Getting stories published in magazines

I have trouble with finding markets for short stories - there are too few UK ones, but there are so many US ones that I don't know where to start. Dozens of US paper magazines exist, from "the New Yorker" down, and many more magazine are online, so many that I wonder who reads them. Some issues to bear in mind when choosing where to send off are

• Quality - some literary magazines have been around for decades and have acquired a good reputation. New WWW magazines may look very smart, but how good are they? If you send your best story to one and it gets published, will you regret it later? You can get an idea of a publication's value from reading the bios of the authors. Look through Best American Short Stories or Pushcart anthologies to see where the best stories are published.
• Are minor publications worth it? - Views differ over whether publications in minor magazines lead to success in big magazines. I suspect that it doesn't help much, but it's an end in itself.
• Are regional publications worth it? - They're ends in themselves
• Genre magazines - springboard or type-casting? - I'd say springboard. Use a pen-name if you're worried.
• Timing - Many US mags have a summer break. No UK ones do.
• Simultaneous submission - Check on policy. UK magazines are less likely to accept simultaneous submissions.
• Electronic submission - More paper-based magazines are offering this facility, though sometimes at a price.

Online Lists

• Top 10 Small Literary Magazines and Journals and Top Large Literary Magazines (from About.com). Useful-looking annotated short-lists.
• Best Online Literary Magazines (from EWR). An annotated short-list of 20 magazines.
• UK Magazines publishing short stories (from "story"). Currently 80 entries, but many of them are minority interest - "Faeries and Enchantment Magazine", for example
• Duotrope. See also their "What's New" and Theme & Deadline Calendar pages.
• Jacqui Bennett Writers Bureau list of markets
• Horror fiction markets
• Poets and Writers
• Tim Love's list of Flash outlets. Though Flash has specialist magazines, some mainstream magazines take them too.

Miscellaneous Recommendations

• Lance Levens wrote - The online market for short stories remains healthy. storyglossia nominated one of my pieces for a Pushcart in '07. Storysouth is also thriving as well as some regional sites such as Dead Mule. Another encouraging note for us in the USA is the recently online short story submissions programs by more established journals such as
  • The Kenyon Review
  • Agni
  • Ploughshares
  • The Southwest Review ($2 fee for online submissions)
  There are plenty of traditional print journals where short fiction thrives: The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Sewannee Review, Hudson Review, Shenandoah, The Florida Review. These are well-known, attract big names and usually pay. But in addition, there are dozens of less well-known entry level zines:
  • Scrivener Review
  • The Danforth Review
  • The Adirondack Review
  are just a few I've published in and am familiar with.
• Janice D. Soderling suggested some Canadian magazines which are affiliated with universities.
  • The Fiddlehead
  • Event
  • The Windsor Review
  • The Malahat Review
• David Landrum's July haul included stories in
  • decomP
  • 34th Parallel
  • The Cynic OnLine
• Tim Love wrote - My list of published pieces mentions some (mostly extinct) magazines. In England I think the only paper options for literary stories are
  • Riptide (prose only)
  • shortfiction (prose only)
  • Ambit
  • Brand
  • London Magazine
  • Stand
  • Staple
  • Tears in the Fence
  • Brittle Star
  • Interzone (Sci-Fi)