The Lit Mag Lab: SUBMITTER TOOLS & TIPS

How to Find Lit Mags, Journals & Presses to Submit Your Poetry, Stories & Chapbook Manuscripts To

Vevna Forrow — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 16:34:17 GMT

I covered this in EP2: How Do You Find Cool Literary Magazines, Journals & Presses to Submit to? Back in April 2025, and later a bit further in EP51: Should I Be Paying Reading Fees for Submissions? Are They a Scam? | Find Fee-Free Lit Mags in August and have a few episodes further on some of these databases, such as Chill Subs and various submission management systems’ Discovery Pages in existence. Do note that these aren’t all the places in existence; tons of other newsletters, art organizational sites, and blogs exist for finding calls for submissions.

Here are some of the primary ways to find more places with submission window opportunities, or rather homes for your poems, short shorties, art, creative work, etc,. below:

Chills Subs

Website: https://www.chillsubs.com/

They also have a wide array of staff recs, lists and collections too:

Chill Subs | Social Media Channels

@authorspublish | Instagram

Canada | Directory of Literary Magazines

Website: https://litmags.ca/directory/

Literistic

Website: https://home.literistic.com/

Published to Death | Blogspot

Website: https://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/

Heavy Feather Review | Calls For Submissions Page

Website: https://heavyfeatherreview.org/calls/#journals

Every Writer’s Resource | Big List

Website: https://www.everywritersresource.com/literarymagazines/

Reddit | r/CallforSubmissions

Website: https://www.reddit.com/r/CallforSubmissions/

Reddit | r/litmags

Website: https://www.reddit.com/r/litmags/

Facebook | Calls for Submissions (Poetry, Art, Fiction) | Publication Announcements

Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/submityourwork/

Erica Verrillo | Medium

Website: https://ericaverr.medium.com/

Trish Hopkinson | Call for Submissions

Website: https://trishhopkinson.com/category/call-for-submissions/

The Practicing Writer 2.0: A Newsletter from Erika Dreifus

Website: https://erikadreifus.substack.com/

Chill Subs | Discord

P.S. Don’t forget that Chill Subs has a wicked cool community Discord server, where a #submission-calls channel exists too:

Join Info: https://www.chillsubs.com/blog/join-our-discord

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by Dipity Lit Mag & dipity.press founded by Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series by pledging your support or buying me a coffee or pizza below if you’d like, but not required to by any means. As always, keep writing and reading poetry. Have awesome days ahead!

Top Reasons Why Poets & Writers Get Declines + Rejections When Submitting To Literary Magazines

Vevna Forrow — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 14:30:28 GMT

Here are the primary and most common reasons for declines:

#1: Not Reading the Submission Guidelines

You may have submitted 5-10+ poems when, e.g., they only permitted one or up to 3 for the contest or call.
Some lit mags and journals are lenient and may not instantly disqualify you or only consider the first poem or short story, and some places do allow up to 10 poems, 3 short stories, etc., but not all, so read very carefully 2- 3 times.
You’ve submitted a poem that does not follow the theme of the call whatsoever and is devoid of connection to the required prompt.
Length Requirements Out of Bounds:
- A lot of places online and print have maximum line requirements—if you go over at all, they’ll decline it. If there’s no defined limit, then you’re in the clear.
- Too long—going over their word counts, you shouldn’t be submitting an essay to a flash fiction call.
- If your manuscript is nearly 100-300 pages and they’re asking for a chapbook, remember it's supposed to be a bite-sized collection, and most chapbook calls require each one to have a distinct focus or be themed overall. There’s a point where something wouldn’t be considered a chapbook anymore.
Putting your name and contact deets inside your submission file or on the file name is a big NO-NO, when they specifically tell you not to for concealed and blind reading practices, especially on contests—only until the final round or official acceptance do they reveal names to make it fair amongst reading team scoring and votes.
- Contests are much stricter on this, sometimes if it’s a general submission, you may just get a warning for future submissions, too
Adding Unnecessary Visuals:
- If they did say no to photographs or artwork, do not include it.
- A visual poem or concrete poetry in a particular shape can be cool, though you should think about your poem’s word choices first and foremost, then circle back to line spacing and formatting, and look at the publication closely, are all poems left-aligned—do they not permit screenshots, etc?
Location & Eligibility: Plenty of lit mags accept work from writers around the world; however, not all. Sometimes, they only accept within where they’re based, e.g., their state or country, so be sure to ask if you’re not 100% sure or scan their website closely for those deets or even Chill Subs and other publisher directories.
- Age Restrictions: Some accept work from writers and artists of all ages, whereas others may have under-18 or over-18+ requirements
- Are you part of the LGBTQ+ community, BPIOC, or do you have a disability? Some lit mags and journals only focus on writers from underrepresented voices or have other eligibility requirements.
Frequency:
- Some publishers will tell you that you must wait for the next open window or the following year until you can submit again, whereas others may not have that restriction or have a minimal readers’ fee for doing so.

#2: Lack of Creativity

The work consists of barely any unique lines or word choices across the board from start to finish.
- Example: “I felt angry and fell asleep—I missed her eyes—they were like the sky” is far too flat and obvious
- Example: “We ate breakfast in bed and found heaven” is too bland
You should not have a predictable ending for short stories—there should be development in your work that surprises the reader, no matter the length of it.

#3: Not Enough Cohesion or Clarity

While poems and short stories can be abstract and consist of multiple cryptic meanings, they should have a focal point—think about what the end goal of your work is.
- Does it strive to showcase healing?
- Is it to highlight overcoming grief or a memory of lost love?
- Are you hoping to raise awareness on a particular topic or expand upon your feelings regarding a current event in the world?
Your poem should not feel like a Frankenstein poem or chop shop one, where it feels disconnected in some stanzas or groups of lines or jumps around all over the place—think about a map when writing your work—getting the reader from Point A to Point B.

#4: Rush Hour Road

You’ve submitted a half-baked poem or short story that’s filled with potholes, road bumps, and a ton of grammatical errors, making it not neither smooth nor enjoyable to read because you were rushing to meet the window deadline.
- It’s ok to have a few typos here and there, as most journals do copy editing and proofreading before publication or permit corrections. However, not every single line should contain typos that can decrease the overall impact and bog down your work.
When you submit at the very last minute without reading the guidelines closely, you have a much higher chance of getting a decline or missing items, or submitting beyond the allotted amount of photos, poems, etc.

#5: Full Capacity Reached

Sometimes your work may be super strong, but the lit mag or journal may only publish, e.g., 14 poems, 32 poems, etc., in each issue, so slots fill quickly in most cases for their layout.

#6: Opposite Days

What you’re submitting does not match the vibe, mission, or core subject matter, or focus of the lit mag, for instance:
- Sending a graphic narrative horror poem to a lit mag or journal that publishes work solely on true love. [REJECTED]
- Providing a short story about your first restaurant purchase to a lit mag or journal that is centralized solely around motherhood [REJECTED]
- Submitting a sad Humpty Dumpty poem based on true events to a lit mag that publishes humorous and funny work [REJECTED]

#7: RATED-R or XXX Content

Overkill on cursing, e.g., swear words in every single line, is a bit much. It’s ok to swear now and then and to do dark themes or horror writing, but it should have a purpose and be done so in moderation so that it does not distract or eat away at the poem.
Some lit mags are geared toward children, so obviously, you should keep your poem closer to RATED G or PG-13 if that’s their specified audience.
Attacking in nature or name-calling towards public figures, politicians, celebrities, individuals, groups, communities, etc., can land you in hot water. You can write a poem or story about bullying and have jokes, but you shouldn’t become a bully in your own writing. Some publications do focus on political events, though; again, read the publication carefully to learn what topics are acceptable and screen their guidelines multiple times before submitting.
Take caution when writing about religion; some lit mags and journals are ok with brief mentions of God and Jesus, etc., but again, your lines should not be violent, aggressive, stereotyping, or attacking anyone again.
You shouldn’t shy away from sex or erotic poetry, though some lit mags and journals may not be geared towards those themes, and others might be—so read through issues and past online publications if possible.

8#: Previously Published

A majority of lit mags and presses in existence typically DO NOT accept previously published work or that's been posted on e.g. Instagram, but some out there DO permit work that’s appeared in another magazine or a piece posted elsewhere typically if it’s just in a personal blog, or social media account space—they may request you take it down before a featured publication too. Just ensure you specify where and are honest about that if it’s been in a print issue already, online, on your Substack, etc., or just on one of your social media accounts. There are exceptions listed for some lit mags, which you can find when you, for instance, hover over the Accepts Previously Published work section if it’s not crossed out in Chill Subs or read their submission site guidelines FAQ page.

9#: ERROR404 on Style

If you’re stating a poem is a haiku, then it better have 5-7-5, not 9-2-2
- When following a specific form or style of poetry e.g., senryu, limerick, go over your lines, syllables etc. a few times

10# Plagiarism Detected

Your submission is discovered to be a copycat of another writer that was out on social media, online, or in print already published somewhere.

NEVER PLAGIARIZE a poem or mirror word for word on any lines, be careful about doing “after” poems, blackout poems, quote-based ones or borrowed-line styled cento poems, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS credit pieces that inspired your work After [ First Name Last Name ] and the poem name, artist or song name etc.—you should list or share which work(s) and the writer(s) that inspired your piece(s) in submission.
Changing a few words and giving it a new title is PLAGIARISM. Please be 100% original, create completely from scratch, and write from the heart—epigraphs to kickstart your write are ok, just be upfront about quotations.
You can have a unique title, but either after the title or at the bottom of the poem, credit names in full, poem titles, spoken word pieces, books, artworks, etc., inspiring your submission if you were drawing from it in any way or form—not being honest will, without a doubt, land you in hot water.

ADDITIONAL TIP: Not all poems need to be titled, but most places do require one. Take the time to come up with a unique and distinct title for your poem(s) or short stories. An irrelevant or pretty random title can throw off readers or confuse them—it’s the first thing that hits our eyes. A fun way to think about it is that you’re basically coming up with a movie or film title for your popcorn poem.

Ultimately, your work could be phenomenal but just not suitable for the publication or upcoming issue in the editor’s eyes, and oftentimes, you may find a home for it elsewhere if you keep trying—it may take a bunch of submissions and rejections, but there are thousands out there. I haven’t covered all the reasons here, so be sure to listen to the podcast audio coverage of these points, EP5: What Tips Do You Have For Getting Literary Magazine Submission Acceptances? and EP18: What Are Some Of The Biggest Mistakes Writers Make When Submitting to Lit Mags? on Spotify, Apple, and elsewhere.

QUESTION: Anything Else You've Run Into?

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by Dipity Lit Mag & dipity.press founded by Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series by pledging your support or buying me a coffee or pizza below if you’d like, but not required to by any means. As always, keep writing and reading poetry. Have awesome days ahead!

The Most Common Ways Writers Track Their Submissions To Literary Magazines

Vevna Forrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:32:04 GMT

1. Excel Spreadsheets

A majority of writers I’ve come across use a jumbo color-coded Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets to track their submissions to lit mags and journals. It’s a simple, fast way to organize everything over time: your poem(s) or artwork titles, the place you submitted to, the date, decision, whether there was payment, etc.

I personally have never made a spreadsheet because I don’t submit to places as much anymore, as most of my time is now directed towards Dipity Lit Mag and dipity.press. When I do get an acceptance once in a blue moon, I will usually add notes to my Word documents or use one of the other ways listed. Some programs in existence have costs, of course, but I think that’s a waste of money when plenty of free methods exist. It’s so important to stay organized, especially if you’re doing simultaneous submissions.

I won’t create a table because a lot of awesome free and small fee ones exist already, so I’ll link some below that caught my eye.

The Forever Workshop has a wonderful, detailed article here with an example one to download beneath Tracking Submissions from Shannan Mann from ONLY POEMS
- How To Strategize and Track Submissions To Lit Mags (ft. Shannan Mann)
Matt Bell’s Tracking Spreadsheet Template
- Note: You can also find and download it here
A few Etsy shops have some instant download Submission Tracking Templates that range between $1-$10, but honestly, you can modify a free one online just by keyword searching “Submission Tracking Templates” via Google search on the first few pages.
If you reach out to others in the writing community, too, or ones you see using a template, I’m sure they’d be happy to share an example over to you as well or share their tracking method setup.

2. Submittable

Submittable has an external submissions tracker feature tab, but I have honestly never used it a ton, since more of my time has been spent on Chill Subs. You can find it under the External Submissions tab, I believe it used to be in another location in the past.

Quite a few writers keep track of their submissions just through Submittable. There are GREEN [ACCEPTED] and GREY [DECLINED] statuses, along with WITHDRAWN and COMPLETED. Very few lit mags and journals use the COMPLETED status because writers like to see the ACCEPTANCES together, but some do use it to indicate they no longer have tasks on that sub, which is less beneficial to a writer if they’re leveraging tracking in Submittable.

Below are the last few acceptances in my own Submittable older account saved screenshot, but more recently, I have submitted to some places that use solely email or a built-in site intake form, and got 4 comedy poems accepted. However, many poets still use Excel spreadsheets to track any payments, individual poem titles, simultaneous subs, and ones they were ghosted on or never heard back on.

2. Duotrope

Duotrope has a really cool submission tracker, too, where you can input dates, the status, e.g., pending, accepted, or lost, and rejected. I think this is a better alternative than just using Submittable—keep in my mind not all lit mags use Submittable, and some of your submissions may be done via email. You just have to become a member, which is $5 a month or $50 a year—the membership has other benefits that you can check out on the site, and if you prefer not to pay for a membership, you may want to just use your own spreadsheet for organization.

3. Chills Subs Submissions Tracker

I just started using this Tracker a bit more in 2025, as you can see below, plus there are two view options, and you can export as a CSV, which I may do too, or even try pivoting to a backup spreadsheet this year. There’s no fee or membership required to use this.

I prefer the full Kanban board view, though. A similar alternative to this would be Trello.

I haven’t gotten around to their rejection bingo in the bottom right-hand corner LOL. You can import only data from Grinder and Submittable—NOT Duotrope and possibly a few other places due to their terms of service or conditions, per the pop-up I saw.

NOTE: You may notice in some screenshots that I just put the total number of poems in the submission name field, if they were beyond one, but you don’t have to do that (I also didn’t want to share all those titles there and tend to come up with fun summarized ones typically indicating the mood or theme)—some lit mags do outright tell you to list the individual titles out, or to just put the number of poems though especially via email. When you have a large number of submissions over time in whichever submission system you're using, typically putting each individual title separated by an indicator, slashes, commas, etc., is good so that you can easily find them or to export them out to a CSV in the future for your records.

I started using a forward slash, more so—above is an example from last month. I wouldn’t do that for manuscripts, though—just put the chapbook or collection title. Some submission systems or forms may have a character limit, so you can abbreviate some words in your title or shorten it to fit if you’re sending 2, 3, 4, or 5+ poems or short stories, depending on their allotted amount.

4. The Grinder

I have never used Submission Grinder, but know quite a few who do, and it looks comprehensive and detailed in terms of stat tracking. It looks like it was founded through the zine Diabolical Plots, which you should def check out. I may try registering and creating an account one day—there does not appear to be any fees to do so, nor membership at this time. They tend to refer to places as “markets.” Still, some writers prefer to have a backup Excel spreadsheet with additional notes and column fields, or they may choose to transfer data into the Chill Subs Submission Tracker, too.

5. The Writer’s Database

Quite a lot of web-based submission trackers exist. I’ve shared a few, though not all, and came across this WritersDB one as well, but haven’t used it myself.

6. Mobile Apps

If you’re on the go quite a bit, then you may prefer using a mobile submission tracker app of some kind. I’m sure there are others, but most appear to be paid apps in the Google Play and Apple Store. One that quite a few seem to mention is Story Tracker, but it’s $7.99. It has “Story” in the title, which leads one to assume it’s geared towards short story tracking, but I believe mentions it can be used for poems and other types of writing submissions in the description.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: How Do You Keep Track Of Your Submissions?

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by the founding editor of Dipity Lit Mag, Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series for submitters and publishers by pledging your support, resharing, or subscribing below if you’d like, but are not required to by any means. We have more rad interviews and topics on the way. Have awesome days ahead!