The creative nonfiction essay (internal link) I’ve been submitting to publishers has been rejected for a third time. I’ll keep trying. I’m not tailoring the piece to each magazine, consequently, it takes little effort to submit the work to another outlet.
Making this process tolerable is the website submittable.com (external link), which makes it easy to submit and track entered pieces. Submittable seems to be the de facto processing mechanism for the literary magazine trade.
Also making submissions tolerable is that literary publishers actually send a rejection notice. That’s rare in the everyday nonfiction magazine world, where your carefully crafted article or proposal letter usually gets no response at all. With a rejection letter you at least know you can now submit your work or idea to another publisher, unless you don’t worry about multiple submissions to begin with.
