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How to Submit Work to Journals Step-by-Step

Writing great stories is all well and good, but for most writers that’s just the first step. What we really want is to have other people read them, and if you’d like that audience to go beyond your friends and family, odds are that will mean sending work to journals.

The process of submitting can be intimidating and confusing when you’re first starting to send work out, but it’s not actually complicated or difficult. If you’ve never submitted work before, this step-by-step guide will tell you everything you need to know. I’ve also included some links to resources that can be helpful for newbies and experienced submitters alike.

Step 1: Find journals to submit to.

There are tons of journals, magazines, and presses that publish poems, stories, and essays, either as stand-alones or in anthologies and issues. There are a few different ways you can break down these outlets:

Since there are literally hundreds of journals out there, it can help to use a combination of the categories above when you’re looking for places to send your work. Which leads to the next question first-time submitters will have: where do writers find all these journals? 

The best place to start is a publisher marketplace, and there are a lot of those to choose from, too. Some of the most popular are:

 

Step 2: Choose the right markets for your work.

Submitting work is a numbers game in a certain sense. The more places you send your work, the higher your odds one of them will say yes. That said, it’s not just gambling and pure luck. True, an acceptance is never guaranteed, but you can increase your odds of getting one by sending your work to markets that are likely to be into what you write. 

How can you know if that’s the case? Here are some tips:

Tip #1: Read the guidelines.

And the implied follow-up this: actually follow them. Word counts exist for a reason. If the journal says they only publish stories up to 3,000 words and you send them one that’s twice that, you’re only wasting both of your time—they’re unlikely to publish it no matter how great it is. The same thing goes for form or genre preferences. If you really like a journal and none of your current work is a good fit, start a list of places you want to send work in the future, and check back with them once you have something that fits their criteria. 

Tip #2: Read work they’ve published before.

This is easy with online journals, which often have their full past issues available on their websites. Even many print journals have online features, publish excerpts from issues online, or have an “issue preview” option that at least lets you get a sense for the style and tone of the works they’ve published in the past.

Tip #3: Take a tour around the journal’s website or social media.

For print or subscriber-only journals where you can’t read work the journal published before, you can often get a sense for whether your work would be a good fit with a bit of online research. The extent of what a journal has available online varies widely from one to the next, but by this point the vast majority at least have a basic website where you can read a bit about the journal’s history, mission, and editors.

Tip #4: Look for editor wish lists or interviews.

You may find editor interviews on their journal’s Duotrope listing. Other places publish this information right on their own website or blog, and there are sites with interviews of multiple editors, like Bennington Review’s interviews with print journal editors or Lumiere Review’s Light Bulb series of interviews. These won’t be available for every publisher, but when they are you can get helpful insights into the type of work they’re looking for (and what they don’t want).

Tip #5: Read work their editors or past contributors have published.

Print journals that don’t publish works online will often still list the names of the issue’s contributors. You can search to see if they’ve published other stories that are readable online, or if the editors have works out there in the world. This may not be an exact match for the type of work they publish in the journal but can give you a sense of their general aesthetic and style they’re drawn to.

 

Step 3: Prepare your work to send.

Journals want to receive work that’s ready to publish. If editors are in love with a piece they may be willing to work with the author on edits, but just like choosing the right market for your piece, you increase your odds of getting an acceptance if your work is in its best form before you submit it.

Now, knowing that a piece is “ready to publish” is its own set of skills, and each writer’s process is different. Generally speaking, though, a piece isn’t going to reach this level until it’s gone through a couple of revision passes. It can also help to have a writing group or partner who can catch any issues you may be too close to it to see. Even if you’re writing up against a submission deadline, though, take the time to at least give it a close read from start to finish. Typos alone won’t get you rejected from most places, but they don’t help your cause, either.

Along with the general preparation of making the piece the best version of itself, you also want to make sure your work follows the journal’s formatting preferences. You’ll find these in the submission guidelines if they have them. Failing to follow these may result in an instant rejection, depending on the publication.

These might all seem like small things, but they’re not trivial if they make it hard for editors to read your work. Following formatting guidelines helps make sure your work is judged on its own merits.

Some guidelines ask for “standard manuscript format,” which means:

This is also a good default formatting to use when nothing is specified.

 

Step 4: Write your cover letter.

This isn’t as intimidating as it might sound. A cover letter for a literary journal submission isn’t nearly as involved as one for a book-length manuscript. You don’t need to provide a synopsis of the work or explain why you’re submitting to this particular journal unless this is requested in the submission guidelines or on the submission form. Many literary journal editors don’t read cover letters until after they’ve read the work (if at all), so the content of this letter isn’t likely to impact your work’s odds of getting published one way or the other. 

As always, if the journal requests specific info or formatting in the cover letter, you want to abide by those. If nothing’s stated, you can use a basic template like this one:

Hello [Journal name] editors, 

I’d like to submit the attached #-word story (“[Title]”) for publication in [name of journal]. [Optional sentence about why you feel the journal is a good fit for your work]. This work is being simultaneously submitted, and I’ll [withdraw/notify according to their guidelines] if it’s accepted by another publication.

My bio:

[50-100 word 3rd person bio] 

Thank you for considering my work.

 

Sincerely,

[Your name]

[your email address]

Poets can revise that first line to say “…the # attached poems (titles separated by commas)…” and if you’re not simultaneously submitting you can obviously leave those lines out.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, simultaneous submissions (or “sim subs”) are when writers submit the same work to multiple markets at the same time. This has become standard practice and most journals accept simultaneous submissions, especially ones that have response times of a month or longer. If a market doesn’t want sim subs, they’ll state this in their gudelines. Most times, publishers that don’t accept simultaneous submissions also have a very quick response time, sometimes getting back to submitters within a few days, so your piece won’t necessarily be tied up at a single market for long.

If you’re simultaneously submitting, the general rule is that the first publisher to say yes gets the work. Once you receive and confirm an acceptance, you want to withdraw that piece from consideration anywhere else you’ve sent it as soon as possible. This will prevent the awkward situation of having the same work accepted by two places and having to tell one of them no.

 

Step 5: Send it.

There are 3 common ways journals accept work: a submission manager, email, or through postal mail. Nearly all large and established literary journals in 2023 use a submission manager. Email is still fairly common among smaller independent journals. You’ll only find a handful of journals that accept submissions by mail, usually older or smaller university journals, so if you don’t want the hassle of printing and mailing things you can avoid it easily.

Submission managers

Submission managers are easy to use, with self-explanatory guided forms. That said, don’t go on autopilot when you’re sending out submissions. Carefully read the explanation text next to each form field for any additional instructions or details.

Some journals that use a submission manager still want a cover letter, but some gather all the information they need from other areas on the form. If they do want one, they’ll have a field for it or tell you to include it as the first page of your submission in their guidelines. If there’s no mention of a cover letter, consider it optional. 

Email

Your cover letter in this case is the content of your email. Pay attention to how the journal tells you to send along your work. Some will want it as an attachment, while others will ask you to paste it directly into the email. In this case, paste it below your signature. 

Journals may specify how to format the subject line of the email. If they don’t, you can use a subject like “[Genre] submission: [last name], [work title].” If you’re sending a packet with multiple works, you can replace the work title with the number of works (e.g., “Poetry submission – Smith, 5 poems” or “Flash fiction submission: Smith, 3 stories”).

Postal mail

In the cover letter for a post submission, also include the date at the top, and include your postal address in addition to your email address under your name at the bottom. It’s also customary to include a self-addressed stamped envelope for their reply. 

Page numbers are the most important for print submissions. Use the “page # of #” format, and also include your name, the work’s title, or both in the header. This will make sure your whole submission gets reviewed even if the pages get separated.

 

Step 6: Keep track of where you send what.

This is especially important if you’re sending simultaneous submissions—if something gets accepted, you need to know where to withdraw it from. It also makes sure you don’t accidentally send a piece to the same place twice, and lets you note places that sent you personalized or encouraging rejections so you remember to send them more work. 

Duotrope has a submission tracker for subscribers. You can also DIY a spreadsheet on Excel or Google Sheets (or copy the one writer Matt Bell created). Every time you send a submission, get in the habit of immediately adding it to your tracker, then do the same when you get a response. This way, you’ll be able to quickly check where you have work out, which pieces, and for how long.

The start of a new year is a great time to set some submission related goals. Even if you’re not the type who normally sets resolutions, committing to putting your work out there in the coming year is the first step to getting your writing in front of readers’ eyes.

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