Review of Submit, Publish, Repeat, 2025 ed.

In case you’ve never stumbled upon Authors Publish Magazine (go subscribe now, I’ll wait), they produce a bewildering number of helpful resources for writers, delivered to your inbox in periodical newsletters. Among these is the coveted (and free) e-book, Submit, Publish, Repeat: How to Publish Your Creative Writing in Literary Journals, now in its eighth edition and ready for download.

(For those curious about previous editions: The book used to have edition numbers, but switched to years at some point. The first edition was written by Caitlin Jans (maybe Thompson? But definitely the co-founder of the magazine) in 2014. Subsequent editions have been spearheaded by Emily Harstone (the pen name of a regular contributor to the mag, though I’m not closed to the idea that Caitlin and Emily are the same person). The 2025 edition definitely says Emily’s name on it, so that’s what we’ll stick with.)

Imagine sitting down with a writing mentor who has an MFA in creative writing, years of writing experience, numerous publications, and teaching gigs under her belt. You’ve got four or five hours together (that’s about how long it takes to devour the book), so you ask her to tell you everything she knows about getting published in literary journals. Like everything.

That’s this book. It’s Emily, sitting across from you, laying on the table everything she knows, and answering questions before you can even ask them. She starts with sending out and tracking your work, detailing every step that follows: getting accepted (and rejected), communicating with editors, navigating the actual publication process, and what to do once you’ve got some credits behind your name. Except it’s all written down, and you can highlight and bookmark it, and refer back to it whenever you want. And it’s free.

Emily Harstone is a published author, poet, creative writing professor, and regular contributor to Authors Publish. She’s also done time as a reader and editor. She primarily writes the book from her experience as a writer and what she’s learned along the way, and uses anecdotes from other writers and tidbits from walking on the dark side to round out her expertise. Her style is very anti-pretentious and casual, even raw (more about that later), which gives the book an intimate feel and makes her encouragement feel genuine. A perfect voice for this book and the target reader.

This book would benefit everyone, but I think the target reader is the writer who is ready to start submitting to journals. She answers every question someone new to the game asks and validates all the feelings that come with the answers. That being said, many of the resources she links to (especially resources like RejectionWiki and the individual journals she highlights for each submission tier) will be invaluable to the seasoned submitter. AND, as an editor, I really enjoyed her perspective and validation of how publishing is evolving. Heck, even publishers and submission curators will find ways to improve their products from the critique of an experienced submitter (especially if your publication didn’t make it into this edition). In other words, it’s worth way more than the cover price!

The read.

I agree with everything Emily says in this book. And I love that even though she is a poet (rather than a short story writer), her experience on both sides of publishing allows her to speak with authority on all kinds of submissions, from literary and genre fiction to flash to nonfiction to poetry. I think her thoughts on submitting to anthologies, organizing submissions into tiers, and communicating with publishers will be particularly useful for every writer. In future editions, I’d love to hear what Emily has to say about AI in publishing, selling reprints, first audio rights, and translations.

My only critique focuses on the editing and organization of Submit as a reference (keeping in mind that a publishing a free book doesn’t earn a lot of money to pay for editors). The book is a good read, cover to cover, but a resource without an index depends entirely on descriptive chapter titles, subheadings, and staying on topic. The titles and sub-titles are excellent, but Emily’s casual style necessitates that she foreshadow an upcoming topic or connect to something she said earlier. During these transitions, she occasionally throws in useful nuggets that are hard to find later. There is a resource list (focused on submission curation rather than all the resources she mentions, unfortunately) and a glossary at the end, but nothing beats an index.

Finally, if you’re a picky reader, you will find this book a little raw. The intimate setup of a mentor speaking directly to the reader makes the book accessible for writers of every level (especially those not familiar with all the jargon), including repetition so that the reader doesn’t have to take copious notes. But there are sentences that are mechanically awkward or lack clarity because of their casualness, single lines separated from their paragraph (widows), pages with only a few words (orphans), and broken links that pull the reader from their immersion.

Nitpicks aside, I don’t know of a more up-to-date, comprehensive resource for submitting to journals. Submit, Publish, Repeat is a validating and encouraging resource for any writer, but especially those wanting to send stories into the wild for the first time. Get your copy on Authors Publish.