What is Duotrope?
Duotrope was first created in 2005 as a database of literary journals, and a place to track your submissions. Duotrope offers a searchable database of more than 7,500 English-language publishers and agents for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in 40+ countries. The website provides a deadline calendar and statistics on Duotrope-listed publishers and agents.
You can use Duotrope in several ways:
Search for publications: Search the staff-maintained listing of more than 7,500 active publishers and agents using 20+ search criteria to narrow down listings. Options include genre, topic, and length. Learn about upcoming publication deadlines with the theme and deadline calendar.
Learn about the market: Review statistics for publications, including response time and acceptance rates. If you’re new to writing short stories and personal essays, a publication with quick response and higher acceptance rates might boost your confidence.
Organize submissions: Use the submission tracker to organize your submissions, collecting information by your piece’s title, multiple submissions, dates of submission and any responses, and submission method and status.
Stay Abreast: Read news on the publishing world, including publications responding to submissions, and interviews with more than 2,200 editors and agents. Find a specific publisher or agent.
Is a Duotrope subscription worth it?
It’s best when you have many pieces ready to send out. Or if you just have a couple of pieces, but plan to send them fairly widely, it can be nice to track them in one place.
How do you use Duotrope?
You can use Duotrope to research publication markets by acceptance rate and subject specialty, learn more about specific publishers and agents, and track your submissions as you get your short story or creative nonfiction published.
What’s the Cost of Duotrope?
First, you can get a 10-day free trial period. Then, subscriptions cost $5.00 a month. If you want to save money on your Duotrope subscription, you can save almost 17% with an annual subscription of $50.00. This works out to a little over $4/month.
Which Agents Are In Duotrope?
Agents who accept unsolicited English-language fiction, poetry, and nonfiction queries and submissions from you, the creator. The established agency must have been in business for one year, and feature an official, updated site with the agent’s biography, and complete, up-to-date guidelines. The guidelines should include the material desired, whether open or closed to submissions and how to submit.
How Much Do Agents Charge?
All real literary agents charge 15% for works sold within the United States. Media and foreign rights are typically handled in part by co-agents, in which case the author pays 20% in total (10% to their literary agent, and 10% to the co-agent). Any agent who charges other fees should be viewed with suspicion, and for that reason, Duotrope does not allow agents who charge fees.
Tracker Preview
Here’s a glimpse at my own Duotrope tracker — or my most recent submissions.
The most useful tool with Duotrope is the data on response times. No one else in the market really tracks this response data. Some magazines respond very quickly, and others take a year or more to respond, if you want to get into one of the ones that take a long time, you might not want to simultaneously send your piece to a place that might accept your piece within a couple weeks.
What about Chill Subs?
Chill Subs is a new competitor to Duotrope, which is more entertaining and playful but doesn’t yet have a tracker (I’ve heard they plan to add one).
What about Submittable?
Well, Submittable is the platform through which you will (usually) submit your work for consideration at a magazine. So magazines pay Submittable to use their submissions platform. You can also search within Submittable, but of course, it’ll only show places that use Submittable. In a sense, it is “tracking software,” but not really…obviously the pieces you’ve submitted through Submittable will be visible through your account on their website, but many other pieces won’t be visible. A lot of magazines, like Agni, have their own system for managing online submissions.