A question for writers

[brainshrub]

Let's say you wrote an excellent short essay on DU and you think it would make a great article or editorial in a newspaper or magazine.
Is there some kind of database you can subscribe to that would submit your essay to EVERY political periodical, website and newsroom for review?
I don't know anything about the business, but I would imaging there would something like that out on the market. Just curious.

For the record, I'm a database designer. If this product doesn't exist I would love to create it. Would anyone be interested in much a tool?

[neuvocat]

1. I dont' know of any

but if you submit something for publication that was posted here first then you need to mention that.

[Maple]

2. No there isn't such a thing

Yes, it would be great if there were!

[politicat]

3. No, it would be a nice thing... but for the simultaneous sub clause most

editors/publishers have.

Most ed/pub require single submissions (send to Salon, get rejected, send to Wired, get rejected, send to Slate, get accepted). It's a huge risk for them to take simultaneous subs since if it's a good piece, they may accept it only to find out you've already taken up with their chief competitor.

Also, since cover letters need to be customized (Dear Sir or Madam is deadly) a sub DB would be .... complex.

Politicat (who has an oracle DB that keeps track of cover letters, subs, versions and communications, but which doesn't automate the process.)

[brainshrub]

5. Well then how does anything relevant get published?

I mean, if you wrote an essay about Hannity's fixation on "Memogate" and then sent it to Salon, it would take them about a week to reply. Then another week to Wired. Then another week to Truthout. ect, ect, ect...by the time you got to the bottom of the barrel it might be YEARS before it got published.

Being a freelance writer must be frustrating. How do you guys do it? How do you keep track?

[politicat]

7. 2 words - Staff Writers. And the freelance with a relationship....

It's an incestuous business....

If you want to talk about what's wrong with publishing at all levels....

give me a pm/dumail

Politicat

[SOteric]

4. No. But before you start work,

you should know that some periodicals and some publishing houses will not accept work that they know or have reason to believe is submitted to another periodical or publishing house.

They could pay you money and be seriously jammed up by finding that someone else had beaten them to the punch. Logistical nightmare.

[brainshrub]

6. So I guess posting essays for review on DU is a bad idea

if you wanted to publish because if they knew, they wouldn't use your material? Am I right? Or are open-forums exempt?
I notice that William Rivers Pitt regularly publishes stuff on DU first, but then I guess he has permission from Truthout.org.

[punpirate]

8. It's not a bad idea at all...

... if the important thing is to get the message or idea out into the public view.

Will Pitt can post here and on truthout.org because he runs truthout.org, I believe. He can sound out ideas here without worry about compromising interest in truthout.org. There's a sort of a cross-fertilization at work in doing such.

No articles published by DU involve payment, as far as I know, and I'm sure that if Wired or Salon called DU and wanted reprint rights, there wouldn't be an argument, and DU would probably facilitate those secondary rights if it meant some payment to the writer.

DU has put about 30-35 articles of mine on the front page in the last eighteen months or so. Some of those die pretty quickly, but others have been picked up by other progressive sites, and have even been reprinted by a couple of bloggers as far away as Slovenia. Right now, I'm not interested in getting paid, so exposure of the ideas on DU and beyond DU is great, as far as I'm concerned. I suppose that exposure might be a bit greater were I to publish under my real name, but I don't for strictly personal reasons.

So, simply, it's not a bad idea to be writing for DU, if one's aim is to bring attention to a particular problem or keep a topical item in public view.

Cheers.

[JailBush]

9. I've had several magazine articles published, and I had a contract

for six books from a major publisher. I waited ONE YEAR for them to make a decision, after which they screwed me so bad, I more or less broke my contract. I then self-published two books. My experiences steered me away from the corrupt and treacherous publishing industry to the Internet.

I do have some sympathy for publishers. They must wade through mountains of submissions - most of them ranging from mediocre to big jokes. For that reason alone, I don't think many publishers would want to subscribe to a service such as you suggest. They prefer to make writers jump through a through hoops, partly to weed out the amateurs.

I think your best bet is to simply study the publishing industry. You can buy books (or find them in the library) that are virtual publishing encyclopedias with information and tips on making various kinds of submissions to many different publishes and media. It's really quite overwhelming.

If you're writing political stuff, you also have to keep im mind that most media and probably very many publishers are corrupt - even including some that pose as left-wing or radical publishers. For example, the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger - Seattle's leading left-wing publications - are very corrupt, and CommonDreams.org publishes some corrupt authors, such as Seattle's Geov Parrish, though I'm not sure if CommonDreams itself is on the level.

It's really a jungle out there.