So You Want to Submit to a lit mag?
Haha, NERD!
Submitting to a lit mag might seem scary, but it’s one of the best things you can do to advance yourself as a writer. Publication not only boosts your ego, but your resume as well! Here’s our grand guide to becoming a SUPER SUBMITTER!
SETTING YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS
Literary magazines are a tight knit community, but unlike your middle school bully’s lunch table, you’re more than welcome to join the club. There’s a strong literary magazine community on Twitter and on other social media, allowing you to stay up to date on what’s going on.
Finding places to submit can feel harder than writing itself. Fortunately, there are lots of websites that make your life significantly either by listing magazines. It’s kind of like literary Tinder. Chill Subs is a great free option that can find you the perfect magazines based on acceptance rate, genre, vibe, call, and more! If you’re wanting to up your game, Duotrope has a collection of over seven thousand places to get published, though they do charge a subscription fee. You can also check out our Other Lit Mags page for some places we highly recommend shooting a sub!
You should submit your piece to as many places as possible! You can submit the same piece to multiple places at the same time, just make sure the magazine allows simultaneous submissions.
It’s also a good idea to track your submissions. You can do this a few different ways- some websites like Chill Subs offer submission trackers. You can also use an Excel spreadsheet- just include what piece you submitted, where you submitted it, when you submitted it, and the expected response time. This will keep you all organized.
How to Submit to a Literary Magazine
Once you’ve picked out a magazine you like, check out their website for more information. Do they accept only edgy memoirs, or will they cherish your queer elven flash fiction? They typically specify in their submission guidelines, but reading some of the work they’ve previously published will give you some insight into what they’re looking for.
Read submission guidelines! Magazines have their own, picky picky conditions. They might only accept certain word counts, genres, and more. Make sure your work is a good fit, and formatted the way that they request. Magazines might request that submissions have a specific font, spacing, and size. If you don’t comply, you might be burned to the ground.
There are all sorts of ways magazines ask you to submit. Sometimes, you email them, sometimes you fill out a form, sometimes you send a barn owl five meters north to their headquarters. Whatever they ask, make sure to follow directions!
Keep in mind, some magazines do want a cover letter. Make sure you know how to make one before submitting to those magazines, since they want to be a bit more professional compared to others. Click here for more info how a cover letter is formatted.
How to submit to our sh-lit mag
Obviously, you’re here because you want to submit to our amazing lit mag (thank you) so we’re going to give you the epic Echo rundown. So, our website has a submissions tab that brings you to our guidelines. Make sure you read them carefully, because if we see ONE MORE DRAGON FANFICTION, we will find you.
After reading our guidelines and making sure your submission follows the rules, scroll down to the bottom of the page to find our submit button. Once you hit the button, it will take you to Duosuma (our submission manager) which allows you to submit to us in an organized manner. Once more, make sure that your submission follows our guidelines, or we will feed your submissions to our monkeys. Thank you so much for considering our magazine, we can’t wait to see everyone’s anti-dragon propaganda!
So you’ve submitted. You’ve waited. And you’ve finally heard back from our editorial team. And your writing has been rejected. UGH! Not to fear – The Echo has got you covered here! We’ve written a whole article on what a lit-mag rejection means.