Art Submissions to Literary Magazines

A good book speaks for itself and conjures up its own images in the reader's mind. A good book, however, still needs a good cover.

Literary magazines today rely on shorter content, especially online magazines, because reading long paragraphs isn't as easy on the web. But almost every lit mag benefits from visual material.

Online lit mags with no cover images, branding, and/or web design seem...too plain. Unprofessional websites are a huge turnoff for me when I'm seeking new places to send my work because I want my work to not only be published, but also presented.

Thus, I don't think that visual/literary pairings always work, but I think every lit mag needs to explore visual ways to presentation. Some of the best, most memorable lit mags and sites--take a look at Synaesthesia's website and any of their issues--incorporate visual features.

The bottom line is that lit mags often need art. Although Duotrope doesn't list art as a separate 'market,' I have a process for finding and submitting to markets that has worked well for me. This does require a Duotrope subscription, which I highly recommend to keep track of all writerly and artistic submissions:

• Filter deadlines by date (I often research markets the month they close for submissions), check "include unthemed," and search for 'fiction' or 'poetry.' I use this method at the same time of looking for fiction/poetry markets, so I can cover more opportunities at once.
• Search through the names, open them in new tabs, click through to their site, and find their submission guidelines. Again, Duotrope doesn't list visual art as a market, so you must look manually. However, I like to vet all markets by looking at their guidelines page before I'll even consider submitting. I also like to check out the format of their issues so I understand how they publish work.
• Save links to the guidelines or submission managers of the 'good' ones, with a note about what work they accept, whether they have esoteric requirements, when the deadline is, and what piece(s) you might want to send them. I do this so that I can start matching submissions to markets, and, if there's a specific piece I want to shop, so that I can gauge whether I need to find more potential markets for that piece.
• Before I submit, I double check the guidelines and make sure I'm sending the right type of work in the right format. (I don't send to magazines that have really esoteric requirements as a rule because my time is valuable--for art and writing).

Then, it's submission time! I'll talk more about the content of the artistic submission process, standard formatting, and my procedures in upcoming posts.