I have two finished short stories sitting in the stables. They're edited, rewritten, edited again...
I wish I knew what to do with them.
I can keep submitting them to YA lit mags but they're so few and far between - how long can I keep that going before I get tired of the rejection letters? Furthermore, with Duotrope behind a dumb pay wall, the ease with which I found places to submit to has been pretty hacked to pieces.
I could put one up on Amazon and see how it does, though. They're about 7500 words each, they're not very short. Putting them up for 99 cents would get my name out there, you know? Even if no one bought it, I could still say "I have some stuff up on Amazon," and that would be pretty cool.
But if I submit them to Amazon then I feel like I'm tossing out an opportunity to get published by someone else. It's a little stressful. I know there will be other short stories (I'm always writing down ideas for new ones), it's just that these two are fairly near and dear to my heart. I wanted to find them a good home somewhere, sandwiched between other writers' stories in a nice little lit mag.
I feel like a frustrated parent.
Has anyone else ever thought about this?
Well, I got published in that anthology (Herstory) by Pagan Writer's Press in March, and will actually be getting a short story published as an ebook by them in a month or two!
ReplyDelete(It was originally going to be part of an anthology, but they decided to release the stories separately.)
It might be worth checking out their site and seeing if the kinds of writing they publish would be a good fit for you! Either way, they're a really friendly bunch of people and may be able to point you in a direction of another indie publishing company. They have a submissions manager on their site, too!
Thanks! I did check out their submissions page and I might try and get something out on paper to give to them, their Samhain openings sound all kinds of fun. = ]
DeleteI vote paying for Duotrope. I resisted for a bit, but I really think it's worth it.
ReplyDeleteOh, and there's always ralan.com.
ReplyDeleteI think I may break down and pay for Duotrope...ralan.com seems to be having website issues at the moment but just from the little Google blurb I read, it seems pretty awesome! Thank you!
DeleteHmmm... Yeah, I don't know what's going on with ralan at the moment. Well, when it does work, it's a handy listing of fiction/poetry markets. It's not as functional as Duotrope, but it's totally free. I held out from paying Duotrope for about six hours. Stoic, I know.
DeleteHonestly, the only reason I didn't sign up for it was just because between Netflix and other sites, if I have anymore automatic subscription payments going on, my bank account would be dry before I knew it! I figured I would be okay without it, but as you can see, not so much, haha.
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