On Lit Mag News (Substack), Barbara Krasner wrote about how she’d made an effort to get published in 2025. She sent 660 submissions. For poetry she got a 25% acceptance rate. For fiction she got an 8% acceptance rate. Overall she had 93 poems, 14 essays, 4 short stories, 11 flash fiction,and 2 flash nonfiction pieces accepted.
I can imagine this news items provoking several reactions among writers I know. Some might see Krasner's behaviour as an egotistic attempt to be famous. Why not write more instead of spending all that time sending things off? I belong to a writers group where many of the members enjoy writing and haven't tried to be published (often because they're writing novels). I can understand that point of view. The important thing for them is to enjoy what they do - the satisfaction of finding the right words to express what's inside. After all, joggers don't have to beat records (even their own ones) to enjoy their jogging.
However I can also see the other point of view -
- The late prose writer Angela Carter and the poet Don Paterson consider[ed] their work unfinished until it's published - it's a bit like talking to yourself. An actor or dancer wouldn't practise alone in their room unless there was a performance ahead. A composer works on pieces with the intention of being heard.
- People who wrote in Ivory Towers used to be considered suspect - often because of their seeming disregard for other people.
- If your work would give pleasure to others (or even help others), it's rather mean-spirited to keep it to yourself.
- It's rather presumptuous to think that you're a better judge of your work than others would be. You might think you're understanding yourself, putting valuable insights onto paper using just the right words, but suppose you're deluding yourself? Does it matter as long you're happy? Maybe not, but if the quality of your self-knowledge matters to you, maybe you should get a second opinion.
- Getting published (getting validation from peers) is an inspiration to write more.
- Krasner thinks that because of her publications she "found her community". The interaction between writer and reader isn't as immediate as at a workshop meeting, but when published writers meet (especially if they've been in the same publications) there's a sense of kinship even if they haven't read each other.
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
I’ve mixed views about the whole publishing malarkey. A part of me—a big part actually—thinks it’s all vanity. Even if you don’t pay. Even if they pay you. It does my ego good to get something into print. As far as fame goes… I’m running out of time there but I’m not sure these days publishing is the way to achieve popularity or at least not print publishing. I have thought about setting up a TikTok account and posting wee AI poems. So, why haven’t you? you ask and if I’m being honest, apart from the work involved (even a sixty second video would take me a couple of hours to produce), I actually wouldn’t want the attention. What I like about publishing at the moment is what I’ve always liked: I send the stuff out, if I’m lucky something gets accepted, maybe they send me a copy of the magazine or a link and that’s it. I rarely get any feedback apart from a few friends on Facebook and a thumbs up from the likes of Reyes Cardénas or Joe Hutchison (or your good self) means a lot to me. My foray into self-publishing was a total waste of time and I regret that bitterly. No one’ll touch my novels now because published is published but published does not mean read. And it doesn’t matter what great writers in the past have done.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm more positive about getting published than you are. Sometimes I meet people who only see the downside of publishing (one person told me that they didn't want to compromise their work) but I think that can be as egocentric an attitude as that of the vanity publisher. Somebody has to publish. It might as well be me.
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