(Image used with absolutely no permission whatsoever.)
Remember those old Hair Club for Men commercials, where a man (with a full head of hair) comes on at the end and says: "I'm not only the hair club president; I'm also a client." Well, allow me to say: "I'm not only the owner of Submitit; I'm also a client." Yes, I use the Submitit Algorithm for my own journal submissions. And I'm happy to say that the thing works for me too (see below).
On this blog, I love to enthusiastically share my clients' success stories. I hope this gives current clients (and prospective clients) confidence that the algorithm—and my approach to submitting stories and essays to literary journals—works. As much as I'd like to get everyone published, I know 100% success is not a realistic goal. But I think I'm significantly improving everyone's chances of getting published, which has always been the point. The numbers seem to be bearing this out. (I plan to publish statistics in the next couple of months.)
I also think it makes sense to very occasionally acknowledge my own personal publishing successes. So—with much humility (hat in hand, balding head visible to all)—I'm happy to say that in the past month or so, the Submitit Algorithm has helped me find homes for the following stories:
"The New City" (forthcoming) in Slippery Elm (85% match, first round of submissions)
"The Hand Remembers" (forthcoming) in Tiny Molecules (72% match, second round)
"The Eternal Bliss of Being an Object Among Objects" in Complete Sentence: A Magazine of Single-Sentence Prose (97% match, first round)
As I continue to study journals (I still read at least a story or two every night), the algorithm will only get better. Each new story potentially improves the accuracy of the algorithm. And I'm frequently adding new journals, probably one or two a week. Sometimes I'll even wipe a journal clean if I seem to be getting a ton of rejections (I just did this with /Temz/ last week). Things are working really well, but I'm always trying to improve.
Finally, I'm open to anyone's thoughts about how the whole system works. You can always shoot me an email at info@submititnow.com. Thank you for reading.
—Erik Harper Klass is the founder of Submitit, the WORLD’S FIRST full-service submissions company. He has published stories and essays in a variety of journals, including New England Review, Summerset Review, and Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, and he has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes.
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