Wednesday, September 30, 2009

A Great Resource

Duotrope’s Digest is a website that can be an author’s best friend! A couple of years ago, I received some great advice from an editor. His name was Patrick LoBrutto, and he told me that if I wanted to break into the horror market with my writing, I should consider writing and publishing some short stories to start getting my name out there. And I did

But what I discovered was that when you write short stories, you then have to find markets to submit them to. So I bought one of those really thick books that has about a thousand listings for places to send your story; you know the one. After scouring over it for hours, I had a list of about five places to send my stories. It was a start, but not a very good one.

So next I did a search on the Internet and one of the markets I found said that they supported Duotrope’s Digest, so I went and checked it out. And boy am I glad I did. It’s a database of over 2000 markets for fiction and poetry. It’s searchable, and if you sign up, it even has a submission tracker you can use to keep track of where your stories are. I love it!

And it’s free. They do ask for a donation, and I happily send them a few bucks a couple of times a year. It’s a lot cheaper – and better – than that thick book that I don’t have to buy anymore!

You can find Duotrope’s Digest at http://duotrope.com/. You can find out more about the author of this article at http://www.DougMcIntire.com.

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