Duo What?

As summer offers its refreshing season (and by refreshing, we mean week-long heat waves in the 90’s and above), you may want to spend some time indoors.  What better to do than spend some time submitting your work to your favorite journals?

As you prepare to send out your story, poems, chapbook, or manuscript, you suddenly feel overwhelmed. Where do you start? Is Ploughshares accepting work currently?  What percentage chance do I have of publishing a poem in The Black Warrior Review or Tin House?(As of today, the stats suggest 0.18 % for Tin House based on 1700 users and 0.28 % for Black Warrior based on 1000 users).

Have no fear! Or at least less fear.  A few good writer friends of ours have suggested the website Duotrope; a statistical phenom for organizing over 4,000 literary markets for you to send your masterpiece(s). We, ourselves, have become utterly dependent on Duotrope.

Here’s why. Duotrope is a free service [updated–it now has a monthly fee of $5. Still dirt cheap and worth it!] that allows you to track not only your own submissions, but to see what the editors are looking for for the particular magazine you’re submitting. You can see which magazines the most challenging, the swiftest, the slothful and the most approachable–a great help when you are waiting anxiously to hear back from the editors. You can see what percentage chance you have of publishing, the average number of days to hear back if you are going to be accepted, the longest time people have waited for a response from an editor and more. (Ex: The average number of days for a response for the Threepenny Review is 4 days!)

So, relax, take advantage of the heat and spend some time getting your name out there.  Cast a big net, and TSHS hopes you’ll reel in some big fish.