Finding a Home for Your Work
Should You Submit to Contests or During Open Reading Periods?
Should you submit to contests or during open reading periods?
WHEN Leslie Jamison first heard about the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, in 2011, the discovery changed the trajectory of her career. Her first novel, The Gin Closet, had come out with the Free Press, a now-shuttered imprint of Simon & Schuster, a year earlier; she was writing essays but not yet thinking in terms of a book. “I loved Graywolf’s poetry books and felt a sense of kinship with the work they were putting into the world,” she says, “and somehow the idea of this contest got me thinking about what might happen if I assembled my essays into a collection.”
Three years later Jamison’s essay collection The Empathy Exams had won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and become a New York Times best-seller. Jamison credits the prize itself—“the possibility of a book that wouldn’t have to get past all the traditional gatekeepers”—with allowing her the freedom to assemble this blend of reported, personal, and critical essays into a single collection. “Something about the forum of the contest made it feel more possible to dream of a book that didn’t look like other books that were out there.”
Finding a home for a book—or for a single essay, story, or poem—isn’t always this straightforward, of course. There are four main ways that books and individual pieces get picked up and published—through agented submissions, solicitations, contests, and open reading periods—and the savvy writer must weigh the pros and cons of each approach. If you don’t yet have an agent or an established reputation or platform, or if you prefer to manage your own submissions, you’ll likely be choosing between one of the latter two options. But which makes the most sense for you and your work: contests or open reading periods? Every year hundreds of writing contests administered by presses, magazines, literary nonprofits, universities, and other sponsoring organizations offer publication to one or more winning submissions. And most magazines and many indie presses run at least one open reading period during the year. So are your chances better with reading periods or contests? Why pay the entry fee for a contest when you can spend less—sometimes no money at all— and submit to an open reading period?
I asked myself these same questions when I submitted my own poetry manuscript to more than fifteen contests and open reading periods—still a relatively low number—before I got the voice mail I had dreamed about but still didn’t quite believe would ever happen. Sarah Gorham, the editor in chief of Sarabande Books, called to say that my first book, Stay Safe, had been selected as one of two winners of the 2019 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and would be published in early 2021. Long before this I had confided in a friend that I felt an affinity with the books Sarabande was putting out, and I knew it was a long shot, but I couldn’t help but wonder, “What if?”
Who chooses what gets published?
Open reading periods are typically overseen by a journal’s or press’s team of editors, while contests, unless they are deemed an editors’ award, are judged by someone who does not work at the press (though such contests are often screened by in-house editors and readers). Gorham says she usually invites “distinguished writers we know well, through their work, or in person” to judge Sarabande’s annual Morton Prize and McCarthy Prize, given for collections of poetry and fiction, respectively. Although Gorham assumes a selected
judge “has something similar to our own preferences,” she also appreciates that the contest format allows the press “to be surprised, to get out of our taste bubble.” Joanna Yas, the editor in chief of the print biannual Washington Square Review, for which I previously served as a layout editor, notes that the contest model also helps bring in new submitters who may be familiar with the judge but not the publication.
In this way the judging aspect of writing contests can counter imbalances in both taste and background among editors in the publishing world. A recent study by Lee & Low Books, the country’s largest multicultural children’s book publisher, shows that at the editorial level, 85 percent of publishing professionals identify as white. In recent years, however, contest judges have tended to be a more diverse group. For example, a few of this year’s celebrated book prizes are being judged by Jericho Brown (the Omnidawn Publishing First/Second Poetry Book Contest), Alexander Chee (the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction), and Stephanie Powell Watts (the Hub City Press South Carolina Novel Prize). Judged contests, then, are one way to get your work seen by readers and decision-makers outside a largely homogenous field. The practice of rotating judges also means you can submit to the same prize multiple years in a row. A submission might be overlooked by a prize’s screeners and judges one year and lauded by that same prize’s new group of decision-makers the next.
Yasmin Belkhyr, the founder and editor in chief of Winter Tangerine, an online journal of poetry, prose, and art, points out another difference in how work submitted to contests and open reading periods are considered: “For the awards, the judges are choosing one piece which they decide is the very best,” she says, while editors reading general submissions are “more concerned with the shape and tone of each issue and how the pieces are in dialogue with one another.”
How do entry fees factor in?
With contests you’ll usually pay a notinconsequential sum of money—the median entry fee of contests listed in each issue of this magazine’s Deadlines section is typically between $20 and $25—for a very small chance of both publication and a financial reward ranging from more modest amounts like Winter Tangerine’s $250 first-place prizes for a poem and a story to Rattle’s more eye-popping first-place prize of $15,000 for a single poem. But with open reading periods, you’ll usually pay lower fees—and sometimes no fee at all—for a similarly small chance of publication yet little-to-no financial compensation.
Most contests that are sponsored by journals and offer awards for single poems, stories, or essays charge between $10 and $20 to enter, while general submissions often cost significantly less—some require no reading fee, and others come with a price tag of $3 or more. (If this is prohibitive, keep an eye out for fee waivers, as many publications will, upon request, suspend entry fees in cases of financial hardship.) There is a lot of variation in how these fees appear to affect submissions. Joanna Yas has overseen contests at two magazines, Washington Square Review and the nowclosed Open City, both of which charged no reading fee for regular submissions and $5 to $10 for the annual contest. “In both cases,” she says, the editors “received far, far fewer submissions for the contest” than for each journal’s regular submissions, which resulted in a narrower range of styles and voices from which the judge could choose a winner. “It was easier, statistically speaking at least, to get published through the contest, which felt strange,” she says, adding, “I stand behind all the great past contest winners at Open City and Washington Square Review, but I prefer to find contributions through regular submission methods.” On the other hand, at Winter Tangerine, which never charges entry fees, editor Yasmin Belkhyr estimates that the acceptance rate for awards hovers around 1 percent, while the general submissions acceptance rate is between 2 and 3 percent.
When it comes to avenues for placing full-length manuscripts, the chances of your book getting accepted via contest or general submissions appear about equal, though acceptance rates vary press by press, of course. Heather Buchanan, the publisher of Aquarius Press and its imprint Willow Books, says that the submission numbers she sees for similarly priced contests and open reading periods are largely comparable— but since they accept more books from open reading periods, the acceptance rates for the latter are slightly higher.
Open reading periods and contests also often charge comparable fees. Sending a manuscript to the poetry and fiction contests sponsored by Sarabande Books, for instance, costs $29, while Copper Canyon Press holds an open reading period for poetry that requires a $35 reading fee. Alternatively Dzanc Books sponsors a fiction contest that requires a $25 entry fee. Of course there are exceptions: The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize is free to enter, as is Coffee House Press’s cross-genre open reading period, though it is capped at three hundred submissions. Lizzie Davis, the editor of Coffee House Press,
Other than paying for the tiny possibility of a huge reward, one way to look at entry fees is to consider them a form of desperately needed support for the publications you admire.
says the decision to not require a fee is part of the press’s commitment to accessibility.
Other than paying for the tiny possibility of a huge reward, one way to look at entry fees is to consider them a form of desperately needed support for the publications you admire. Gorham reports that Sarabande’s state and corporate funding has waned considerably during her tenure. Buchanan says that at Willow Books, entry fees for both contests and open reading periods cover costs for administrative work and publication. And Winter Tangerine is currently on hiatus as Belkhyr and her team “figure out how we can do the work we want to do without underpaying our staff or introducing fees and tuition hikes that would make our projects inaccessible to the communities we’re trying to amplify.”
Accessibility is a real issue for the editors at presses and journals who are faced with the decision of whether to charge entry fees and, if so, how high they should be. As Joy Lanzendorfer put it in the Atlantic in 2015, “Saying that you want to hear from marginalized voices rings hollow against the literal barrier of the reading fee.” For Nino Cipri, whose story collection Homesick won the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, some reading fees were “the equivalent of a week’s worth of groceries or the monthly premium for my health insurance.” Poet and novelist Jennifer Givhan, who is trying to support herself and her two children with her writing, says, “The pay-toplay model can be frustrating and demoralizing and is completely unfair to those who simply don’t have the money to enter.” However, she adds, “Because my odds of acceptances have been steady at around 19 percent for the past five years or so, it’s a gamble I’m willing to take.”
Why gamble on contests?
Besides the prospect of publication and the exposure that comes along with it, there’s the potential financial return. Journal-run prizes often pay $1,000 or more for an individual piece, while a standard literary journal acceptance often pays very little if anything. My book contract from Sarabande came with a two-week fellowship, a standard royalty agreement, and a $2,000 cash prize, which more than recouped what I spent on entry fees for all fifteen submissions that preceded it. Although book prizes generally pay less than fiction or nonfiction advances at major publishing houses, they pay significantly better up front than many deals struck through open reading periods, as small presses often cannot afford to offer advances. Givhan, for instance, has earned $2,000 in prizes for each of her prize-winning collections, but two books placed during reading periods have only brought her—so far—a total of $450 in royalties.
Money aside, I can personally attest that winning a contest is, without exaggeration, life-changing. I’ll never forget the humbling shock and wild joy of pressing Play on my voice mail and hearing, “Hi, Emma, this is Sarah Gorham at Sarabande Books, and I have some good news.” I’m still learning how this will shape my career, but it has already begun doing so. I’m not alone.
Nino Cipri, for example, signed with an agent as a result of winning the contest sponsored by Dzanc Books. “Our society loves a winner,” says Buchanan at Willow Books, “so publication prizes do add a level of prestige and help with the marketing.” Contests also come with a few built-in perks you might not even consider, such as an automatic blurb and publicity boost from the judge.
Annie Hwang, a literary agent at Ayesha Pande Literary, regularly reads the winners of both journal and book prizes on her “hunt for talented emerging voices,” as she calls it. She also pays closer attention to submissions from writers who have published short pieces, with or without prizes, in literary journals she especially admires—though if a writer has won “a prize that catches my eye,” she adds, “that would be the cherry on top.” Placing in and winning contests demonstrates a writer’s ability to “build and grow your platform and brand” and to reach an audience.
Single pieces: slush pile or contest?
With all this in mind, let’s say you have a story (or an essay or a batch of poems) that you’re hoping to publish. For the same amount of money, you probably could submit this story to either five open reading periods or one contest.
Which route you should take depends on your goals for your submission. Hwang says that if a writer has already published several pieces through general submissions, “it might make sense to gain some higher recognition by submitting to prizes.” And if mentors’ feedback and previous acceptances suggest you might have a shot at winning, contests could be a good way to attract an agent’s attention or improve your curriculum vitae. After all, some prizes, like the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, come with significant hype and prestige. And many prizes, like Winter Tangerine’s awards, also name and publish finalists, which would be a feather in any writer’s hat.
Although book prizes generally pay less than fiction or nonfiction advances at major publishing houses, they pay significantly better up front than many deals struck through open reading periods.
However, if you’re submitting for the first time, trying to build your publication list more generally, or hoping to avoid the higher entry fees, general submissions might be a good way to go. Although the potential payout is lower, you can likely afford to submit to more places simultaneously, increasing your chances of acceptance. And even if not, you could get a personal rejection encouraging you to submit again.
Either way, the rejections and acceptances you receive may help you gauge where you are with your work. Hwang says, “You will learn something about the process of putting your work out there and receiving feedback; you will learn how an industry professional engages with your work, what resonates and perhaps what doesn’t—and all of that is invaluable.” Davis at Coffee House advises writers not to worry if they’re short on journal publications but are ready to submit a full book. “We’ve acquired some wonderful projects that had not received prizes or been widely excerpted prior to submission,” she says. “We’re not generally focused on those kinds of accolades and are more interested in whether the book will fit alongside the others on our list.”
What about manuscripts?
If you’ve completed a book manuscript, especially if it’s a novel or memoir, your decision may come down to either pursuing an agent or submitting the work yourself through contests and open reading periods. Hwang says if a book has a broad readership and could potentially find a home at a larger trade publisher, querying agents before submitting on your own might be the way to go.
According to Sarah Gorham, contests and open reading periods’ accessibility to non-agented writers is both intentional and important: They show presses “a crosscut of writers in the community, from seasoned writers to those just starting out.” (Sarabande even treats contest submissions as an open reading period, regularly publishing entries that aren’t selected by the external judges but that catch the editors’ eyes.) Lizzie Davis, at Coffee House, says, “The kinds of risk-taking works we seek aren’t always agented, especially if they’re debuts.”
Just as a diverse set of contest judges can disrupt the dominance of white editors in publishing, the focus of contests can sometimes act as a corrective to publishing industry biases. Northwestern University Press, for example, works with the nonprofit Cave Canem to publish second books, specifically, through the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. Parneshia Jones, the press’s editorial director for trade and engagement, says, “It is just as difficult to get your second book published as your first. This is especially the case for Black writers and writers of color, so we wanted to create a prize that stands out from the first-book award prizes to cast a wide net.”
Aside from the judges and prize money, a book contest also signifies a dedicated and prefunded slot in a publisher’s lineup and is therefore an opportunity for a press to pick up a manuscript that it might see as financially risky or less marketable. This is particularly true of first books and poetry, essay, and short story collections, none of which tend to sell as well as novels by established authors. Jennifer Givhan recently received the following rejection for an agented poetry submission to a major publishing house: “We struggled to find a truly commercial way to position Jenn.” Around the same time she also sent this manuscript to one contest—last year’s National Poetry Series, for which it was named a finalist.
Leslie Jamison was drawn to Graywolf’s prize for similar reasons: “My agent basically told me if we were going to sell to a big New York house, I’d have to make the essays much more uniformly personal and more chronological—something more like a memoir—and I knew absolutely that wasn’t the book I wanted to write.”
Nino Cipri hadn’t planned on submitting a short story collection before their novel, since “the conventional wisdom was that it was difficult for a debut author to get a short story collection published.” But after learning about Dzanc’s contest, they decided to collect some stories, take a risk, and submit. Cipri, whose novella Finna was also accepted through an open reading period at Tor.com, believes writers should consistently submit to free opportunities at presses they admire, adding, “Even if you don’t get published through them, it’s always good to get your work out.”
NO MATTER your particular situation, there is some pretty consistent advice: Work hard and do your research. Only submit work, Gorham says, that “has been vetted by at least two other writers or poets. Wait a few months. Then read the manuscript over again until you believe it is perfect.” With every submission opportunity, she says, you should read the press’s previous publications and “decide if your work is a good fit.” Jones, at Northwestern University Press, agrees: Doing this “gives you insight to how a publisher produces their books and if you can imagine being published by them,” she says, adding, “Follow the submission instructions carefully.” And, says Belkhyr at Winter Tangerine, “Whether for awards or general issues, submit to magazines that are publishing work you could imagine your work living next to, especially if you’re paying to submit.”
Finally, once you’ve done all this, don’t get too invested in a single submission, and—as Cipri puts it—try not to “focus on any one path to publication or a writing career.” There is no single answer. Keep looking for the ways that work for you.