This video is for any writer. Whether you are already published (either self-pub or trad pub) or if you are just starting out as a writer.

For starters, any short stories of mine that you have ever read were originally submitted to a literary magazine and not accepted. So I have been doing this FOR A WHILE. But I was doing it all wrong.

My short stories were… long. Novellas. Novelettes. While some literary magazines specifically look for these, they were too long. Escaping Avila Chase and Interview with a Vanlifer are published and bound as stand-alones. That’s likely too long.

I was only sending them to the three or four most prestigious literary magazines I could think of off the top of my head, getting no response, and calling it.

And each literary magazine will define the lengths differently. Some call anything up to 1000 words flash fiction, some say only up to 600 words. Confusing.

The first thing I needed to do was to write down my new story ideas and revise. With short stories, every sentence really has to carry weight. After working with my agent on two books, I felt much stronger in my ability to refine.

Pitching to smaller, more niche magazines helps because fewer people pitch them, you can build more credits and bona fides this way. I would check the author bio on all the books I was reading to see their lit mag credentials. That helped with the research.

And then I found Chill Subs. I could track where I had already submitted. Now I did have to manually enter this, but it was SOO helpful. Within each listing, I can see if they are open to submissions. What length do they like. How often they respond or if they respond at all. Do they pay authors for their work? Do they require a fee to submit? All of it.

Then came the cover letter. So I found in Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal, she had a great template for these cover letters. And they were short and sweet.

What I found out online is, short fiction gets a SHORT cover letter.
I would also spend time checking who the fiction editor was if I could find it. So it wasn’t “To Whom It May Concern,” I either addressed the Fiction Editor by name or “The Fiction Team,”

Then it was time to submit. So I tried to take a similar tack that I did with querying agents and try to focus on the lit mags that responded the fastest first, but that didn’t always line up. At first, just rejections. Okay, tweak the cover letter. Then I started to get personalized rejections. Most of the lit mags use Submittable or Duosoma or a system so they can send form responses. “We received the story.” “Sorry but no thanks.” So when I got a unique response, I knew I was on the right track.

I read an article on Lit Hub that said it takes about 100 submissions to finally get a short story accepted. Well, I was at 50 when I finally got the email with “ACCEPTANCE” in the subject line. I was genuinely shocked!!

But you can read my satirical short story Bystander on January House’s website, AND it will be available in print for their winter issue. The link to purchase is below!

Resources:
-ChillSubs: https://www.chillsubs.com/browse/magazines
-Duotrope: https://duotrope.com/
-Erica Dreyfus/The Practicing Writer 2.0: https://erikadreifus.substack.com?r=1s6spt
-Author’s Publish https://authorspublish.com/
-Before and After the Book Deal: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46065066-before-and-after-the-book-deal

Read my short fiction:
Bystander on January House: https://januaryhouselit.com/2025/06/26/bystander/
Escaping Avila Chase: https://1mkwilliams.com/escaping-avila-chase/
Interview with a #Vanlifer: https://1mkwilliams.com/interview-with-a-vanlifer/

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