In preparing your short story for publication submission there are several points to keep in mind.  Short stories are much better than novels for one reason: they're short. 

Writing a short story is a very good way to get your foot in the door of the writing industry.  You can experiment with different narrative styles and play with characters, situations, and tone.  Short stories can be as short as a paragraph or as long as 50 pages, so you have wide degree of freedom with which to work. 

After having written a short story that you feel is complete and that you are ready to share with the world it’s time to proceed with the submission process.  Even though the fact that assistant editors and interns at literary magazines are regularly drowned in mailbags full of submissions often referred to as a "slushpile", getting your short story published is not always an impossibility  

The first step is to meticulously check your spelling, punctuation and grammar.  Having stupid typos and mistakes is the easiest way to get a rejection letter.  The only exception to this is if you want to get crazy and creative, such as writing a story in the first person from the perspective of someone who has incorrect grammar.  If you've got a well-thought out idea behind that spelling mistake or lack of punctuation, then you're fine.  

Always make sure that your short story makes sense.  A good test for this is to hand your story to a friend, roommate, family member or writing group.  It's very important that the reader can clearly follow everything that's going on. 

There are thousands of magazines and websites that publish short stories. Submitting to all of them would be expensive, time-consuming, and futile.  You must narrow the field and send your story to the publications that are most likely to publish it.  In other words, you have to find a "fit."  To narrow the field, ask yourself these questions:  

Is this your first time submitting a story for publication?  If you haven’t established a name or reputation for yourself then you probably should stick to smaller magazines or those that are specifically geared to helping out novice writers. 

Do you want to make money from getting the story published?  Even the most highly respected literary journals won't pay or certainly don’t pay much for stories.  To make serious cash, shoot for big glossy publications that have money to burn.  Either that, or try to publish a book of a collection of your own short stories.  It’s important to remember for your first short story that being satisfied with getting it published should be payment enough. 

Is it crucial to see your story printed on paper?  If this is not a primary concern then online literary sites might be a good start.  There are a lot of them and it still counts as a legitimate publication.  The downside is that there's no guarantee that the story will get read. 

Consider if your story has a particular ideological/cultural background that others may identify with?  This is the question that many first-time writers forget to think about.  There are dozens of magazines out there for all conceivable ethnic, cultural and religious groups, as well as lifestyle magazines for people with particular hobbies or occupations as well as magazines for geographic regions.  Figure out the target audience for your story and you'll improve your chances of getting published. 

Are you willing to pay to have your story read or published?  This is a question that even successful and established writers often struggle with.  There are hundreds of short fiction contests across the country with prizes ranging anywhere from $50 to a couple grand. I f you think your story can win, you can shell out the $10 - $15 per entry.  Just make sure that the contests are reputable: find out who last year's winners were, and make sure these are real people, and that your story has a legitimate chance.  

Think of any connections that might be able to help you?  This doesn't just apply to you if your dad edits Vanity Fair.  Almost every college and most towns have a literary magazine, and if you're interested in being published you might want to get to know some editors.  They'll be able to give you inside tips on what the magazine is looking for and if they like you they'll probably read your stuff first. 

There are two central ways of finding publications for your story: 

The Novel & Short Story Writer's Market could very well be your bible.  It lists thousands of magazines, with short descriptions of each that should be enough for you to know whether your submission might find a home there. 

The other way of finding suitable publications for your story is to do your own research.  Search the Internet and do your homework in exploring the publications that might have an interest in your potential submission. 

Once you have carefully made a list of suitable publications, most of these magazines both print and online will make available a set of writer's guidelines that will let you know both what they're looking for and what format requirements they demand.  They use these guidelines so that they have to do as little work as possible.  Some of the guidelines are industry-wide:  

·Don't send your only copy of the story

·Double-space your manuscript

·Print on one side of the page in a clear and simple font (e.g., Times New Roman)

·Include a brief cover or query letter 

Some magazines can be incredibly picky about some of the specifications (e.g., demanding paperclips rather than staples, or that your name not appear anywhere on the manuscript), so it's important that you get your hands on guidelines for every publication to which you submit your story.  

One of the most common requests made in these guideline pages is for "No simultaneous submissions."  That means that if you submit your story to that magazine, you're not allowed to send it to any other magazine until you get a response.  Unlike the other guidelines, you can feel comfortable about ignoring this request.  The odds of getting published in even a single magazine are fairly low; two at once would be uncanny.  If you do simultaneously submit to magazines that ask you not to, your risk is jeopardizing your relationship with those particular magazines if they were to find out.  In the rare case that your story is accepted at two publications all you need to do is call or write all the other magazines considering your story and tell them not to bother.  The more publications that you submit to greatly increase your possibility of getting published. 

You've got your story, your list of magazines, and now you’re ready to start sending out your submissions.  Items easily purchased at an office supply store are as follows: 

·Page-size manila envelops 

·Letter-size envelops

·Postage stamps (at least three per magazine on your list) 

Include a cover or query letter and remember that your letter is one of thousands written by people who want to get stories published just like you.  If you have been published before, you definitely want to let the editor know, and perhaps you might get some sympathy points if you make it clear that you're a novice willing to take any kind of constructive criticism.

Include a line of sincere praise for the magazine that explains why you want to be published in its pages.  Do not try to explain or contextualize the story.  Just give your brief description of it.  Don't write a lot of personal biographical information in your letter. 

In sending out your submissions, address your story to the editor who will be reading it, by name if possible (e.g., the fiction editor in the case of a large magazine) or To Whom It May Concern.  Definitely mention the name of the publication, but feel free to cut and paste in your word processor and send out ten or twenty nearly identical letters. 

Make out a pile of Self Addressed, Stamped Envelopes (SASEs) for each one of your submission packets.  You should include these so that the magazine can respond to you with an acceptance or rejection, and hopefully some editorial advice. Not including a SASE is often interpreted as inconsiderate and will generally negate a response or return of your submission.  

Before you deposit all these into the mail, double-check to make sure you have an accurate list of exactly what magazines you submitted to, and when you sent out the envelopes.  

It’s a smart idea to keep a detailed list of what you sent to whom and on what date.  That way, you won't mistakenly deluge a single magazine with multiple submissions at the same time and you'll also be able to track which magazines have gotten back to you and which haven't.  

In most cases, magazines will state their response times along with their writer's guidelines, and these will range from two weeks to six months. 

Don’t be disappointed if the first couple or first couple dozen responses are rejections.  If you are rejected by all of the magazines to which you submitted, you should either go back to step two and re-evaluate your goals of publication or go back to the beginning and try the whole process with a different story.  

If you're lucky enough to receive an acceptance letter then you must understand and accept the conditions of the agreement between you and the publication. 

It can be easy to forget that your story is really your story when an authoritative editor tells you that you have to edit out or change certain things. Of course, there's no law against caving in to the editor's every whim, but even the most domineering editor will be disappointed if you don't stand up for your own work.  When an editor suggests changes, they are almost always sincere suggestions and not commands.  So make sure you're satisfied with the final text.  Most respectable magazines should also let you see an advance copy of any illustrations that will accompany your story; if this is important to you, make it clear to the editor. 

The legal status of your story after it is published depends on what rights you end up selling to the magazine. Though you automatically own anything you write when you write it, there are several categories of copyrights and publication rights that you should understand and be comfortable with before finalizing your contract.

Andrew was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and the University of California at Santa Cruz.  He has authored The Cigar Connoisseur along with numerous magazine articles on cigars, food & wine and travel.  Aside from these areas of interest, Andrew has written for both film and television having sold an original screenplay as well as a two-hour A&E Biography.