Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Link of the Month: Duotrope

EDITED to add a link to my December 1, 2012 post on Duotrope's move to a paid subscription model.
EDITED a second time to add a link to my December 5, 2012 post on deciding to leave Duotrope.

Duotrope is likely best known for its extensive database of markets for short fiction and poetry. While that's certainly the core feature of the site, there are a number of ways which writers can use the site to their benefit.

  • The Theme Calendar is one of the major sources which I use for generating the monthly Upcoming Deadlines posts. Currently there are over 200 listings in the calendar, primarily for short fiction submission calls.
  • The Interview page has a collection of over 500 interviews with editors of various periodicals. For publications you are not familiar with, this can be an additional way of learning about the preferences of the people who will be reviewing your submission.
  • The Market News and Updates page is a very quick way to see what entries have been added to the market database in the past week.
  • Finally, the Submission Tracker allows you to easily stay on top of your current and historical submissions. If you've got a lot of stories or poems out at market, this can be extremely useful.
If you haven't already used Duotrope, it's definitely worth your time to check it out. Are there any features of Duotrope which aren't mentioned above which you have found useful? If so, please mention them in the comments.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing the post! I think the statistics Duotrope offers are incredibly useful too. When submitting a story to a publisher, I use the response time averages to help with designing a plan of attack.

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    Replies
    1. Dale, that's a GREAT point. I use those as well, but didn't think to include them in my post. Thank you for adding this tip!

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