A Writer's Output

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     The publishing landscape is changing, and not only for full-length books. Newspapers and magazines are losing advertising revenue and shedding staff, and now offer far fewer openings for freelance work. In parallel, the small magazines produced with devotion and optimism, the ones that offered poetry, literary fiction, science fiction or fantasy, the ones printed on cheap paper and posted to people who would actually read them, have migrated to websites. Such markets used to offer payment in the form of a contributor’s copy. Now would-be writers are assured of ‘exposure’. See your name on screen and join the millions shouting out their words to a largely uncaring world.

     As writers, we keep going. As a rule of thumb, I used to reckon that one submission in 6 would be accepted. In addition to the publication of A Shackled Inheritance, a full-length romance, in 2016 I had 8 acceptances out of 71 submissions (short stories, poems, essays, translations), roughly one in 9. One flash fiction website folded before my story was published, 3 short pieces were published in print anthologies and 3 on websites, leaving one in the pipeline. There is even another one still in the pipeline from 2015.

     It would be interesting to know how other writers are faring.  

     Madeleine McDonald