FotW is published in the United Kingdom but they accept submissions from around the world. They are open to most genres like fantasy and horror, although they also publish literary fiction.

One of the things that makes FotW unusual is that they accept Novelettes – a story between 7500 – 15000 words. If you have a piece that is between that number of words FotW is one of the few literary journals that will accept it for consideration.

FotW has a high acceptance rate. They accept a little over 60% of the work submitted to them. They also give personalized rejections to half of the authors whose work they reject. They also respond within two and half weeks.

FotW publishes work over 150 times a year so you should expect to see your piece up on their site shortly after it is accepted. They publish new work every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

FotW favors work that has strong plots and characters. The editor likes authors with a quirky sense of humor. FotW allows people to comment on other writers stories, which is a nice way to review feedback.

The submission process is easy, attach a  .doc file to an email, the body of the email should contain the stories title, genre(s) and the author’s name.

Occasionally they are open to different genres and closed to others. This information is always available online on their submission page. Make sure you check this page before submitting to them.  The editor is very accessible so if you have any additional questions you can email him, his address is on the submission page.

In conclusion FotW is a good online journal to submit to if you are a fiction writer just starting out. They have a thoughtful editor, a good response time, and an established audience of readers. You can visit their website here: www.fictionontheweb.co.uk

1. How long is your book?

Although there is no official length for books, established publishers definitely have ideas about how long it should be. These publishing standards vary per genre. For example Science Fiction and Fantasy novels tend to be between 80,000 and 120,000 words long. Mysteries and romances often are shorter and tend to be between 60,00 and 70,000 words.

A lot of books that are self published, particularly electronically, are a lot shorter than that. Hugh Howey, the author of the bestselling e-book Wool, published the book originally in 5 separate parts, then published it as one omnibus edition. The first part is 12,000 words (60 pages). That is hardly the length of a book a publisher would accept, yet Howey managed to make his self published series a best selling one by building interest from the first part through to the fifth. A publisher never would have accepted the first part alone, but after Howey turned the series of novella’s into a hit, Penguin is publishing The Wool Omnibus edition in Print.

If your novels tend to be shorter and part of a series it can be a lot easier to self publish them online and build a fan base by offering the first one for free. That’s how Howey became one of the best selling authors publishing right now.

If you tend to write longer literary novels, it could be harder to self publish it online, because it is harder to build a fan base for literary novels in the self publishing world right now.  Readers are used to spending 1.99 to 99 cents on  self published ebook purchases, so they may not be so willing to pay enough per book to justify all of your hard work.

2. How much control do you want over your book?

Some writers want editorial feed back. They want someone else to tell them which characters and scenes to cut or focus on. Other writers want to execute their own artistic vision. If you are in the first category you can either try to go the traditional route or hire a freelance editor to give you feedback. Freelance editors tend to vary wildly in price, but if you can’t fine one in your price range you can always try to get a friend to give you feedback. If you fall into the second category and this is your first book, you should probably self publish it. You will most likely be happier with the end results.

3. How much submitting are you willing to do?

16 publisher’s rejected The Diary of Anne Frank, 12 rejected the first Harry Potter book, 121 publishers rejected Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  One of the most famous authors of the Twentieth Century, C.S. Lewis’s work was turned down over 800 times before one piece was accepted for publication. This does not even take into consideration the modern publishing world that relies on agents. You have to put together a good query letter, make sure your first twenty pages are as polished as possible, and submit to at least fifteen agents, in order to get one of them, in order to get a publishing contact. That is no small amount of work, although the pay off, a major publisher releasing your work, may really be worth it.

4. How much promotion are you willing to do?

When you have a larger traditional publishing company releasing your book, they will handle most of the promotion. You might have to show up and sign a few books or create an authors facebook page, but most of the promotion is the publisher’s responsibility. They are also in charge of distributing your book, making sure that the public has easy access to it. However with a smaller independent publisher you might end doing the same amount of self promotion as a self published author.

When you publish your own book, you become your own publicist. If you are self publishing in print you also have to be in charge of distribution as well. But the primary focus will be on making sure people know about your book. A lot of people self publish these days, particularly electronically, because it’s cheaper. You have to make sure your book stands out, and you have to do everything to make it stand out, from the cover to a twitter account, to convincing friends and strangers to give positive reviews. This can be a lot of work. But if you have an interest in social marketing, and are willing to put some work in, you can get your work into the hands of others. Remember that if you support other self published authors, they are likely to help you as well.

5. How soon do you want your book to be out in the world?

If you are the patient type, traditional publishing could be the way for you. It takes an average of two years to see your book published by an established publisher. Self publishing, even if you are printing the books through a third party can take a few weeks at most, and sometimes even just a few hours.  If you like to see immediate results, then self publishing might be the right choice for you.

Hopefully after reviewing all the questions and their explanations you have a better idea about which publishing route is the best fit for your career and your manuscript.

First do some arm stretches to get your blood flowing. This is important, because the blood flow actually helps you think better. It might not seem obvious at first, but getting your blood flowing will make your brain work that much better because of the extra blood flow reaching your thought-producing brain cells.

After stretching, write down a title on the top of your page. It should not be very long. Often my titles are very cliché and obvious, like The Dark Island, or The Wishing Well.

Next you should set a timer for three minutes. Then you should write as fast as you can until the timer runs out. Don’t try to make sense, don’t try to match the title, just try to write as fast as you can without even thinking about it. If you are writing as fast as you can you will end up writing about unusual things. Things you would otherwise never write about.

After the timer is up, your writing might be hard to read, it might not make sense in places, but you will have created something new and interesting. You also will have warmed up your writing muscles, and will be prepared to work on more serious writing.

If you enjoy this exercise, I recommend doing it daily, keeping close track of your progress. After each session, record the number of words you can write in a minute. If you do this exercise often enough, your writing will get faster and faster. When I started I could only write about 120 words in three minutes, and after about a month, I could write 165 words in three minutes. Not only that, my writing got more polished, even as it got faster.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you should self publish or go the more traditional route, then you should definitely read this weeks article on the topic. The world of self publishing has come a long way recently, and you might be surprised at the number of best-selling books that started out with self publishing. (Hint, 50 Shades of Gray is not the only book that started out self published.)

This week we also give you one of the best writing warm ups we know. It’s a 3 minute sprint, and it trains you, very effectively, to get words down on paper. If you’ve ever had writers block, this will cure it, fast.

The two journals we review this week are both worth a look. If you want to publish your fiction, then Fiction On the Web is for you. They’re one of the oldest literary journals on the internet, and are very accessible to authors new to the publishing world.

I have to admit, I have a soft-spot for Softblow, the other journal we review this week. Why? Because I was recently published by them. They are well established, and accept poetry for publication. If you have poetry you would like to get published, be sure to read our review.

As always, thank you for reading. We’re a small magazine, but we’re here to serve you. Your feedback is very much appreciated — so be sure to send it our way: support@authorspublish.com

Sincerely,

Jacob Jans
Editor

Softblow is a great place to be published because a lot of good, established poets have had work published there. It is nice because they often will accept all the poems that you submit or request more so that they can showcase not just one of your poems, but an array that gives readers a better idea of your style overall.

They publish 12 times a year on the first day of every month. However once your work has been accepted they post it online immediately, but it is not featured on the main page until the edition you are in comes out. It is really satisfying to see your work online so quickly, and to be able to share it with your friends right away even though it is usually months before the general public can see it.

Softblow respond to most submissions within three days. This means that if they do accept your work it could be up on their website within three days, or less. Recently a friend’s work was accepted and published within twenty-four hours.

Softblow has an acceptance rate of under four percent, so they are rather discriminating. They are easy to submit to though. Their email address is listed in the Editorial section of the site. Just paste a short biographical statement and 4-6 poems into the body of an email.

The Editors tend to be interested in poems that have interesting, image filled language. They also like poems that contain a central idea. They do not generally publish poems that rhyme. They also to accept prose-poems, poems that do not contain line breaks or stanza breaks.

In conclusion Softblow is a great journal to submit to because they have a quick response time, and they post your poems without any additional delay. They also are discriminating and have a long history of publishing established poets early on in their careers. You can visit their website here: www.softblow.org.