and directed me to a pub just a few blocks away where the remains of the meeting was winding down in the beer garden. I must say that it was 35 degrees C in Brisbane and the hygrometer stood at ‘soup’. So it took a couple of cold beers before I managed to cool down enough to enjoy the experience. But enjoy it I did – until the point where I mentioned that I’ve largely been submitting my stories to non-paying magazines.
My rationale for this is that I’m slowly building up to the high-paying mags, first by building a portfolio of published work in the non-paying markets, then moving up to the low-paying mags, then the mid-range ones, then the high-paying ones. It seemed like a good strategy to me and it’s been working out. I’ve been clocking up some publications, I’ve been getting the experience of working with editors, and my confidence in my publishability has been growing.
But no-one else does it that way, it seems. Everyone else starts by submitting to the highest-paying mag they can find, then, when they’re rejected, move down a tier, then down again, and so on until someone publishes their story. Given this, they had all supposed that I’d been rejected by every paying mag in the world or I wouldn’t have been published in non-paying mags! (Someone also said that they thought I was doing myself an injustice and that my work was easily good enough for at least the mid-range mags – bless ‘em.)
So, do I change my strategy, or what? If I stick with what I’m doing, I’m pretty sure my bottom-up approach will get me there in the end. If I switch over to the top-down strategy, I might get there quicker – and I won’t have to endure people assuming I can’t hack it in the high-paying markets. It seems like a no-brainer, yet I can’t help feeling my ‘work your way up’ strategy has merit. Maybe it’s just my working-class background making me feel like I should serve an ‘apprenticeship’ before I can claim to be a trdesman.
i think you’ve done a good thing in getting your stuff published, and it gives you credibility for the paying mags. you could probably start venturing out into other fields, but i wouldn’t view what you’ve done as a waste, because you’ve now got publishing credits. and it’s good to support the industry, even when you don’t get paid for it!
Why not do it both ways? There’s no law says you can’t submit to both non and high paying markets. The main issue will probably be your own self confidence. High paying markets will be more likely to kick your story back or totally ignore you. Well, they can go and get stuffed.
Best thing about submitting to payers is that if you DO get any feedback it is useful, because presumably you’ll want to join the paying market one day and their requirements are going to be different from the non payers.
good luck. Jenny
I’m afraid I have no experience with submitting short stories, so I can’t give any useful advice. I just wanted to say that it sounds like a scary world in which ones writing ability is judged by fellow writers based on which magazine you get into. I would be thrilled to get any magazine to feature my work, paid or not.
Thanks, Jody-Ann, Jenny and Emma.
J-A, your comment about supporting the industry is an important one. I hadn’t realised before I started submitting to the free mags just how serious and dedicated the editors are. They’re doing a major service to writing and writers and, by setting high standards, often produce mags that are not distinguishable in quality from the paying ones.
Emma, if you want to have a go at submitting to free mags, I highly recommend it. Two mags I have found which have high quality and very good editors are Bewildering Stories (based in Canada, ed. Don Webb) and Concept Sci-fi (based in the UK, ed. Gary Reynolds). You might also take a look at The Absent Willow Review (based in the US, ed. Rick Decost) which is newer than the others but is doing very well so far.
With book publishing I’d definitely start with the big boys and work my way through them, then move onto the independents: but with articles it’s often easier to establish yourself as some sort of expert in your field by working for the smaller titles before you approach the top guns.
Thank you for participating in my pitch party today, by the way–it’s much appreciated.
Jane, your pitch party has been a huge success. I’ve met all kinds of interesting new bloggers and I think I’ve picked up a couple of new subscribers too. Thanks for organising it.
(Hmmm. I suppse I’d better go and copy this into your own blog too in case you don’t come back here.)