The (Submission) Grinder- Submission Tool for Literary Magazines

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Duotrope (check it out here), an online database of markets for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. As promised, I have a similar post today. This one for an online database that is free to use.

The Grinder, also known as The (Submission) Grinder, is an online database of markets for fiction and poetry. While the website says it does not yet include nonfiction, they intend to expand to that market in the future. The database is comparable in size to Duotrope with listings for over 7,000 markets.

Also worth mentioning is that there are less submission entries for several markets, which decreases the accuracy of the acceptance and rejection statistics; however, there are other markets with more data logged for the past 12 months than Duotrope, and the statistics provided are still useful either way.

The statistics they provide are gathered by voluntary reporting of users. Here are a few of the statistics you’ll find:

• Average response time of publication
• Percent of Submissions that are Accepted
• Percent of Rejections that get a personal response
• Submission and Response Timelines (illustrating when responses were received and whether the submissions were accepted or rejected).

When available, The Grinder includes information on the pay rate of the publication, and whether they accept simultaneous or multiple submissions.

The Grinder has a search function to narrow results by genre, subject, word count, etc. You can also run a search for a specific publication title.

The features discussed above can be used without signing into the website, but if you register the site also has a submission tracker. This keeps track of where you’ve submitted your piece along with the average response time of the publication. There are indicators for when the average response time and estimated response period have passed, so you can query the publication on the status of your submission.

The information you put in the tracker, is used to update statistics for each publication on response times and percentages of acceptances and rejections. The information is for your use, and other users cannot see which of your stories have been rejected; although, there is an option in your user profile to have your name listed for the recent acceptances (past 30 days) of a publication.

Navigation of the website is not as polished as Duotrope, but it is user-friendly.

Here are a few other features that The Grinder provides:

• Favorite publications
• Ignore publications
• Follow Market
• Tracks Lifetime Stats of Submissions (e.g., No. of Submissions, No. of Rejections, No. Acceptances, No. of Pending Submissions)

For more information, or to try The Grinder, visit http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/. If you have stories ready to submit, you may find this post on Manuscript Formatting helpful. Best of luck with your submissions!

If there are similar websites to Duotrope or The Grinder that you enjoy using, feel free to comment below to help expose writers to additional resources.