For you writers of short fiction, how much time do you spend searching for a market for your work? I used to forecast that for every three hours I spent writing, I used another hour just on researching markets. This included understanding what the market was doing, checking on the audience and reviews of publishers, deciding where best I fit in, as well as prescribing to said market's highly personalized guidelines. Whew! It was time-consumptive.
We all have work and family and other life obligations that come first, so the time found for writing is precious and a limited resource. Utilize every writer's resource that you can in order to sift through the unnecessary balderdash.
Here are some of the best online writing resources I have discovered that provide MARKET LISTINGS and the latest in what publications are asking for (focused on speculative or genre fiction).
These are FREE market listings:
http://www.ralan.com/index.htm - Ralan.com: Speculative Fiction and Humor
http://www.aswiebe.com/writing/markets.html - Aswiebe's Market List: Fantasy, Sci Fi, and Horror
http://www.placesforwriters.com/ - Places for Writers: Literary, Journals, and Fiction
http://darkmarkets.com - Dark Markets: Horror
www.everywritersresource.com - Every Writers Resource: Literary, Genre Fiction, Academic
http://horrortree.com – Horror Tree: Horror, Speculative Fiction
http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/thegrinder/Search.aspx - All Fiction Genres
http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines?genre=Fiction&subgenre=All&perpage=100&format=All&pay=yes - Poets & Writers
http://www.angiebenedetti.com/blog/category/anthology-market-listings/ - Angela Benedetti’s Market Listings
http://writingcareer.com/tagged/magazine-writing - Writing Career (Magazines)
http://writingcareer.com/call-for-anthology-submissions - Writing Career (Anthologies)
http://sandraseamans.blogspot.co.uk/ - Sandra Seamans' Markets (My Little Corner: Horror, Science and Speculative Fiction and other genres)
https://duotrope.com/index.aspx - Duotrope Digest: Literary or Genre Fiction
In addition, be sure to obtain your annual print copy of WRITER'S MARKET (Writer's Digest Books), that provides traditional publishers who may not advertise on the internet.
Hope this helps, and keep writing!
Midnight cheers,
Eric
<UPDATE JANUARY, 2017>