Sending out short story submissions is an endeavor. I devote a number of hours each month to identifying journals that are open for submissions and cataloging where I’ve sent which story. A new free tool for finding journals has recently come to my attention. Today, let’s explore Chill Subs and see how it can help us writers find homes for our work.
What is Chill Subs?
The Chill Subs website equips writers with an impressive search tool for literary magazines, presses, contests, residencies, and other opportunities. Importantly, and what makes Chill Subs stand out for me compared to other tools, is its filters. On the “Browse” page, you can filter the lit mags you’re looking at by a number of variables.
The filter that feels most important to me is the “Open for submissions” tick box in the second half of the page. This saves a lot of clicking through websites. In the lower righthand corner, there is also a field that lets you reorder the listings; one of the options here is to sort by deadline, which can help find opportunities that are about to close.
Of course, the question with listings like this is, how accurate are they? My experience so far has been that they are accurate. Phew!
Tiers of publications: Erika Krouse’s lit mag rankings
There is an enormous quantity of journals out there publishing literature today. This is amazing and beautiful and, in a world that sometimes feels like it has left literature behind, galvanizing. That quantity, though, also overwhelms. When I began sending out short stories a few years ago, I had no idea where to start.
Early on, and it’s still my guiding resource, I found Erika Krouse’s lit mag ranking (I’ve just noticed, Krouse has now updated the ranking for 2023!). Krouse divides the lit mags on her list into a number of tiers, from high-readership, high-paying, award-winning publications to those less known. When I have a new story, I first target the higher-rated journals; then, as those rejections roll in, I send it to markets lower on the list.
The strategy I use definitely isn’t the only one–some writers reject the idea of ranking publications. I’ll also say that Krouse’s list contains only about 500 journals, excluding a great range of publications. For me, though, it has given useful direction to my process.
Unlike Chill Subs, it’s also worth noting that Krouse’s list is text-only. That means a lot of work searching for these magazines’ websites and identifying their open submissions windows.
Chill Subs and tiered publications
Chill Subs has a filter called “Vibe.” In comparison to Krouse’s more prosaic tier titles, Chill Subs divides magazines like this:
- Very fancy very impressive very not fast (17 journals)
- Top-tier stuff. Not Paris Review, but ok (85 journals)
- Send us your best but less intimidating (1341 journals)
- Send us your f***ing worst (4 journals)
- Weird / outsider / wtf even is it (59 journals)
- We’re just chilling here (78 journals)
The numbers in these different categories suggest a flatter structure than Krouse’s (although, interestingly, Krouse’s new 2023 ranking reduces the number of tiers from 7 (with a few subdivisions within tiers) to 6 (with only one tier subdivided)).
I notice, briefly browsing through, some journals that show up in somewhat different places on the two rankings. I say this discrepancy is a good thing. When we rely myopically on a single resource, we will discount some publications and lift up others without our own critical reflection. We should be looking for the right-fit publications for the stories we have crafted.
What else does Chill Subs do?
Beyond its search feature, Chill Subs lets writers create a profile (here’s mine!), on which you can link your publications and market services like beta reading and editing. It also has a submissions tracker, which, if I didn’t already have a spreadsheet system that I don’t know if I can ever part with, I would be really excited about. It also has a social networking feature that, similar to Twitter, allows folks to make short posts. I haven’t tried this yet. The website seems to be under constant development, with a number of planned features up and coming.
Final thoughts
Chill Subs isn’t the only tool out there to help writers find and manage submissions. Duotrope seems to be the industry standard, but it is a paid service. I’ve also played around a little with The Grinder. Chill Subs adds another tool for us, as we keep writing and sending our stories out.
What tools do you use to find writing opportunities? Do you have experience with Chill Subs, Duotrope, The Grinder, Erika Krouse’s list, or other resources? Please share!
Best wishes for the weeks ahead,
Jimmy
Words like trees 
Heey there Jimmy! Found your article by googling ourselves (yeah we do this haha cause we keep fighting SEO). That’s an awesome overview, thanks so much for the kind words! By the way, I’ve been thinking about incorporating Erika’s list and other similar rankings as one of the sorting options too. But we’ll see!:) And vibes are not entirely accurate right now haha because we recently tripled our database and it’s hard to identify vibes for all of them haha, so we used “Send us your best but less intimidating” by default, but we’ll review them soon. And also will switch to a badges system where users will be able to sort of vote for some of the qualities of the magazine like vibe or how active it is or how it promotes their authors. This data will be more accurate coming from community 🙂
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Okay wow, hello! I guess all kinds of things can happen when you google yourself. I love the idea of crowdsourcing that data–it seems like you have a lot of users so with a large enough user base you’ll be able to have that be nicely representative.
The thing for me that stands out for your site is that ability to instantly filter. If you did include Erika Krouse’s or similar rankings as one variable among many that could then be filtered for, I’d definitely love that! As it is I have a big spreadsheet myself with magazines I’ve found from Erika Krouse’s list, other places, and now you, but the more data you have in Chill Subs the less needed a spreadsheet like mine would be for me.
Thanks for reading!
Jimmy
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