Hello! I am here with Erin Cairns (of InkFoundry) to announce a new Submission Grinder feature in collaboration between the two sites!
(Erin here! Hi!)
What is the Submission Grinder?
The Submission Grinder is the sister site of Diabolical Plots and run by the same publisher. It is a donation-supported online tool to help writers track submissions, find publications for their work, keep track of payments, and more.
What is InkFoundry?
In Erin’s words:
InkFoundry is a story-discovery tool, made to help readers find interesting, engaging stories tagged with every niche interest under the sun! Inspired by the accessibility and discoverability of Archive of Our Own, InkFoundry archives links to professionally curated, well-edited, artist-paid, free-to-read stories from online magazines and journals.
What are Market Story Links?
Market story links are links to free-to-read stories published by a publication that has a Submission Grinder market page. You can see them in action on the Diabolical Plots market listing, where it shows a link to the most recently published story as well as a link to a random story from the backlog of published stories.
Besides those couple of links on the market page, it also has a link to the stories page for the publication where readers can find a list of all of the stories that have been uploaded for that publication.
Modern audiences are familiar with tags and using them, and these cards are a very quick and easy way for them to recommend stories to each other– with warnings, tags, and a tantalizing hook.
What is the Collaboration?
Publications that meet certain criteria can name a user account as a trusted representative, and then that representative can upload spreadsheets of story promo data. And then that story promo data will also be shared automatically with InkFoundry and if it meets their criteria (i.e. for InkFoundry it has to be speculative), then they will add it there as well.
For a publication to name a trusted representative, they just need to contact The Submission Grinder through our contact form and tell us that you want to name a trusted representative for your listing, and we will help you get verified and set up to do that. The trusted representative will need to register for a free Submission Grinder account (we do not share or sell your account information, and we do not send you any advertisements – we do have a couple of newsletters, but those are opt-in only).
What Criteria Does a Publication Have to Meet to Use This Feature?
- the publication has to have a full Submission Grinder listing (not an incomplete/stub listing)
- has to be a fiction publication (nonfiction and poetry may be added later)
- Stories have to be linkable to read online
- the listing must not be marked as Non-Standard Contract
- cannot charge submission fees
- cannot use generative AI art, or accept generative AI writing
- has to pay writers
- has to have an authorized representative (this can be set up by requesting it through our contact form!)
Why is the Collaboration?
If you followed the earlier link to InkFoundry, you might think that the Market Story Links in the last question looked like basically the same thing. And they are! Both sites started implementing them roughly the same time, but InkFoundry has done a great job implementing great frontend search interfaces and getting a lot of data entered. The Submission Grinder has certainly made some progress and will continue to make some progress, but InkFoundry certainly has a much more mature searching and tagging system.
Submission Grinder has done other things for this very well, particularly a bulk upload tool that takes a spreadsheet file containing story promo metadata, and can upload a lot of records all at once. Allowing it to be put in a spreadsheet makes it much easier to fill it in and format it using programs, or by crowdsourcing story tagging to a publication staff or even a fanbase.
Erin and I realized that this was a great opportunity. The Submission Grinder has a robust spreadsheet import that makes it easy for a publication to add a whole backlog efficiently. InkFoundry has a solid search functionality and has a reader-based mission statement instead of a writer-based mission statement which is ideal for the goal here. By sharing the story promo data, it encourages publications to use the Submission Grinder interface to allow them to benefit from that.
Readers are ready! Help them find you and stories they can click on with enthusiasm! Inform them about what they’re about to read with tags and pitches, hooking them just a little bit at a time until they’ve got a hundred open tabs of stories they can read over breakfast or on their lunch break or in line at the grocery store!
Conclusion
If you have any questions please reach out to either of us!