HOW TO SUBMIT

A writer shares his knowledge and strategies for getting published within the world of small presses and literary magazines.

As a former contributor to the literary website HTMLGIANTand the editor responsible for the “Where to Submit” list for the Entropyonline magazine, Sweeney uses his expertise to offer a warmly encouraging how-to for writers. Specifically, his intended audience are those who aim to submit their work to places outside the traditional Big Five publishing houses and without an agent advocating for them. Sweeney emphasizes various reasons a writer may have for wanting to get published, encouraging his readers to be honest about the validation they seek from external sources and the kind of community they hope to build. He provides basic tools to begin research into different publications, including templates for cover letters, and he explains how he prefers to “tier” his submissions to maximize chances of a story being published within a year and to avoid overlap. The author rounds out his advice with chapters that offer a behind-the-scenes look into his own work as an editor, and interviews with successful writers, including Lisbeth White and Jackson Bliss, who share their perspectives on the challenging world of publishing. Sweeney’s tone is approachable and pleasant throughout: “When I first dreamed of being published, I wanted ‘fame, glory, and money,’ in a surprisingly unironic way,” he writes frankly early on, making readers feel at ease before he begins breaking down how hard it can be to stand out. Smartly, Sweeney quickly shows how these complications can be potential advantages, as when he encourages authors to get a sense of different publications’ schedules in order to “approach your work rhythmically rather than getting lost in question of what to revise when.” The final interviews effectively support one of Sweeney’s main points about community, as when one author, Zoe Tuck, smartly describes literary journals as “a room I want to be in.”

A practical, thoughtfully constructed guide for aspiring authors.