The Poetteer

Hello Poetteers, Recently, there has been a big conversation about submission fees. I don't like paying for submission fees. I don't get why you have to pay people to read your work. You are paying for a submission you aren't even sure will be published. The price deters me away. It can be hard to afford but the experience might be nice. I’ll pay submission fees if I fully stand behind the press itself. Whether there is a fee or not you have to research if the journal or publisher is legit. But I do understand that they have fees because that along with book sales it is what keeps the journal or publisher running. I have my own way to go about that and I want to share it with you. Read their submission guidelines. Check out which authors they have published. Read a previously published poetry book or journal issue to get a feel for their style. I appreciate that there are journals and publishers that will take your submissions for free. But the fees could...

Hello Poetteers, In the beginning of my poetry career, I had done a few poetry submissions. After doing those few submissions I saw their appreciation for my work and stuck with their magazines. I eventually stopped doing new submissions. Even after the old ones, I stuck to closed their doors. At the end of 2016, I picked up the poetry submissions again. All the poetry submissions were to literary journals. I never submitted to small presses. For a while, I didn't find ones that seemed trusting. Once I found a small press it makes me feel better to recognize an author they have published. I may start sending to presses. It's best to find them through Poets Market, P&W, etc. I’ve heard bad stories about poetry submissions. It never happened to me but then one caught up to me. I found a new literary journal and it was the first one I saw with the theme that it had. It's hard to find literary journals with that theme. I'm not mentioning which journal and theme...