Publishing Opportunities

Doubts about the value of my work tend to snake up on me in February, and last year I seized a whole day by the throat, 23 February, and sent piles of manuscripts to places likely to want them. My results were quite good. To help find places that might want my work, I visited websites such as these:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CRWROPPS-B/ - Updated Daily
My favorite. Moderated by poet Alison Joseph of SIU-Carbondale. Sample item: "CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Bone Bouquet seeks to publish the best new writing by female poets, from artists both established and emerging. We are especially. . ."

http://www.pw.org/classifieds - Updated Bimonthly
Sample item: "EKPHRASIS, a biannual journal, seeking poems, each based on a single work of art. Free or formal verse considered. No simultaneous submissions. Previously published OK if credited. . ."

www.litmags.org (Don't use their search boxes; they don't work. Click on "List All Mags" at the top, and go from there.) - New mags listed almost daily
Sample: "A Thousand Faces is the quarterly journal of superhuman fiction. Published four times a year simultaneously online and in print, A Thousand Faces is the next step in the evolution of the superhero genre. . ."

http://www.winningwriters.com (If you are into contests.) Register to look at the free-contest database. Be sure to click on the Month with the deadlines you want or it will show only January.
Sample: "Free contest offers decent-sized prizes and web publication for creative travel essays about living and working abroad. Enter online only. . ."

Good luck!

Publisher Seeks Novels

SWITCHGRASS Books, the fiction imprint of Northern Illinois University Press,
seeks submissions of full-length literary novels set in or about the Midwest by
authors with Midwestern ties. Mail manuscripts to Northern Illinois University
Press, Switchgrass Books, 2280 Bethany Rd., DeKalb, IL 60115. For submission
guidelines, please visit

http://www.switchgrass.niu.edu/switchgrass/
(Looks very legit!)

The Book the Poet Wants

A publisher kept my friend's poetry-book manuscript for 14 months before finally rejecting it with the comment, "This needs to be cooked down."

In other words, condensed. Shortened.

The poet then for the umpteenth time changed and rearranged the ms. -- product of 11 years of effort -- and "cooked it down." It's not necessarily better. But it's thinner.

Publishers are free to reject any manuscript. Editors can and should pinpoint weak or oafish poems. But "cook down" a manuscript? Why? Is it too long? Too luxuriant? Why do poetry books have to be so thin? Will "cooking it down" better please the readership and generate profitable sales? Unlikely. The publisher won't market the book -- that's the author's job -- so it's not a matter of marketability, either.

A poet's manuscript is as carefully crafted as any poem. Selecting, sifting and arranging -- editing one's own poetry book -- is the work of months. Do editors know that? If so, they might respect it -- and the fact that no one can know better than the poet how a long a ms. should be or how it should go.

So what is this "cook it down" unless it's another needle to stick into the poet, whose soul is already bristling with needles and knife handles?

Plain Talk about Agents

For serious dirt on Why You Need to Have an Agent, please see above link by Editorial Ass (a recovering Editorial Assistant). It's probably all true. Repeat: Publishing is a business. If you don't do business, you won't get your books published by major houses.

Annie Dillard Helped

Annie Dillard (nee Meta Ann Doak) helped me today as I chose 6 unpublished poems to submit to an anthology that is no sure thing, that I suspect might never be finished or published. So I wanted to hold back a couple of poems just too good for it, thinking: I bet these could impress a bigger editor -- later. Then Dillard's words came to mind:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.

And I sent my 6 best poems and felt the rightness of it, the healthiness of having set them free, trusting that I will write even better ones. Thank you, Annie.

Advice for the Unpublished

Picture a longtime couples therapist who has written a book for men. It's short and snappy, because men can't read good. Publishers also told her that men don't buy or read books, especially books about relationships, and that's because they're sort of like, well, unevolved, and live in basements, and now and then their women and kids throw bananas down the stairs. After a year of rejections, the author, unwilling to give up, came to the January meeting of the St. Louis Publishers Association. The speakers were two authors fiendishly successful at marketing their books. The therapist presented her problem and asked for advice.

I listened, majorly, because I wanted to tell everyone with unpublished manuscripts what was said.

Could you maybe start a blog about relationships? they asked the author. Everyone's interested in relationships. Did you place some articles on that topic online at ezinearticles.com or Helium? Yeah, you don't get paid for those articles, but it costs you nothing and your name is on them, and a link to your website or blog, and if they're good articles and get picked up by various websites and e-zines, they travel, give you a presence, establish your credibility as an expert in this field, which is what you are. Then publishers might give you a listen.

And maybe put excerpts from your book online? Maybe some chapters on your website? Yes, before it's published, so people will get to know and appreciate your work.

"But I don't want to give too much away," the author said.

"There's no such thing as giving too much away," the expert said. "If people like what you have on the Internet, if they read and value what you write there, they will want to buy your book."

Nine Ways to Judge a Literary Journal

Pretend the literary journal you're looking at is a person, and ask yourself if this is the sort of person you would like to befriend.

1. How does it look? Healthy, artsy, sloppy, folksy, ritzy? . . . . and do you like its looks?
2. Does it seem able to appreciate people (writers) like you?
3. Does it seem to refer constantly, not to say obsessively, to things you have had enough of, such as Greek myths, old barns, eating disorders, famous dead writers, or graphic depictions of meaningless sex?
4. Is it trying hard to be something it's not?
5. Does this journal let you know, through its form or content or list of contributors, that it doesn't care to associate with your kind?
6. Is there something in this journal that intrigues or stimulates or impresses you?
7. Do you like this journal enough to see it again? To sit down and have lunch with it?
8. Do you two have anything in common?
9. Would you like to be associated with this journal?

Full disclosure: At this time I am a longtime subscriber to just one literary journal, and that's the quarterly Creative Nonfiction. I keep up with Natural Bridge. Not long ago I gave up The Sun and The New Yorker, because they arrived so often that reading each issue felt like a job.

Irons in the Fire

I've got three book manuscripts out circulating, which rather takes my mind off the long, ambitious poem I sent to a magazine that may or may not take it, for political reasons (aside from the fact that they might not like it. But I do). Strange that I worry most about the poem, not the books.

It really helped getting my writing group involved in readying the Writing Group book for submission to publishers. One of us photocopied the book outline and sample chapters; two of us split the work of writing customized cover letters for each publisher; I made a spreadsheet to track submissions; someone did stapling and envelope-stuffing; she with the best handwriting addressed them and the SASEs; and finally one of us carried the packages to the post office and got them stamped for going (and returning; but we hope not). Any anxiety about that book -- now titled The Writing Group Handbook -- is divided eight ways. And so it rests lightly on the individual creative soul.

We, and specifically I, have no worries about whether the Writing Group book is good and worthwhile -- we know it is. Eight writers can't be wrong! A poet can never have the same secure feeling about a poem. But that's the price of writing poetry and wanting to publish it. I'll pay it -- but I am glad of having several other irons in the fire, and some writer friends.