The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist

Publishing in Magazines

80 Publishing in Magazines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The market for publishing short stories has changed significantly even in the twenty-​ five years that I’ve been sending work out.When I first began writing, there were several commercial venues for short stories, places like Redbook, Mademoiselle, GQ, the Atlantic, and Esquire . Way back, in the glossy magazine’s heyday, Kurt Vonnegut had even published a short story in Ladies’ Home Journal. It seemed that nearly every glossy magazine used to publish some fiction. My wife’s first publication was in the men’s magazine Gallery—and, no, it wasn’t a pornographic story. When she told me about this shortly after we had met, I was envious, especially since a section of John Irving’s The World According to Garp, one of my favorite novels, had appeared in Gallery as well. (My wife would later publish a second story with them. The published story was accompanied by a wonderful full-​ page illustration. And, of course, shewas paid for the story, too! On the day the issue was released, we went to a gas station in Lincoln, Nebraska, and, to the consternation of the cashier, asked for half a dozen copies, which were kept behind the counter.) Most of these magazines have quit publishing fiction altogether, or if they still do, it’s infrequent or insubstantial. Among the commercial magazines still publishing fiction are the New Yorker, Harper’s, Playboy, and the Atlantic (which now publishes a special fiction issue that I always seem to forget about), and it’s rare to find a newcomer in any of these pages. Even when the New Yorker publishes an issue devoted to “discoveries,” most of thosewriters are already undercontract for a book. In fact, an editor at the New Yorker had contacted my agent for a bound galley of The Book of Ralph to see if there was anything that might interest them for their “discovery” issue. It’s hardly a discovery if the story is an excerpt from a book that’s about to be published, but that’s one way to guarantee that the editors appear prescient, I suppose. I have all but quit sending to the big, commercial, glossy magazines —and not just because there are so few of them remaining. The last time I sent a round of submissions to these bad boys, I didn’t hear back from half of them. The rules have clearly changed. When I first began sending work out in the 1980s, it wasn’t uncommon to get an actual note from the main fiction editor. I have at least one hand- Getting Published 81 written note from Rust Hills at Esquire, and a personal note, typed on a manual typewriter, from Daniel Menaker at the New Yorker. At the very least, I always received a rejection of some kind, if only a standard one on nice paper. But these days are gone. You’re lucky to hear anything anymore. A new editor at a major magazine wrote to inform me that they normally didn’t read unsolicited fiction but that they had done me the favor this time of reading mine, and, sorry, but it wasn’t right for them.The editor went on to tell me that I shouldn’t expect a response the next time. (This, I should add, was after I had already published three books and won two writing awards from this very magazine. I had even become friends with the previous editor.) So, this is what it’s come to: Editors are doing you a favor if they even look at your story. That was pretty much when I decided thanks, but no thanks. The good news is that there are hundreds of other places to publish —literary journals, like the Iowa Review or Cutbank, that are either affiliated with a university or, like Gargoyle and One Story, that are run independently. Some of these journals, like theVirginia Quarterly Review, are now competing against the big glossies for National Magazine Awards . . . and winning! (Not that the Virginia Quarterly Review is an easy magazine to break into; it’s not.) I still buy the annually published Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market, which, for my money, is the most thorough of the reference books in terms of information it provides. Duotrope—www.duotrope .com—is probably the best online resource for finding magazines to submit to. There is a hierarchy of magazines—certain magazines tend to get more attention than others...