Duotrope’s Digest: A Great Way to Find a “Home” for Your Writing!

Another great resource when seeking markets for your writing is Duotrope’s Digest. This website is a compilation of writing markets and is described as “a database of over 1700 current markets for short fiction, poetry, and novels/collections.”

Duotrope’s free service includes a search engine that allows you to find the most appropriate markets for the type of writing you do, as well as the level of compensation you are seeking for your work–from non-paying to token payments and from semi-pro through professional compensation levels, with other payment levels in between. They also have an “Unknown” category for those markets whose level of compensation isn’t available.

You can either use their search engine to generate a list of all the markets within one of three categories (Short Fiction, Poetry, or Novels & Collections) or narrow your search still further using such criteria as Genre, Length, Sub-Type, Reprints, Awards, Themed, and others; and you may also search by Publication Title. You also have the option of hiding temporarily closed markets so these do not appear in your list.

Duotrope’s Digest uses a very interesting system of color-coded symbols to present all the pertinent info about each market on their list. Info covered includes Type of Media (Electronic or Print), Length Ranges/Categories, as well as specific Genres accepted by each publication. (Their Genre listing also includes an “Open to Most” category.)

They also give you Response Time information in each individual market description, as well as statistical info on percentages of Acceptances vs. Rejections, Rewrite Requests, Non-responses, and Author Withdrawals of manuscripts. In addition, each market listing contains a Before Submitting section, giving tips for submitting your own work. They also tell you when the most recent response reported to them was received by an author from the publication and also the latest submission date of manuscripts that have received responses. They tell you when the market was added, when its entry was last updated, and when it was last checked. Each market description page also includes a link to the publication’s website.

Duotrope updates its market listings about once a day–They, in fact tell you exactly how much time has elapsed in hours and minutes since their last update!–and once a week, they check all listings to make sure they are still current.

While this site focuses on fiction and poetry, some of their markets accept essays and articles, as well, though these tend to relate to the genres covered by the particular publication. In fact, some of their markets even accept such things as interviews, scripts, photography, artwork, music, and other media. So, it’s definitely worth a look!

Duotrope’s Digest is a helpful site offering an impressive list of free services to the writer who is interested in finding just the right market for his or her work. Aside from those services already mentioned above, they offer a fascinating compilation of statistics related to the marketing of your writing, including lists of the 25 slowest-responding and 25 fastest-responding markets, as well as the 25 most challenging and the 25 most approachable markets. (This can be found by clicking “Curious?” in their Quick Menu.) Very interesting stuff!

They also offer a weekly e-mail, based on your writing category of interest, informing you of any new markets that have become available that week, as well as any updates that have been made to the markets already on their list since the last Duotrope’s Digest e-mail. This service can be a real boon to the busy writer and can make keeping up-to-date on the latest markets an absolute breeze!

Anyone who visits the site may search for market info and also read all the valuable info posted to the site, but an additional service is available to registered members: that of tracking your submissions on the site. Membership is free, though they do ask for donations to help the site stay that way.

Check out this site and find just the right home for that literary masterpiece that’s been sitting there gathering dust!