Duotrope

[Naomasa298]

How many people here have a Duotrope account and/or use Submission Grinder?

For anyone who doesn't know, Duotrope is site that allows you to find short story publishers and agents who you can submit your work to. You can search by genre, subgenre and topic, and it will give you an idea of response times, open windows and acceptance rates. Duotrope requires a subscription, which is $5 a month.

Submission Grinder is a dating site a free site which has the same function. It's not as comprehensive or as quick, but it gives a lot of similar information.

I have a Duotrope account, so I'm happy to try and help people if they need to find a short publisher.

 

[typree]

Actually, I haven't heard of either of these until now. They look to be pretty useful tools for getting started.

Probably won't be needing them any time soon since I'm not at publishing stage yet. But I'll keep them in mind for when I am. Probably gonna toy with it a bit between now and then, too. (Most likely just Submission Grinder since Duotrope is paid-access.)

Thanks for sharing, Nao!

 

[Naomasa298]

Duotrope has a free trial. You do have to sign up with a card and just remember to tell them you don't want to continue with the paid subscription.

Submission Grinder is painfully slow at searching, though.

 

[Set2Stun]

I love Duotrope. I've been using it for about 2.5 years now. It's good for searching, but what I like most is the submission tracking and statistics. It's hard to believe I used to do all this stuff manually in a word processor. I mostly use it for shorts, but I have also tracked some novel submissions to indie publishers in there. Just checked now and I've tracked 289 submissions (a couple dozen are still outstanding) and have 5 acceptances. Great success!

For an excellent free service, I recommend signing up for the Sub Club newsletter. Every week they email a list of magazines currently open to submissions. A lot of them are for non-paying markets, but those can be good for newer writers looking to snap up some credits to include in their query letters. They also list contests that are open, if that's your kind of thing. They will occasionally send lists of "agents looking for X."

For agent-specific querying, there's nothing better than QueryTracker. The free version is great on its own, and the paid version is only like $20 a year. These tools make it so easy to submit these days, however that also means there will be a lot more competition out there !

 

[Naomasa298]

For agent-specific querying, there's nothing better than QueryTracker. The free version is great on its own, and the paid version is only like $20 a year. These tools make it so easy to submit these days, however that also means there will be a lot more competition out there !

I use a spreadsheet for query tracking. I've built in formulae to give me expected dates and highlight submissions that are due and need querying and so on, so it does what I need. Of course, that doesn't help other Duotrope build its statistics though.

 

[NotoriousNAG]

Oh god, I used submission grinder probably about 10 years ago when I was actively submitting, had a whole spreadsheet to track things and everything.

Sadly nothing came of it (very fairly, I was not writing good stories) but I'm happy to see it's still going

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Though I no longer subscribe, I was very happy with Duotrope. It vastly simplified sorting through agents.

 

[JT Woody]

I was grandfathered in on Submittable.
its like Duotrope. Now, it requires a subscription, but I've had it since 2015.