Growing Your Readership: How to Get Your Work Out
Patricia Mulcahy and Judy Sternlight
In a recent Office Hours session (5E hosts free monthly sessions on Zoom) we revisited ways for writers to gain exposure by publishing stories, essays, or opinion pieces online or in print. Publishing short pieces is a great way to establish a base of loyal readers, to experiment with new styles and subjects, and to get feedback on your work as it develops in tone, voice, and narrative reach.
Given the plethora of outlets for short pieces—both fiction and nonfiction—it requires dedicated research to find editors who will respond with real enthusiasm to your submission. In our recent OH session, we brought up the fact that many of today’s best-read and respected magazines, like Granta, Ploughshares, and The Paris Review, are run by millennial staffers, many of whom are drawn to voices from “underserved communities,” however you define them. So where do you fit in?
Where are your people, as it were? It’s critical to read and subscribe to publications that speak to you both as a reader and a writer. Which magazines or sites showcase an editorial vision that may align with yours? Can you envision your story, essay, or op-ed on the site or in the magazine?
Just as you would research an agent’s client list and submission requirements before submitting a query, you should look into how a magazine or website operates, and the type of writing they seem to encourage and appreciate.
In our recent OH session, poet/novelist/nonfiction writer Diane Mehta talked about working for years to craft certain poems and essays and placing them with the right publication at the right time, taking the time to deeply research publications that felt like a good match and establishing relationships with editors whose sensibilities she admires.
Is all this effort worth it? Editors in 5E who built their reputations at major publishing houses have admitted that when pitching possible acquisitions, listing a writer’s credit in The Hudson Review, for instance, was not going to compel our colleagues in the sales department to jump up and down. Still, read on!
Reason #1 to publish in literary journals: As articulated by Ruth Mukwana, a UN aid worker and fiction writer, publishing an occasional short piece while your main focus is on a longer work can give a writer a terrific emotional boost: “There’s real joy when you see your work out there.” Is there any better reason?
Reason #2: Some agents do look at literary publications in search of talented writers who don't yet have representation. Speaking of agents…
Reason #3: Multiple publishing credits boost your chances when you query agents and editors. It shows that you're serious about your writing, and that other editors have already embraced your work.
Reason #4: You can showcase short excerpts from longer works-in-progress to increase exposure and give yourself a boost. You might even make some money. Fiction writer Zeeva Bukai talked about her success in extracting short excerpts from longer novels-in-progress and shaping them into self-contained short fiction. She sets aside a modest sum, maybe $200, annually to dedicate to entering writing competitions, and consistently has several pieces out on submission while also developing longer works. Zeeva has found good leads in The Masters Review and Erika Dreifus's newsletter.
Marcia Butler, author of two novels and a memoir, pointed out that the gems you remove from your memoir or novel (killing your darlings) can prove useful when you're publishing short pieces around the time that your book comes out. It’s all about showcasing your material at just the right time for maximum exposure.
Let’s get back to that research. The recent shutdown of the respected online magazine Catapult drew attention to the fact that some literary publications are subject to the whims of well-off sponsors. It may be best to focus on those with a longtime, established base, many affiliated with university writing programs: The Sewanee Review from The University of the South; Ploughshares from Emerson College in Boston; The Missouri Review from The University of Missouri at Columbia, MO; The Antioch Review from Antioch College in Ohio, to name just a handful. Be sure to observe the stated requirements for submission: word count/length, timeframe, and format. The platform Submittable is frequently used.
There are myriad ways to narrow down your options; logging onto literary Twitter is one. Despite the controversies afflicting the platform since Elon Musk’s acquisition, many writers, publications, literary agents, and publishers still post. And some publications, especially those that operate online only, like The Rumpus, put their submission deadlines up on Twitter threads. Writers on Twitter will pose questions such as: “What are your favorite places to submit?” The flood of responses can tell you a great deal.
Another tried and true method is to peruse not just the winning entries in Best American Essays, but also the long list of sources for “notable” pieces listed in the back of the volume. In the 2021 edition, “winning” essays came from publications ranging from Harper’s Magazine, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and The Threepenny Review, to Salmagundi (from Skidmore College), The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Point, started by grad students at the University of Chicago.
The “notable” sources were equally far-ranging, from Ecotone to the Nashville-based Turnip Truck(s) to The Margins (for Asian-American writing) to The Iowa Review, High Desert Journal, and The Dead Mule School, a twenty-six-year-old publication from North Carolina that requires a “statement of Southern legitimacy.” Even the titles will give you an idea whether or not to give their submissions process a try. All have their own requirements, editorial perspectives, and designated submissions seasons.
It’s also noteworthy that the prestigious Whiting Foundation just gave out a series of prizes to literary magazines like Latin American Literature Today, The Bellevue Literary Review, which started with an emphasis on medical themes, Kweli, a relatively new forum for writers of color, as well as One Story, which sends one short story a month to subscribers in the mail, to be opened “like a letter from a friend.”
There have been some cutbacks in the world of literary magazines, including The Believer, whose demise was much lamented by writer Leslie Jamison, who had her first piece published there. But there’s been a big increase in online outlets, many with targeted markets (African Americans, Asian Americans, mothers, people with disabilities), which has also increased what you might call the echo effect. Memoir Monday, a weekly newsletter and reading series now hosted by Narratively, and supported by Granta, Tim House, Catapult, Narratively, and Guernica, selects entries from across the web, not just the host publications. Recent installments have picked up pieces from sources like Oldster, The LA Review of Books, and a Brooklyn-based site called Pigeon Pages (“We are proud of the eggs we nest.”)
A piece in any of the above, or elsewhere for that matter, might be “echoed” in the newsletter and help expand your base of readers.
One participant in an earlier Zoom session recommended a $5/month subscription to Duotrope, a database of publishing resources with extensive listings of magazines, agents, and publishers large and small. The service also offers to keep a running list of all of your submissions. Many publications operate on a shoestring with small staffs and can take months to respond. So, lots of writers submit simultaneously if allowed. It’s useful to have a current list of the status of your efforts.
Poets and Writers (https://www.pw.org) is an excellent source of information not only on literary publications, but also writing programs, contests, residencies, and literary agents.
Growing a readership requires persistence, patience, some old-fashioned literary sleuthing, and most importantly, a belief that your work does deserve readers. Having a thick skin is absolutely crucial. Publishing your short pieces can take as much time as writing and crafting the work; but in today’s outpouring of words, opinions, and perspectives, you have to relish the challenge.