You Don't Need An Agent! Publishers That Accept Unsolicited Submissions

“You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn’t give you that right. Having more weapons doesn’t give you that right. Being from the Capitol doesn’t give you that right. Nothing does.” ― Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

pov: you just told your bestie how you accidentally killed your boyfriends dad and lied to the public about it

More of old work, it'll take a while before I get to my most recent comics andna

They are just silly

Part 1

when the two least affectionate guys ever start dating, their love language becomes acknowledging each other's presence

i think their locker elevators are funny

the thing I love most about the “Bruce and Jason are both TANKS” supremacy is that it means, in all likelihood, that Nightwing, Red Hood and Batman went on a joint patrol together at least once and some out of towner goon, in a panic, called Nightwing — all 5’10 180 lbs of him — the “skinny one.”

jeremy heere was so autistic coded and for what

I can’t remember which issue but there’s a robin comic where he tells Tim to get some rest and then wakes him like 2 hours later and I can’t help but think any normal 14 year old would have had a fit.

If only one of my posts gets read by amateur authors let it be this:

SUBMIT YOUR WORK TO THE TOP PUBLICATIONS FIRST AND WORK YOUR WAY DOWN!

What do I mean by top? Standards of quality, audience, pay rate, legal contract; it can be anything. What matters is that you set the metric you prefer and aim for the top.

I say this because most new authors think that when submitting short stories, or flash fiction, or poetry, you need past credentials to publish with the highly-ranked publications. That's probably true but the logic is backwards. By the time you're good enough to publish in the highest ranking magazines, you've probably already published in a lot of others. Don't settle, you have nothing to lose.

Let's look at two scenarios. One in which you believe in your writing and one in which you don't.

The confident writer starts submitting to all the top publications. They submit, wait for a rejection, and submit again to a different one. They slowly work down the line until finally they hit the very top of the range of publications that are willing to accept their work. They now know what market they have a chance in and what markets to read from to improve.

The insecure writer starts submitting to all the unknown/unpaid/unvetted publications. They need to build credentials before they can submit to the preferred publications, right? If they don't get scammed out of rights they slowly move up the line of publications. They stop when they get accepted by the very bottom range of publications that will pay them the least amount, or give the least exposure, and think themselves lucky. And now they find themselves gaining much less confidence, and much less understanding of the markets, than if they started from the top. They'll have markets they believe they have to learn from when really they've surpassed them.

Even in the worst case publishing scenario: only one market accepts your publication at the very bottom, the only thing that is lost by being confident is your time. With any other publications willing to accept your work, you're guaranteed to get the better deal by being confident. Starting from the bottom is only self sabotage.

You may get more rejections (or even fewer than you think), but if you keep your head up and keep pushing, it'll be better for your writing and your confidence in the long run.

Besides, you'll probably be scammed less if you start with the ones that everyone trusts.