Submission Tracker

Why serious writers track their submissions

Most literary magazines and contests accept simultaneous submissions, but the etiquette has one hard rule: the moment a piece is accepted somewhere, you withdraw it everywhere else, immediately and politely. You cannot do that if you do not know where the piece is. A tracker turns "I think I sent that story to four places last spring" into a list you can act on in two minutes, which protects your reputation with editors you will want to submit to again.

Tracking also keeps your expectations calibrated. Literary magazines commonly take one to six months to respond, and many now say "if you have not heard from us in six months, consider it a pass." Contests usually announce results weeks or months after the deadline closes. Agents often respond to queries in four to eight weeks, if at all. Set a response-expected date on each entry and you will know when a follow-up query is fair game and when a silent market has earned a "no response" and the piece is free to go back out.

There is a money angle too. Contest fees of five to twenty dollars feel small one at a time and add up fast across a season. Logging the fee on each entry shows you what your submission habit actually costs, so you can weigh it against free-entry contests and fee-free magazines. Ourwriting contests list flags free-entry competitions, and contests open right nowshows what is currently accepting entries, sorted by deadline.

Your data never leaves this browser

Everything you type into this tracker is stored in your browser's local storage on your own device. Nothing is sent to our server, no account is created, and we cannot see your submission list even if we wanted to. The trade-off is that the data lives only in this browser: clear your browsing data or switch machines and the list will not follow you automatically. That is what the JSON backup is for; export it occasionally, keep the file somewhere safe, and import it to restore or move your log. The CSV export gives you the same data in a spreadsheet-friendly format for your own analysis.

How to use it well

• Log the submission the day you send it. Two fields matter most: the date and the market. Everything else can be filled in later.
• Use the market search for contests. Start typing a contest name and the tracker matches it against our live contest list, pre-fills the fee and entry URL, and adds a "closes in N days" countdown to the Upcoming panel.
• Note simultaneous submissions. Put the sister markets in the notes field so a future acceptance tells you exactly who to withdraw from.
• Retire silence honestly. When a market blows well past its stated response time, mark the entry "no response" and send the piece somewhere that wants it.