Writers Market Guidelines Resources

Every aspiring writer absolutely by all means should have some sort of resource that provides them with information about the various markets that accept freelance work and details about what they are looking for. This is a list of many of those resources online. There are obviously endless databases of writers guidelines and writers market information out there on the web but I tried to pick a selection of resource databases that were unique and least likely to overlap information completely. Many of these are updated regulary and based on what the markets and publishers contact them with at the moment, but a couple of them just happen to be really large and extensive where you can find any market you are looking for. As a freelance writer myself, these are the sites I’ve found the most helpful.

Writer’s Nook and Readers Corner”

Though this is only a handful (or a few) of links to online paying markets and their writers’ guidelines, the list at Writer’s Nook and Reader’s Corner is a good one. As the writers of WNRC warn, though, one should be sure to check with other freelancers before putting tons of trust into a specific market, as some of these online publications are short lived, on a tight budget and/or tend to be somewhat unreliable. This is a good page to start scouring through, though if you want to write for online markets only.

Fiction Factor Writers Market Guidelines

The Fiction Factor Website contains a list of market guidelines according to category, such as non-fiction, fiction and poetry. While the listings are primarily designed for online submissions for web publishing only, there is also limited information on this site for Anthology calls for writers and an updated overview of a few contests. Hardly extensive, this site is a good one to browse through last to, if anything, simply make sure you got them all.

Writers Weekly Market Guidelines

Writers Weekly has been well known for its reliable and quality writing resources for a very long time now. There are many places on this site where one can find out about freelancing opportunities, contests and markets, but the best way to the most comprehensive list of good links is through the site’s internal search engine. Select the Search link from the top navigational bar and you will have the opportunity to scour the site for a wide array of distinguishing information. Leave everything as it is, that is, keep the options at their default, except for the keyword window. There, type in quotes, “Welcomes New Writers”. Then search, and you should come up with thousands of great listings for individual magazine sources looking to add new writers’ works to their history of published material. This site is very helpful for your pick and choose searching method as well, for the short description of the market type and needs right below the title of the market/link enables you to easily weed out the markets in which you have no level of interest.

Publisher’s Database

The Publishers Database is a dedicated resource for writers, artists, poets and photographers and has an enormous, massive, let me reiterate, monstrous database of writing market listings, fit with extensive contact information and writers’ guidelines. This website is definitely one of the most extensive free sources for writers market information available on the Internet. With guidelines and direct URL links to probably thousands of magazines, newspapers and literary journals, both online and off, included, you can find enough markets to have you writing pitch letters for a week straight, and even then, only plowing through a little less than half of this list. The list is alphabetically organized, but you may break it down a bit by clicking on one of the freelance work types: art, music, writing and other. And for each of those, you can choose a sub genre to target your needs even more. This website is very highly recommended, but is a lot to tackle. Therefore, I do suggest taking it on only when you have a few hours to spend in front of the almighty machine.

The Market List”

While the Market List website has thousands upon thousands of links to specific market contacts and some submission information, the site in its entirety leans a little biased towards that of the speculative fiction and fantasy/horror genres. That is not to say that the market listings are not extensive and diverse among all genres of writing, as there are listings as random as Attache, US Airways’ inflight magazine, Austin Home and Garden, a Texas publication and Autograph Digest. This is a great resource for markets if you have time and energy to click back and forth every few seconds between each link and the main page, but unfortunately, the only way the list is narrowed is by the first letter in the publications’ titles. There is no way to discriminate toward specific genre, publication format, or category of interest. So while it may very well have listings that can be found in no other place on the web, the fact is, these specifics are a little difficult to come by. And too difficult to be worth the effort, I’m not sure. I still have yet to fully explore all the listings in the first section, A.

Worldwide Freelance Market Guidelines”

This list of guidelines is absolutely huge and probably one of the best, fullest lists besides the fee based Writer’s Market database. Easily searchable according to keyword, level of payment, genre, category, etc if you know what area you want to write in and about this is a great reference place. The only thing about this and other lists this large is that it is hard to know which magazines are calling for writers at the immediate moment. While some of the other resources I’ve listed here only have a few according to which publisher’s have contacted them to get listed, this basically shows everything and what they generally look for on an ongoing basis. Which essentially means it’s more hit or miss; it may be difficult to find the markets that are most likely to buy your work.