The end of a wet and wild March is upon us, which means it’s time to celebrate the hardworking Women Who Submit members who have published their work.
The WWS members included in this post published their work during the month of March. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in March!
It’s never too early to think about creating a marketing plan, but how to begin? Although learning about marketing can initially feel overwhelming, this blog will empower you to set your literary career up for success by creating a simple marketing plan in three easy steps using no and low-cost strategies and tools. In light of the historical and ongoing racial and gender disparities in publishing, it is more important than ever to create your own system of success.
Identify your writer goals and values.
What are your short and long-term writer goals? Which genre(s) do you write? Which literary venues do you want to publish your work in? Are you planning on writing a book or multiple books? Do you want to self-publish or go with an indie or traditional press? What are your dream fellowships, grants, and residencies? Also, consider how your values (such as community-building, social justice, feminism, anti-racism, etc) inform your writer goals.
Identifying your writer goals and values is an empowering process because you will gain clarity on how YOU define success for yourself versus basing your worth as a writer solely on external forms of validation. And, knowing your writer goals and values will also determine your specific marketing strategy.
Create SMART marketing goals and track your progress.
SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. If this is your first time creating SMART marketing goals, I recommend setting very small goals. In fact, the smaller, the better!
An example of a SMART marketing goal can be posting about your writing twice per week on social media. Additional examples of SMART marketing goals can include creating or updating your author website by a certain deadline or aiming to do writer podcasts/interviews once per month.
Tracking your progress also helps you to determine whether or not you are achieving your goals. And if you find that you’re not meeting your goals, there is no need to shame or criticize yourself. Instead, you can give yourself credit for learning a new skill. ANd then, whenever you are ready, you can take action by modifying your SMART goals. For example, instead of posting about your writing twice per week, perhaps posting once a week works better for you.
Start an author newsletter.
I encourage every writer to start an author newsletter. Although social media can be a wonderful tool to build relationships in the literary community, we do not own our social media accounts. This means that social media accounts can suddenly be deactivated without notice.
Alternatively, an author newsletter gives you 100% ownership of your email list and it is the most direct way to communicate with your supporters outside of social media. There are both free and paid newsletter providers to choose from, such as Mailchimp, Substack, ConvertKit, and more. And, with consistent action over time, more and more folks will naturally join your newsletter.
Beginner writer, remember, it’s courageous to show yourself and your art to the world. Take risks, don’t be afraid to fail, and try again. I strongly believe that writers should be celebrated for their art, and marketing is just another tool that can help us achieve that goal. I’m rooting for you!
With love,
Cecilia
Based in LA, Cecilia Caballero, PhD, is a poet, creative nonfiction writer, teaching artist, and co-editor of The Chicana Motherwork Anthology. She is an alum of Tin House, Macondo, and Roots. Wounds. Words. Cecilia is a 2023 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow and she is finishing a memoir. Twitter: @la_sangre_llama.
This year, February flew by so quickly that I only just realized it ended. Our amazing Women Who Submit members, however, have been working hard, as always, and their efforts have paid off with more amazing publications.
The WWS members included in this post published their work during the month of February. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in February!
It’s hard to believe how quickly the first month of 2023 has flown by. While many of us are still trying to comprehend that we’re officially one month in to the new year, these Women Who Submit members have already been out there publishing their work in amazing places.
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of January. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in January!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of December. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in December!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of November. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in November!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of October. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in October!
I spent September doing a residency at Ragdale in Illinois, where I was lucky to have a great cohort that included two wonderful WWS members, Lauren Eggert-Crowe and Siel Ju. Never have I been more grateful to enjoy such good company and to have such a big chunk of time to contemplate and to write.
Submitting, though, has escaped me, which makes me even more in awe of those of you who participated in WWS’s Submit 1 submission event on September 10th. Congratulations to all who participated and to those who have already heard from their publication venues of choice, whatever the response. Sending out our work into the world is an act of bravery deserving of recognition.
Meanwhile, the WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of September. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in September!
The last two months of summer have been filled with emergencies for me. So I’ve combined the July and August publication roundups. This way, I was able to fully focus on the wonderful accomplishments of the WWS members, who continue to persevere and publish in wonderful places.
I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in July and August!
SUBMIT 1 is the one day out of the year WWS encourages women and nonbinary writers across the globe to send one of their most beloved pieces of writing to one top tier journal as one community. This is an act of solidarity, not only with our writers, but with editors and publishers as well. SUBMIT 1 dares to connect the literary publishing community as a whole.
In its 9th year, thanks to an Impact Project grant from the California Arts Council and the support of our fiscal sponsor, Avenue 50 Studio, WWS has expanded this event into the WWS Summer Series. This program includes the Summer Writers Workshop in July, the Submission conference in August, and Submit 1 in September.
The submission drive was created in 2014 for WWS’s five-year anniversary and to honor Vida, Women in Literary Arts, and the Vida Count. It was the 2009 Vida Count that inspired the co-founding of Women Who Submit in 2011. While the event celebrates our history and the importance of gender equity in literary publishing, over the years, we’ve questioned if we were doing enough to help prepare our writers to send their work to the top journals of the nation and world.
The WWS Summer Series is our answer to this question. In July, 36 writers were given the opportunity to participate in month-long workshops with our faculty, Melissa Chadburn (CNF), Muriel Leung (Poetry), and Colette Sartor (Fiction). In August, over 150 writers registered for the Submission Conference, a one-day, online event that featured 18 writing professionals sharing their best tips and strategies (For recordings of the 2022 panels with closed captions visit the WWS Youtube page.). So then, SUBMIT 1 is not only an act of solidarity, but an act of faith in our writers and the writing process.
How to Participate:
1. Before September 10th, study THIS LIST of “Top Ranked Journals of 2022” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. Links to guidelines are included. BE SURE TO READ AND FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES.
2. On September 10th, submit one of your most beloved pieces of writing to at least one tier one magazine from wherever you are in the world at any time of day.
3. Notify us on Twitter or IG. Be sure to tag us @womenwhosubmit, so we can celebrate you with lots of claps, cheers, and funny gifs.
4. Hang with us on IG Live at @WomenWhoSubmit from 7am to 10pm PACIFIC for a full day special guests, support, and resources. Here is where you can ask WWS members for tips on submitting, get encouragement, or receive LIVE claps for when you hit send.
SUBMIT 1 IG Live Schedule (all times are PACIFIC):
5. After submitting, fill out THIS FORM to help us track how many submissions were sent out, which will help us in our continued mission towards gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing.
Submission Drive Origins:
After the first VIDA Count was published in 2009 illustrating the dearth of women’s voices in tier one publications, members of VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, began asking the editors of these journals why they thought the numbers were unbalanced. The most common answer was women don’t submit as often as men. In response, Women Who Submit and the monthly submission party was created in 2011 to support women and nonbinary writers in submitting their work for publication in order to raise the number of such voices coming across editors’ desks.
Our annual submission drive is a call to writers to submit their well-crafted and cared for work en masse to tier-one literary journals that historically have shown gender disparities in their publications. It is a call to action. Our first WWS submission drive was in September 2014 at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA.
