Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).
This week’s TTT is more about a resource than a tool.
Today’s Tool: Duotrope.com
Platform: web browser
Cost: $5/month or $50/year + 7 day free trial
What it does: Duotrope has been around for a long time as a database of short story markets. You can find magazines, e-zines, and anthologies that are looking for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and even art.
Duotrope has a great search function that allows you to search by genre, market type (magazine, antho, etc), payment/royalties level, and a lot of other options.
If you’ve already got some stories written, or if you’re looking for inspiration, you can go to the Theme & Deadline Calendar. This gives you a listing of the publications with chronological deadline dates (upcoming) and the theme of the stories their looking for. I’ve used this for inspiration more than once!
Probably one of the most useful features beyond the search function is the ability to see how long a market takes to respond and what their acceptance rates are. Now, this isn’t reported by the market itself, but by Duotrope users (which means it’s only as accurate as people’s participation).
When you get a response from a market, you go to their Duotrope page and click the Submission/Response link on the right. It will take you to a form where you can enter all the relevant info: the piece of work you submitted (which you have to enter on a separate form, but which is kept, so once you enter it, if you submit to multiple markets, you can just choose that work), when you submitted it, when you got a response and what that response was. Then Duotrope compiles that information along with other people who’ve entered the stats (provided there is enough input data) and displays the totals on the market’s page.
For example, you can see stats for Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine below as of this writing:
What I’ve noted above are just the highlights. You can also find editor interviews, stats that show you the fastest responding markets, as well as what users favorited the most. There’s also a stats page that breaks things down into market types and whether they charge fees to read. So tons of great info!
Where to get it: At any browser near you! Duotrope.com
Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!
Stay awesome!
Photos courtesy of me!
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