5 Ways to Find Lit Mags

This was originally published as part of our free course, A Submitter’s Guide to Lit Mags, on The Forever Workshop. Read the original post in its entirety here.

I'm going to tell you a lie. A lie everyone but writers seems to know is a lie.

"There is no money in writing!"

There is money in writing. You have it.

Some see that as an opportunity to provide a need in exchange for that money. Others will just try to screw you out of it. Nothing makes that more obvious than when you start to dig into the various ways to discover new lit mags. Let's take a look at your options.

Google is a messy way to find lit mags

Lit mag lists you find through Google tend to come from websites with no real knowledge of the industry. They publish these lists once or twice a year because it drives SEO traffic, so they can sell you something related on their website.

Worse, you often have places just changing the date on their content so it shows up when people write "2024". This gets even worse if you start looking for niche genres because so few publish about them; it's more likely than not that you'll wind up with a five-year-old list of 50% defunct magazines.

E.g., top three results for "where to publish fiction," not including places like Reddit, Quora, or Medium —

• Where to Submit Short Stories: 20 Places Accepting Submissions (Reedsy) (originally published 2020)
• Where to Submit Short Stories: 30 Options for Writers (The Write Life) (originally published by another author who-knows-when)
• 24 OF THE BEST JOURNALS ACCEPTING SHORT STORY SUBMISSIONS (Writers) (originally published 2020)

These are not recommendations. They are thirst traps.

The one thing Google is good for is finding acceptance rates. If you Google [Magazine]'s acceptance rate, it will tell you right at the top wherever it's been listed.

Social media is OK for finding lit mags (if you're the type of person who likes finding things on social media)

This method is best for those with a community-focused goal for submitting. Most magazines are active on social media. The upside of using social media is that you get to engage directly with the editors of a magazine, gather insights, and be the first to hear about special calls. It is important to note that the number of followers a lit mag has means almost nothing. Engagement is your metric. How often are people commenting, liking, sharing, their content?

There are a lot of free online tools for analyzing social media. If you plug any Twitter or Instagram in, it will give you their engagement rate by “%.” A good engagement rate on Instagram is 3–5%. On Twitter, this is much lower (0.02%–0.09%). Here is a tool for Instagram you can use that isn’t perfect, but is free. And here is one for Twitter.

If you see engagement rates lower than these, a few things might be happening. Sometimes, a magazine is older, popular for other reasons, and has simply picked up a lot of followers along the way that they don't really engage with. But others may have such low engagement rates because they spam follow-for-follow, force writers to subscribe to submit, or buy followers to look more popular than they are. A magazine with 1,000 super-engaged followers will get you more attention than a dead social media with 100,000.

Submittable's Discover page is OK if you don't mind fees

Submittable has a page on its website that acts as a feed for submission calls. Problem: Loads of the calls that pop up are for constantly recurring contests by magazines or organizations with no masthead and enticing prizes, charging silly fees.

Submittable is not a filtering service. They do not vet magazine calls or care. It's not their role. Using their “Discover” feature can be an interesting scroll, and you'll find things here and there, but the effort/reward ratio is skewed AF.

Newsletters are the best all-around pick for those who want to learn passively and submit

There are several newsletters out there that focus on the indie-lit world. The two best for submission calls are, ahem, Sub Club (100% biased) and Authors Publish.

The clearest distinction is that Author’s Publish only shares calls where there is no fee to submit. You sign up and get emails of opportunities weekly.

Both newsletters offer curated lists, and the nice thing about curated lists is that usually, the curator cares more than an algorithm. You'll get more details, often those you won't find in databases, and overall, have a better time.

Databases are the most accurate way to discover new magazines

The two main databases in indie lit are Chill Subs and Duotrope.

Chill Subs

Pros: Friendly, free, community-driven. Cons: A bit buggy (for now).

Duotrope

Pros: Straightforward, better sub-genre specific filters, better tracker data. Cons: Paid, somewhat hard to navigate, no community.

Databases are the best for folks who want to narrow their search or discover new listings. You can save listings, get notifications, and schedule your submissions.

My favorite way to find magazines and the best for the health and well-being of the writing world

I think the best way to find lit mags is to stalk writers. When writers get published, they have their lit bio at the bottom. In this bio, they tend to share their most prestigious publication credits.

Seek out writers who have a similar style to you, find their bios, websites, and socials. Read their work. Look for where their work was published. How did those lit mags treat those writers? Were those pieces nominated for awards? Was the work promoted and presented well?

Almost any question you could have about a magazine can be sussed out through the lens of how they treated a writer's work. But most importantly: style, subgenre, vibe, etc. You'll know your work fits because you'll know they've liked similar work in the past. Like when I found prose poem publishers by stalking Leigh Chadwick.

The easiest way to find a writer's website? Google their name + "writer/author". Easy. One. And done.