SLO NightWriters

Electronic Submission Techniques For Serious (and Busy) Writers

by Sue McGinty

Terry Sanville breathes new life into the somewhat- dated  (according to Wikipedia) term  “rocks.” In five years he’s placed more than  100 short stories with 110 publishers.  By his estimate, he’s  submitted work, mostly electronically, 2700 times.  Despite putting himself on a self-described “energy budget” after retiring, the former urban planner writes four to six hours a day, and still finds time for music, his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one skinny cat (the in-house critic).

Full disclosure: Much of this prose is lifted from Terry’s excellent handout. (Copies available by e-mailing tsanville@sbcglobal.net.)

At the February 2010 meeting of NightWriters, Terry conducted a combination presentation and hands-on workshop where he shared tricks for finding and meeting the needs of both online and traditional  publishers who accept electronic submissions, a growing trend in today’s literary market.

In the first part of the workshop, Terry used the handout to provide guidelines for formatting prose and poetry, whether submitted electronically or via the USPS.  Next came a basic cover letter and clever bio. One publisher rejected his submission, but loved the bio! He also provided a sample Word table for keeping track of submission activity, another very useful tool for busy writers and one this writer intends to copy.

In the second part of the workshop, Terry had attendees log onto www.duotrope.com a free writers’ resource listing over 2800 current Fiction and Poetry publications. The website also tracks submissions for members, and membership is free, but donations are encouraged. He guided us through a lengthy, but pretty intuitive set of parameters, to return a list of publishers seeking short mainstream fiction.  The parameters allow you to choose genre, expected pay, and other options. A word of caution from Terry: Never submit directly from duotrope. Go to the publisher’s website and follow the directions precisely, for example, what to put in the e-mail subject line, whether to attach the document or embed in the e-mail, etc.

Thanks to Terry some of my short fiction now languishing in a drawer will get a new life!

Photo by: Dennis Eamon Young

www.DennisEamonYoungPhoto.com;