Poetry Magazine
This magazine is run by the Poetry Foundation. They accept poetry, translations, and poetry-related prose submissions, as well as special features (archival and contemporary portfolios, digital archive pitching – for poem guides, poem collections, and samplers).
Deadline: 15 June 2024
Pay: $10/line of poetry (minimum $300), and $150/page of prose
Details here and here. 

The Paris Review
They accept submissions of prose in February, June, and October and poetry in January, April, July, and October. They will accept fiction submissions via Submittable until they reach capacity, as well as by mail.
Deadline: 30 June 2024 for fiction (see Submittable)
Length: Unspecified
Pay: Unspecified
Details here.

Three-Lobed Burning Eye
This is a magazine of speculative fiction – horror, fantasy, and science fiction. “We’re looking for short stories from across the big classifications and those shadowy places between: magical realism, fantastique, slipstream, interstitial, Weird fiction.” They like voices that are “full of feeling, from literary to pulpy, with styles unique and flowing, but not too experimental.” They do not want extreme horror. They welcome translations. They publish online thrice yearly, and every other year in a print anthology. Some of their stories are also in audio format.  
Deadline: Open now
Length: 500-1,000 words for flash fiction, 1,001-7,500 words for short fiction
Pay: $30 for flash fiction, $100 for short fiction
Details here.

Graveside Press: Tiny Terrors
This new press wants horror fiction of all kinds, but are not particularly interested in stories that contain excessive violence or gore – see their website, and all their projects (including closed ones), here. They say Tiny Terrors “is our short fiction program for when a novel just won’t do. Just a short shocking scream to keep you awake at night …”
Deadline: Open now
Length: 5,000-12,000 words
Pay: $0.02/word
Details here and here.

Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine.

Channel is published twice a year in print, in April and October. Each beautifully designed edition features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from around thirty contributors. Channel also publishes nonfiction in various forms on their blog.

Channel accepts submissions of poetry and fiction during submission windows throughout the year. Now through June 20, they’re accepting poetry and fiction for Issue 11.

They also accept nonfiction submissions year-round, for publication in the print journal and on their blog. They accept narrative essays, interviews, and commentary on creative work or community-based environmental projects. You can read their blog to get a sense of what they publish.

Channel accepts submissions from around the world, in both English and Irish. Poets may submit up to four poems. Authors of fiction and nonfiction may submit one piece.

Channel does not have strict guidelines for length: “We believe that creative work should be free to occupy as much space as is needed for its full development.” That said, because of print limitations, they usually do not publish prose over 6,000 words, or poems over 300 lines.

Channel pays authors published in their journal. They offer €35 per printed page, up to €250 per piece, and with a minimum payment of €50. For work published online, they pay €35 per 400 words, up to €250 per piece, and with a minimum fee of €50. 

Channel accepts submissions via email, not online or by post. They accept simultaneous submissions but ask that authors withdraw writing published elsewhere. They do not accept previously published work.

Channel only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines in full before submitting.

If you would like to learn more or submit to Channel, please visit their website here. 

Bio: Ella Peary is the pen name for an author, editor, creative writing mentor, and submission consultant. Over the past five years, she’s written hundreds of articles for Authors Publish, and she’s also served as a copywriter and copy editor for a wide range of organizations and individuals. She is the author of The Quick Start Guide to Flash Fiction. She occasionally teaches a course on flash fiction. You can contact her at ellapeary@gmail.com.

“Dear Emily,
My novel has been through years of revisions now, and I’ve shopped it around to most agents and publishers. I could revise it one more time, but I’m not sure I have that in me or if it will change anything. What do I do now?”

There is no one easy answer to this question, but there are options that most writers have available to them.

Many writers think of self-publishing as the only option, and while it certainly is one, it is not the only one.

Below are the three best ways forward from rejection in my opinion.

Self-publish

I’ve worked with many authors who’ve ended up self-publishing, and some of them have been successful going down that route, and really are grateful they chose to self-publish it. Others have regretted it.

If you are going to self-publish, do not work with a vanity or hybrid press, actually self-publish. I talk more about what the distinction is and why you should avoid vanity and hybrid presses here.

Make sure you have an excellent cover and get proof copies in advance to verify that the printer is doing a good job.

It is important to go all out in terms of self-promotion. Make yourself a marketing plan with a six-month lead time to the sale of the book, so you really can put thought and effort into promoting it. This article isn’t about promoting books so I won’t go into more details here, but I will highly encourage you to watch this terrific lecture by Nev March about book marketing beforehand. She’s a traditional author but a lot of her advice is still very helpful and it can make the scope of marketing clearer.

Write another book

I understand that this option is a little confusing, but the fact is most authors don’t get the first book they write published, or rather, they don’t get it published first.

Jennifer Givhan, the poet and novelist, had her first manuscript, Jubilee, rejected widely. She then wrote a second novel, Trinity Sight, and found an agent to represent it. That agent eventually successfully placed both Trinity Sight and Jubilee with a respected traditional publisher.

I have also seen so many other examples of this as a friend and a reader. It’s a far from uncommon story.

In any case writing a brand new book can be a great and helpful experience as writers often take all that they learned writing and revising their first book into writing the second. So right from the start they have a much better first draft.

For writers who are feeling particularly burnt out, consider writing shorter pieces for a bit. These are generally much easier to place and that can help your query letter and your confidence.

Give the project space to breathe

Often it can be tempting to just force a revision to have one, even if you aren’t inspired to do it. In my experience revising too soon after writing the previous draft or after receiving critique, is not generally helpful.

Writers in this situation tend to focus on surface level revisions, and making hasty decisions with little thought involved.

I think it’s much better to give yourself time and form a plan for revising that you are excited about, before working on revising this work. Sometimes this takes weeks, other times years.

In conclusion

No matter which option you chose, I think it’s important to remember that most people who set out to write a novel never complete one, so you have already achieved a lot more than most.

The road to seeing my novel, G.O.D., self-published on Amazon (and other sites), was long and worth it. It began in 2008. I hit the publish button in 2024. 

It took nine years to write and edit. I threw out the first 80 pages and the second 35, and then I found my point of view and went from there. I joined an online Scrabble game with four players to combat the difficulty of sitting at the computer and writing for lengths of time. I had to be there to take my turn, so I couldn’t leave. It helped me not jump around. And a bonus? Sometimes, words on the board sparked some good ideas! Another tactic was setting a timer, writing for 25 or 50 minutes, then taking a 10-minute break. 

Not only did I need help staying seated, but I also didn’t stay in one place. During the novel’s creation, I lived in Los Angeles, New Mexico, Buffalo and Cleveland and completed the final edit in Boulder, Colorado. 

When it comes to completion, a professional editor is vital. You need a fresh eye to review the story. You know it so well that it’s easy to believe something is being conveyed when it may not be. Or are you repeating yourself? We cut over 30 pages. The editing process lasted over a year, and at one point, we brought in another editor to make sure the story was clear. 

At first, I was dead set against self-publishing. I wanted to go the traditional route, get an agent, or find a publisher that accepted submissions without one. I sent out queries here and there when I felt like it, with no schedule or discipline. It was not the best road to accomplishment.

I took The Manuscript Publishing for Novelists class in 2019 and finished with an enthusiasm usually reserved for trips to hot springs and gourmet meals hand-fed to me by Greek Gods. That waned quickly with my short attention span for dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s just right to potentially have my manuscript rejected, not due to merit, but to what I considered pomp and circumstance. I received some nice notes, but the desire to wade in the pool of tradional publishers became shallow after a couple months. 

So, my manuscript sat in a folder on my computer, gathering virtual dust. Here and there, friends asked me what I was doing with my novel. I didn’t have an answer, aside from not much. 

In the summer of 2023, I attended a writer’s conference on Denman Island and took a class on self-publishing. I hoped learning the steps from A to Z would light a fire inside me to birth this baby.

It didn’t. Starting with what to put on the cover and going from there felt daunting, and thinking about it made me tired. It sounded like a lot of work, and it could run into thousands of dollars or leave me pulling out my hair while trying to figure it all out. 

In October 2023, things changed. During a pet-sitting gig for a tortoise in Los Angeles, I happened upon a little library down the street. In it, I found a thin, sweet book that changed the course of my novel. The author thanked a company that makes predesigned customizable book covers. I went to the website. Within seconds, I found the perfect cover for less than $200, including the back, spine, and banner ads. Finding a cover I loved piqued my interest in moving forward. 

Learning the ins and outs of self-publishing was very useful. I knew what I needed to do next: figure out how to lay out the manuscript. I contacted my editor and asked if she could take care of that piece or recommend someone while I looked for options to do it myself. I am grateful beyond time and space that she agreed to do it. 

After all those years, I pulled out a printed copy of the manuscript and reread it to see if I wanted to change anything. Little tweaks happened. Fortunately, I was still in love with the story. And here’s where my stomach knotted up—I wanted to be sure I was making good decisions. Those knots lasted for three months, all the way through receiving the final manuscript back, ready to publish. There were so many decisions to make, each one impacting the outcome. Now that G.O.D. is published, I look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. But that’s the nature of hindsight. It was worth it.

These are the things I want to tell you about self-publishing. 

1) Hire a professional editor. 

2) Have your cover done professionally. Or use one of the predesigned cover sites, like I did. They are customizable, and you are the only person who can use them once you purchase them.

3) Be prepared to make many decisions including but not limited to: 

• the size of the book
• the cover
• your bio and back cover text
• your author bio for inside the book
• do the chapters all start on the right side or either?
• the font
• the chapter headings – style and justification (left, right, center)
• where you want the page numbers, title and author name 
• hyphenation on the pages
• whether to purchase an ISBN or use the ones offered by Amazon, IngramSpark, etc. (and the implications of your decision)

4) You need separate ISBNs for each book format: soft-cover, hard-cover, ebook, and audio. ISBNs aren’t required for ebooks but are recommended. 

At first, I just wanted to publish it as quickly as possible, so I got an ISBN from Amazon. As I got more involved and learned about the available distribution channels for bookstores and libraries, I decided to purchase my own from Bowker.

5) Remember, while self-publishing your book, you must make many decisions and learn many things, and there is no landing spot. Once you finish your book, the next step is publishing it. Once you publish it, you have to market it. Once you get momentum on this book, it’s time to write your next while still selling your last.

If it all sounds daunting, I understand. It is, and it isn’t. I am here to tell you that it is doable and worth it. You can take small steps for as long as you need. If you keep on the path, you will see your name on a book cover on Amazon. I can see you smiling now.

Bio: Amy Nanette Glin has lived an unconventional life that includes managing comedians, cooking for celebrities and priests, and telling stories on stages. Aside from being an author, she’s a life coach, assisting people in unraveling belief systems that don’t serve them. Her first novel, G.O.D., is now available on Amazon.