Writers Market Online

Mar 17, 2009

Having found the Writer’s Market books very useful in the past, but don’t like the fact that they “expire” (think of the trees!) and have to be replaced every year, I thought I’d give the Writers Market subscription website a try.

Access costs $6.00/month or $40/year or $55/2 years.  I figured $6 is a cheese and onion sandwich, so worth a try.  If you were to get the print edition, it would cost $20 and you’d have to replace it in a year.  I believe you can buy a “deluxe edition” that includes access to the website for $30. (These are amazon.com prices for the 2009 edition as of today.)

What is WritersMarket.com? (from their about page)
WritersMarket.com is the Internet’s most comprehensive guide to getting published. Since 1921, Writer’s Market has been the “freelance writer’s bible”, providing contact information for thousands of editors and agents, tips on manuscripts formatting, query letter clinics and more. And now it’s all available online, in a searchable database of information that can be personalized to meet your specific market needs. You can search through the thousands of markets in seconds, easily eliminating those that don’t fit your criteria. You also get daily market spotlights, a guide to Web resources for writers, tips on getting published, news from the publishing world, our online submission-tracking tools, and more. And, WritersMarket.com is continually updated, so you can be sure you’re getting the latest information available.

In addition to the publishing information available on the site, you also get access to the “Community” section which includes member blogs, a forum, groups and in general takes a stab at social networking.  I don’t think this works very well, personally.  I posted a couple of items on the forums, and noticed that days could go by without any new posts from other members.  So, it’s not very active.  Member blogs were unnecessary, because I would expect most writers have blogs already, and I would never suggest anyone make a blog that isn’t available to the public at large, but only to paying members. I noticed that only a bare handful of blogs were actually posted to on a daily basis, and the member groups didn’t seem to be all that active.

The meat of WritersMarket.com (and the reason to subscribe) is the information available about markets, agents, and editors. Back when I used the print edition of Writer’s Market, I would spend hours marking up pages, drawing big x’s through unsuitable entries, and wishing it was all a bit easier.  With the website version, it’s 1000x easier.  The search works well, you can save searches, and even save markets in folders.  I made a folder called “To Query” and came back the next day to send out query letters to those agents. Folders are slightly awkward in that simply moving a market from one folder to another is difficult, and you can’t see what folders a market is already in by looking at its listing.  Also, there’s no place to put notes, which I personally would find very helpful.

They did not have a search criteria for agents that accept e-queries.  This is important to me, but I had to use “has a website” instead, hoping that most agents who accept e-queries also have websites listed, but I know this isn’t necessarily going to be the case, and I’m going to miss on a few.

I found it slightly difficult to wrap my head around how to track queries with their “My Manuscripts” section.  Frankly, I think LitMatch.net works a lot better, plus the information they have about your submission is much more nicely laid out at LitMatch.  That being said, the information about the markets is better at WritersMarket.com.  It was current, detailed, and complete.  It felt more like a “no more stops needed”, although I did go to the agents’ websites to verify their current needs and submission guidelines.

Could it be better?  Absolutely.  The place where it fell down for me was user record-keeping.  It was awkward, as though it had been programmed as an after-thought by someone who didn’t actually try to USE it.  I plan to keep my free membership at LitMatch for tracking, and use the two sites in tandem.

Is it worth the money anyway?  Yes.  Despite the quirks and places the website could have been more user-friendly, the information for writers is pure gold.

Recommended! Plus, by using the website instead of the print version, you probably save a couple of trees every year, not to mention an entire bookshelf if, like me, you’ve been buying these things for a while.