How to Suss Out What a Journal Publishes When You Can’t Read Their Back Issues
Conventional wisdom says to read a journal’s back issues before you send them work so you can get a sense of what they publish and whether your stuff’s a good fit. The same advice is often given to folks shopping around a chapbook or book-length manuscript: read what the press has done before. It’s good advice—when it’s possible. That’s easy for free online journals, for instance, and even many print journals, small presses, or paywalled online publications have free samples available.
In other cases, though, the only way to read past issues is to buy them. While I’m in favor of supporting small publishers in theory, my budget and bookshelf space also aren’t infinite. Granted, there are other ways around this conundrum. You could only submit to places that do have work available on line, for instance, or you could just say fuck it, send your stuff anyway, and hope for the best.
There are other ways to get a sense for a journal’s tastes too, though, ones that don’t involve spending any money. Here are some things I’ll often do when I want to scope out a journal, anthology, or press to decide whether it could be a good home for my work.
1. Check your local library.
If you’re looking to read something for free, the library is always a good first stop. Granted, most libraries only have a limited selection of literary journals. Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library system is pretty stellar, but even so they only have about a dozen literary journals in their circulation. That includes a lot of the heavy hitters, though, places like Paris Review and Asimov’s, so definitely if the place you’re looking at is a better-known publisher the library is worth a shot.
If there are colleges or universities in the town where you live, it’s also a smart move to check their library catalogs, especially if they have a creative writing program. This advice doesn’t just apply to literary journals, either. You can also check for books published by small presses—not every small press will have their books available this way, but many of the more established ones will, at least via interlibrary loan if they’re not directly available in the library’s collection.
2. Read their other online content.
Admittedly, some publishers have a better online presence than others. There’s also the unfortunate fact that print-only journals, especially those run by universities, tend to have the least online content. Sometimes, it’s limited to just a basic web page with submission and subscription/purchase info, which won’t be particularly helpful.
This tends to be the most useful when you’re looking at small presses and journals affiliated with them. Often, they do have a fairly extensive online presence, even if it doesn’t include much in the way of samples to read. Right on their website, you can peruse their back catalog and read blurbs or descriptions of past titles, even if they don’t have samples of the content to read.
For both presses and journals, you can also check out other content they post, like on a blog or social media. If the press puts on readings or other events, see if they have recordings of them posted to YouTube, their website, or other social media pages. That can sometimes be a kind of “back door” way to scope out content from an issue or recent release, just by hearing it read aloud instead of seeing it on the page.
One ancillary tip: If you’re looking for a home for a book-length manuscript, I highly recommend subscribing to publishers’ newsletters or mailing lists. New book announcements may come accompanied by snippets of works that aren’t available elsewhere, or you may find out about readings you can attend or livestream. Sometimes editors will share insights in these mailings, too, like if they’ve been getting too much or too little of a certain genre, or if there’s a topic or theme they’re particularly interested in.
3. Read other work their contributors have published.
Most print or subscriber-only online journals will at least have a list of the authors published in that issue available for free. Same deal with anthologies and small presses—the names of authors can usually be found pretty easily, even when the publisher’s online presence is minimal.
Do a quick Google search of their contributors or past authors to see if they have other things published that you can read for free online. Granted, some writers work in multiple genres or styles, so there’s no guarantee the other things you read will be exactly like what’s published in the journal or press you’re interested in. I recommend perusing past works from a few different authors. Take note of any similarities in their style, voice, or the types of things they write about. That’s likely a good indication of the type of things the market likes to see.
4. Read things their editors wrote.
The aesthetics of a journal or press start from the humans at the helm who curate the work they publish. In most cases, the editors’ tastes for what they like to read are very closely aligned to the kind of stuff they like to write.
This is another one that’s in the “not a guarantee” category, of course. For one thing, just like other writers, small press and magazine editors might work in multiple genres. If the publication is established or run by an institution, it’s also possible they had an existing aesthetic that predates the current editorial team, which could make the editors’ writing less of a guide for what they’re looking for in the slush. Where this will be most useful is for independent presses and journals that are either run by a very small team (total staff of 5 or fewer) and/or where the founding editor(s) are currently on their active staff.
5. Judge them by their covers.
…well, not just their covers, but that’s a good starting point. You can tell a lot about a publication from how they present themselves. The images, font, color choices, and other details of issue, anthology, or book covers can give you insights into the publication’s genre, their tone, and the kind of mood they want to set for readers.
The same is true of their overall online presence. Granted, some publishers are more invested in the look of their website, blog, and social media pages than others—if the website and its color scheme are obviously a template, this may not be so helpful. Most of the time, though, you can get at least get a feel for where they fit in the broad sense—if they’re more literary or genre-oriented, if they’re into lyricism and imagery or more focused on plot and narrative, and so on.
I’ll give the necessary caveat here that these methods aren’t fool-proof—but, then again, neither is reading a journal’s back issues. The truth is, the only way to 100% know whether your work is a good fit is to send it to them and let the editors tell you. Doing this kind of research can at least give you a sense of whether you’re in the ballpark, though, and keep you from wasting your time sending work to places that are completely unsuitable for what you write.
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