So, I’ve basically got three publications in mind for my submission. These are three personal favorites that I believe are very accessible reads, and fortunately, have pretty simplistic guidelines.
First off – the piece that I plan on submitting is Why you should ditch your digital files and venture over to vinyl
I know that there are some edits that need to be made to it. I’d likely remove the subheadings and maybe change things so that there is more of an element of discussion while I recall the conversation. I’m not super pleased with all of the sentence structure, but it was written quickly and figured…you know…it’s only a draft.
1) Paste (online Music/Art/Culture Site)
Paste is really clear with what they want – and even include a style guide for folks who don’t do this for a living. They are primarily looking for feature profiles of artists, essays of a personal, humorous or opinionated nature, trend stories, and reviews. Submissions are taken on a rolling basis – and they let your words speak for themselves…no resume or prior work is needed…just email it off to their contact person. Personally – since they are looking for essays I think this would be my top choice, and a place that I would seriously consider submitting to.
2) No Depression (Quarterly Print Publication about Music)
After reading a bit more about what No Depression is looking for in terms of content, I don’t think this publication would be suitable unless I re-worked the angle of the piece…it wouldn’t be impossible, but might compromise the feeling of the piece. For the print publication, they just want a story synopsis and a writing sample emailed to their editor. For their online site, they allow you to create a login where you can put your article and see it live on their within minutes.
3) Pitchfork (online Music/Art/Culture Site – considered slightly more academic)
This publication will take unsolicited pieces, but seems hesitant to publish anything by a person that they don’t have per-existing relationship with. If they are interested in your writing – they might be inclined to let you review an album or two before taking on any long form articles or stories.
I think that after cleaning my piece up, I’d totally be interested in sending it to Paste. It’s a reputable publication that I feel best aligns with my piece, and would require the least amount of re-writing which would allow it to stay more true to form.