Year of Fearless Writing: Submissions Spreadsheets

Welcome to the Year of Fearless Writing!

Submit, submit, submit

If you’re reading this, you’ve likely been writing for a while, but maybe you’re just starting out. Either way, you’ve reached the point where you want to do more than just “post to your blog” or “read and workshop stories with your writing group.” You want to send your words out into the world where they will reach as many people as possible. And maybe you don’t know where to start, but you’ve found a couple calls for submissions that look interesting. (If you haven’t, try googling “calls for submissions” and your favored genre. We’ll talk about finding the call that fits you in a later Year of Fearless Writing feature.)

Still, you want to make sure to position yourself for success, whatever that means to you, right? That means getting the right story, essay, or pitch in front of the right person at the right time – and not missing out on any opportunities. And that’s where tracking your submissions comes in handy.

Let’s assume you’ve got a fantastic story lined up and a list of publications you’re interested in. (We’re going to focus on short stories and essays here, but most of this also applies if you are querying a novel-length manuscript.) The submissions process can be daunting and – let’s face it – downright scary. You’re giving your words, your heart and soul, to a complete stranger, who will evaluate their worth.

Wait, that’s not exactly right. Lesson number one: you are not your writing. A rejection does not mean that your work is worthless; it also does not mean that you yourself are worthless. It means that your work is not a good fit for that publication at that time. Keep this in mind, and you’ll find your skin growing thicker by the day.

Why track your submissions?

You’ve found it: the perfect home for that short story, poem, essay, or novel. You’ve read up on the market or publisher, you’ve browsed through past publications, and you just know. This is it. It’s time to hit “go,” sit back and sit back and wait for the money to roll in. Right?

Well, it sure sounds nice. But in reality, chances are you will be sending your stories out to five, ten, heck, maybe a hundred different places. And after a while, every place starts to look similar. You really don’t want to send the same story to the a publisher (agent, editor, etc.) more than once. It’s embarrassing, and besides, it won’t get your story published any faster.

You also want to know which of your stories have been rejected, because not all publications send a formal rejection. A lot of them, especially ones with less staff, or if you’re querying a novel, simply say “if you haven’t heard back from us in six weeks, consider that your rejection.”

How do you keep this from happening? You track what went where when.

Note: Before you submit, check to make sure the publisher accepts simultaneous submissions. If they do not, you need to make a decision: am I willing to wait six weeks to six months to hear back from this particular market before I submit this piece elsewhere? Am I that sure this is the best and only home for this piece? In the end, it’s up to you, but if a publisher states that they do not accept simultaneous submissions, respect this requirement.

What do you need to track?

At the most basic level, here are the five things you really need to keep track of:

1. What you submitted (title)
2. Where you submitted it (publication, agent, contest, etc.)
3. When you submitted it (date)
4. Response date (if any)
5. Status (accepted, rejected, revisions requested, etc.)

If you want to get fancy, you can add a column for notes or comments, contact information, website – anything you find useful for yourself. (I keep a column for the publication’s website or submission page to make it easier to find them if I want to submit to them again. You may also want to keep a column for pay rate.)

Looking for a template? Here’s a very basic Submissions Tracking Spreadsheet. Just save a copy (or download it as an Excel sheet), and adapt it as you see fit.

Here’s another one: this Submission Tracker Template created by Matt Bell also calculates how long you’ve been waiting for a response. 

There are a lot of more sophisticated tools out there to help you manage the submissions process. Some publications track submissions for you (for example, Daily Science Fiction). Other publications use a submissions service, such as Submittable or Moksha. (Tip: scroll down on Moksha’s site to see some of the publiations that use it.) These have the advantage of allowing you to monitor the status of multiple submissions across different publications using the service. But many publications don’t track your submission, leaving you to do the work yourself. Don’t neglect it!

There are also a number of standalone submission tracking tools for your personal use. Some are free, others require a subscription or a membership. Some aggregate data to give you a sense of a particular publisher’s response time, acceptance rate, or even pay scale. Take a look at these tools, and see if one might be right for you:

• Query Tracker
• Duotrope Submission Tracker (for members)
• Writers Database

Other things to keep in mind

As many publication websites will tell you, a non-response is a response in and of itself: it means no. How long should you wait? Check the publication’s submission guidelines to see if they mention their response time, but in general, give any submission a good six to ten weeks before checking on the status of your submission with a polite note or writing it off if the site indicates you should.

Don’t expect feedback, even if you do get a rejection letter. Most large publications receive thousands of responses to their calls for submissions. Smaller publications might have hundreds of responses and limited staff. If you get a form-letter rejection, don’t write back with a request for feedback – they just don’t have time – and for God’s sake, don’t fire off an angry email about why the editors just made the biggest mistake of their lives. It’s unprofessional, and besides, editors talk to each other. They will share names, and you may have just written yours off the list for a publication you don’t even know you want to submit to yet.

January’s YFW assignment is:

Build your tracking spreadsheet and put something on it.

Use Excel, Google Docs, any of the suggested websites in this post, or heck, some sticky notes on your wall or your bullet journal. Just do something that works for you… and then submit something.

How do you know where to submit? We’ll dive deeper into that later in the year, but right now I want you to keep one rule of thumb in mind: if you’re not getting paid for your writing, nobody else should be. That means don’t submit to places where you have to pay for the right to submit (unless it’s a contest, with cash prizes), and don’t submit to places where the end product costs money but none of the money goes to the writers. You deserve to get paid for your work. And even if you can afford not to, someone else can’t, so while you’re learning to call yourself a writer remember you belong to a group of workers and that you can help lift everyone up by insisting on not working for free so that some publisher can make money. Exception: charity or benefit publications. It’s totally cool to donate your work, and can be a win-win if you want to get something published and help a cause.

REMINDERS: BEFORE YOU HIT SUBMIT

We shouldn’t have to say this, but we will: read the submission guidelines. Thoroughly, and more than once. Every publication is different, so you can’t assume that you know what they want. Related: make sure that you are submitting the kind of piece they are looking for. That is, if a magazine publishes flash fiction, don’t submit your personal essay there.

Here are a few things to pay attention to:

• Submission format – Do they want your submission pasted into the body of an email? Or do they want an attachment, and if so, what kind (Word document, PDF, text document, etc.)?
• Manuscript format – Many publications will state exactly how they want your piece to look. Do they want a cover page? If so, what goes on it? Should you put the story title in the header, or is that unnecessary? What fonts are acceptable? Should your submission be double-spaced, or does it matter?
• Cover letter – Do they require one? If so, keep it short and sweet: who you are, what you are submitting, and which call for submissions you are answering. In some cases, an author bio can be included here.
• Author bio – Do they require a separate author bio? How long should it be? We’ll go into more depth on creating strong author bios in a future Year of Fearless Writing post; in the meantime, think about what the publisher would like to know about you: your preferred genre, your relevant experience or publications, anything that would show why you’re a good fit for this publication. Are they looking for #ownvoices? Make sure to include how you fit the demographic the publication wants to include.
• Response time – Some publications will let you know when you might expect a response, or if/when you ought to check in on your submission’s status.

About the authors: