You have a notebook full of revised and polished fiction that you are just dying to get published. What do you do now? The answer is both simple and difficult. It is simple in that all you have to do is submit your work to journals (by the best process) and it is difficult in that you should be prepared for lots of rejection slips. In this article, I wish to share with you some of the perks of literary publishing and to assist you with preparing your manuscript and choosing the journals to which you will send your work.
The world of literary publishing is one where you will find a vast amount of competition. There are thousands upon thousands of people submitting to journals daily. There are not near as many journals as would be needed to publish all of the good work reviewed by them. Therefore, the process is extremely selective. Journals usually have aesthetic grounds that they use to review a piece of writing. To be completely honest, you are very very lucky if they read your manuscript past the first paragraph. This is because they "know" what they want to publish and if your piece is not it, the eyes of the editor are trained to know.
Just recently, I had the opportunity to attend the workshops and reading of Stephen Corey, the editor of The Georgia Review, here on the campus of Morehead State University. In a workshop on literary publishing, Corey said that The Georgia Review receives about 10,000-15,000 poetry submissions a year, and about 5,000-7,000 stories. Out of those figures they publish 12-15 of the stories. Those should not be discouraging numbers, however, to a dedicated writer. If you revise and take the time to make you work the best it can be, you are already ahead of many of the submitting writers.
Corey also said that the first paragraph to a page is one which determines whether they read on through the manuscript. They have read so much work that they know how to recognize the work worthy of reviewing for publication. This is not a horrible thing to those of us out there who wish to be published. It is the only way that they can give the well written manuscripts that they receive the time that they deserve. Work on those first paragraphs and make them good along with the rest of the story.
