Post 200 and more market news

Welcome to my 200th post on Musings of An Aussie Writer (the blog). We've covered a huge amount of territory since August 2007. Hopefully those of you who visit here regular have managed to find something useful in my ramblings.

The market list has been completed. I've compiled 50 dark specific markets and 50 SpecFic markets that accept scratchings from the dark side. I've sent the list off to the President of AHWA, Mr Marty Young for his consideration. We'll see what happens from there.

I've also altered the list into my own submission pathway. If you go here, you'll find the intro page to submissions. You will find a list of market databases you can browse for free. Some of these are very extensive. I tend to use Ralan's Webstravaganza and Duotrope's Digest mainly but there are plenty to recommend for the others. From my intro submission page you will be able to access my submission pathway list (the link is at the bottom). This is tailored in two ways:

1) The list only contains markets that accept dark fiction. You will see it is divided into specifically dark markets and markets that accept dark fiction as well as the standard SpecFic fare. It is further divided by pay scales.

2) Only markets that accept email submissions are listed. Two reasons for this exist. I see no reason for cutting down additional trees when the majority of submissions gain rejections (hard fact of the industry) and it costs an arm and a leg to send things around the world from Australia. It means a few professional markets have been omitted--so be it. If I ever get to the point where I'm a household name, they can contact me for a submission.

Feel free to use my submissions path if you so wish. I suggest there is two ways it can be of use (lots of twos in this blog):

Submit your masterpieces using the top down approach. Send them to all the top paying markets that also allow you to submit it to other places at the same time (Simultaneous Submissions). This will allow you to send to multiple markets all at once and give you a chance to receive top dollar for your work. However these markets are very competitive and new writers find them very hard to get into.

The other option is to start at the bottom. Send your work out to the exposure paying markets first; build up a bio full of publishing credits. I suggest only one or two per low/exposure paying market. You should always be aiming to move up.

Once you get to the flat payment markets, you'll find there are a number of highly reputable ones that you will want to add to your bio. If you get that far, I strongly suggest you start submitting from the top down.

Another reason I've included a list of market databases is because of anthology submission calls. I have no intention of trying to keep up with them, when Ralan and Duotrope already do an outstanding job. Anthology and competition guidelines and themes can give excellent prompts for new stories--don't ignore them. They will give you inspiration for all sorts of new pieces, which you can decide on later if you want to submit to the market that spawned it originally. I've written many stories from this source of inspiration and ended up sending them to all sorts of markets.

At this point in time, I was going to begin blogging about my research trip yesterday. I've been to the post office and posted off my assignments, and I've finished the market work for the time being. I'm now sitting down to lunch but it's already 3:30 in the afternoon and I haven't started any fictional writing yet!

I'll blog on the research trip as soon as I can but for now I want to get some real work done.

I hope you find the market list useful. Let me know if you do and let me know if there are any broken links or additions you'd like to see.

Good luck with your submissions.

BT