Current mood:

annoyed

Misconceptions Writers Have
Sometimes I get a glimpse into the kind of bad information writers are getting out there on the web and I cringe. It makes me angry because I was once a clueless writer and I could have easily been misled by stuff like this. It also annoys me because I can tell that there are writers out there getting bad advice because I see the evidence in my slush pile. Unprofessional cover letters, inappropriately formatted submissions, stories that do not fit our guidelines AT ALL. It's like going through a mine field.

I am, of course, not alone. Just the other day bgliterary shared what huge mistakes writers made when sending subs to him. And I know enough editors that Tales from the Slush Pile can be at once amusing and disheartening.

I've been looking for some other places to teach writing classes since my novel class has been somewhat successful. I was hoping to do some stuff focusing on short fiction, so I poked around and found a few places to apply. One of the places I pitched a class to was a writing information site run by a woman who is, I believe, a freelance non-fiction writer. Most of her site is devoted to that topic. She does have some stuff for fiction writers, but not much. The site also offers classes on various subjects. I didn't see one aimed for short fiction writers (though there were two for novels) so I asked if she'd be interested in adding one to her roster.

I got back a nice email saying that she didn't have a short fiction class now because that market is very 'harsh,' but said I could pitch a class to her anyway. I pitched two to her, one for short stories of any genre and one specifically for SF/F stories. I wasn't sure what she meant by the short story market being harsh, though. I don't see it as any more harsh than the novel selling market. I thought maybe she'd had a bad experience. The emphasis of the classes I pitched was how to make the market less harsh. Strategies for subbing, how to catch the editor's attention, and how to avoid getting bounced for being unprofessional by not reading the guidelines, subbing stories clearly not right for the market, or not formatting correctly. That kind of thing.

The woman, we'll call her Benji, wrote back saying the classes weren't quite right for her organization. They didn't really have the emphasis or 'fun' element she was looking for. Plus it didn't sound like the kind of classes her readers would clamor for. So far, this all seemed fine to me. I mean, if the class isn't what you're wanting, that's legit. But she said something else that made me kind of go... what?

But, if the class were to include, say, a large database of short story markets that students could pitch their stories to, well, that would be something. Kind of a how-to class with a textbook of short story markets. It would have to be original markets with info obtained from the publishers; not rewritten and republished writer's guidelines.

When I saw this, I immediately thought a couple of things. The line 'pitch their stories to' made me think Benji wasn't really aware of how short story markets work. Writers don't generally 'pitch' stories, they just send them in. Also, this thing about a market database... I thought there were already plenty of databases with writer's guidelines. Writer's Market for mainstream, Ralan's for genre. There are certainly more. Many of them are free. Why would students clamor to sign up for a class with a database of guidelines they could obtain on their own? And how would these guidelines differ from writer's guidelines given by the markets themselves? So I asked. This was her response:

The problem with writer's guidelines is that there is nothing unique about them. Any writer can access them and most of the writing sites and newsletters reprint them with abandon. They're full of information that is not unique for any one user (the writers), so, other than the fact that it contains hints on what they want in manuscripts, it's a free for all. Everybody has the same info so nobody really has an advantage over other writers in landing a contract with them.

She then went on to say her website never used writer's guidelines or even referenced them when making their market listings. Instead, they send questionnaires to editors and publishers asking for specific information and current needs. She claims that her market listings contain information that the magazine's own writer's guidelines do not because the mag's are usually several years old.

This didn't make any sense to me. Just in terms of the magazines that I work for, we keep our guidelines up to date all the time. If our needs change, we say so. Otherwise, what's on the website is what we currently need. Same with all of the other markets I'm aware of. And some of those markets have very, very detailed guidelines about what they do and do not want. Again, current needs being Good Fiction.

I don't know how specific Benji thinks writer's guidelines are supposed to be. Nor how that would give students in the class some kind of advantage over other writers who just happen to see the guidelines. What gives writers an advantage is writing well and following the guidelines. Knowing the market can help, too.

She basically wanted me to put together a database of what markets wanted from my students. How editors would determine what they wanted specifically from my students I do not know.

And again, the language that she uses in her email--talk of 'landing a contract' and this from later in the email:

And, even if a company requests submission of a complete manuscript, it's still better to have the information on what they want, straight from the editor, prior to beginning the story, thus giving the writer a much better chance of a sale.

Makes me think she's still thinking in terms of selling articles, not fiction.

So I wrote back explaining all of this and saying that obviously my class wasn't right for her website. But that she still had it wrong about how selling fiction to magazines worked and also wrong about how out of date writer's guidelines are. I got back an email this morning saying that it was nice my own magazine kept the guidelines up to date but the 'vast majority' of magazines did not.

Okay then.

I decided to check out the market listings on her website and see if what she said was true. She puts new ones up every week, so I looked at this week's and last week's. I only saw one listing that mentioned fiction, most of the others were for articles. This didn't surprise me because, as I said, her site is mainly for non-fiction freelancers. I looked at about half of them, and these three examples are indicative of what I saw overall:

InsidePOOL Magazine. No guidelines on website. There was contact information. Not listed in Writer's Market. So the only way to find out how to submit or what this market wants is to email them (even though they don't say you can do that on the website) or to go to Benji's site. So this market doesn't have writer's guidelines to be out of date with.

Mature Years Magazine. Writer's Market's guidelines contain exact same details plus some not listed on Benji's site. And the Writer's Market ones are better organized. No website for this magazine. Again, they don't have any other writer's guidelines to be out of date with.

Pediatrics for Parents has a website with very detailed guidelines saying exactly what they want and don't want and even what they want from both medical pro and non-pro writers. Also detailed on how they want the manuscript to look. Benji's site listing is not as detailed and contains a link to writer's guidelines on PoP's own website. Current Needs in Benji's listing offers nothing new or specific. Writer's Market listing is just as detailed as Benji's listing.

Now, the Writer's Market is a pay service. But it's $30 for a year or $2 for a month. Why would a student pay me $100 or more to take a class and give them market listings they can get on their own for $2? I was starting to suspect that basically I was supposed to do all the leg work in tracking down markets for my students instead of making them do it.

I decided to see if any of the other writer's guidelines I could find were out of date and not specific. I compared them to the listings I found on Benji's site.

The majority of what I see in Writer's Market Little and Literary section are detailed guidelines that contain the same information that Benji has. A little less than half of the guidelines I looked at had links to the magazine's website where more detailed guidelines could be found. Most of the listings included what markets did and did not want. All of them had been updated within the past three months.

Of the glossy magazines that pay high prices for fiction, their guidelines were all detailed, there were links to websites, and 90% of them had guidelines available on their sites. Most of the ones I looked at were detailed. Again, the Writer's Market listings were all updated within the past three months.

Now this is all for non-genre magazines for the most part. I'm sure I could go through Ralan's and see that all the guidelines were detailed and kept up to date. And that's a free site. Writer's Market does cost a little, but it's no more than the print version, and it's updated often and searchable. If you want detailed guidelines for free you can just go to B&N and copy down the ones you want and not buy the book. Or, in several cases, go to the website of the magazine itself.

So, I fail to see how creating yet another market database is something value-added for students in a class. If they're not willing to go out and do their own legwork, then they're not going to make very successful writers anyway. This whole business about giving them an advantage over every other writer out there is just marketing speak. It doesn't mean anything. It's not true. What gives writers an advantage is good writing and professional behavior.

What disturbs me most about this whole episode is, again, that Benji is out there advising writers and telling them how the publishing business works. She's probably very well-informed on the ins and outs of freelance article and non-fiction book publishing. I'm not doubting that at all. But the fact that she thinks she can apply that same thinking and techniques to fiction is a little scary. She thinks she knows, and thus she will probably pass on incorrect information to aspiring writers. I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, but I know the basics of how things work by now.

It makes me wonder if this is why no matter how many times editors cry out 'Read the Guidelines Before You Submit!" there are still plenty of writers out there who don't. Is it because they think the guidelines are all out of date, anyway, and don't reflect what the editors want?

And for you editors of non-fiction magazines out there, is that true for the majority of those publications? It just seems wrong, to me, for editors not to keep their own writer's guidelines up to date. If you're going to neglect them that much, then why even have them at all? Seems to me it would be in the best interest of the editors to keep the guidelines current so they get less stuff they don't want.

Bad information leads to writers making editors cranky. The more I see and experience, the more I feel that the first element is the root cause of many woes.