My situation is slightly different from that of others. Within the publishing ranks of fiction, there are sub-genres. Most of what the rest of the fiction class will look at and discuss is the literary market. My focus is speculative fiction.

 

With book publishers, everything is more blurred than it used to be, what with the giants owning most of the little guys, so that different publishers of literary fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance may be controlled by the same umbrella corporation. For example, Roc, a big SF&F publisher, is part of Penguin group, and Tor and Forge are both part of Macmillan. It seems in book publishing, as with everything corporately-controlled, nobody is who they say they are.

 

I don’t think that the division of the market for novel publishers much affects me because I don’t think anyone should bother themselves too much with thinking about publishing until he has the product. That, and working with and finding the correct publisher seems to generally be the work of an agents. To my knowledge, books are usually sold through agents. Mostly this is done because of the convenience of then having an agent for future writing, but I think it is also done this way because it seems normal. Most unrepresented novels I hear about being published are self-published. Plus, back when I had misconceptions that what I had written was ready for publication and I did the whole agent and publisher search, most book publishers that I saw said that they don’t accept unrepresented work. That said, I looked up Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, and they accept unrepresented work - good to know for the future. But since most novels require an agent for submission, I will instead look at magazines and journals.

 

For speculative fiction, the top publication options for short stories become Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Fantasy & Science Fiction, among a few others. (My info on publications comes from duotrope.com––a handy alternative to Writer’s Market.) The top SF magazine of Australia is called Aurealis, and Interzone is a popular UK magazine (those ones are first tier in their respective countries). Not only are these the top sellers, they pay professional rates (five cents a word and up). I have personally been rejected by each of them, several times.

 

Circulation seems better for speculative fiction magazines than literary ones. I don’t have a reason for it, but the same seems to be true for genre books versus literary books. I’ve heard people from both the literary world and the worlds of laypeople tell me that genre sells better. Last time I investigated, I found these magazines are also filled with crap, so that made me feel better. That was back when I worried about being published instead of worrying about writing. Not that worrying helps anybody with anything, but I’m glad I now have my priorities straight. I think that good writing comes first, and once it comes, it will eventually be published somewhere.

 

To harp again on my previous rejection, I don’t think there was anything wrong with me shooting for the top and sending my stories to the big publishers. There was, however, something wrong with me stopping after that and not sending out my work to smaller magazines and journals. That’s something I’ve never done, and I wish I had before I started to think all my short stories are crap and lost my confidence in writing any new ones. I’ve never been a big fan of short fiction, but I’ve always been told it’s the way in the door, that we need to write short fiction and have it published before we can publish novels. It seems to be true, but I know that there are always exceptions.

 

There is a large stock of middle range speculative fiction magazines. Some examples: Leading Edge, a unique semi-professional magazine at BYU, sports an impressive (far less dejecting) rejection rate of 86.96% (when the typical seems to be in the high nineties), though it does enforce a Mormonistic censoring that disallows profanity, sex, or extensive violence. Shimmer prints speculative fiction and corresponding art, accepts only short (5000 word cap) stories, pays a penny a word, and seeks unusual work with a strong emotional core. Lightspeed limits its submissions to science-fiction only but pays professional rates.

 

If I failed to find a place in the middle tier, I would move onto the smaller one. Onirismes is a fledgling webzine (though I tried to figure out how to read it and couldn’t) that features speculative fiction writing in both French and English. I don’t think I would submit there––I was just intrigued by its uniqueness. The Midnight Diner is a genre-busting anthology (relatively new) that asks for paranormal, horror, crime, and weird stories. The writer’s compensation is small––three editor’s picks get a hundred bucks each. Sephamore is a not-for-profit publication of speculative fiction run by volunteers! Oh, and it’s in New Zealand. There are many more of these as well as many publications offering little to no compensation for their writers.

 

After doing all the research for this, it seems clear that there are many, many places to publish my work. Now, if only I had some.