The Submission Grinder (or The Grinder for short) is a donation-based tool for writers to :

• Search for publications to submit their work
• View anonymized response time statistics based on other writer's submissions
• Track their submissions

Our database grows daily in size and accuracy.

Started in the spring of 2008, Diabolical Plots is a genre zine edited by David Steffen. The focus is on speculative fiction with a significant bent toward the business and craft of writing. In 2015, Diabolical Plots started publishing original fiction. Diabolical Plots, LLC is entity that maintains both The Submission Grinder and Diabolical Plots.

Telling us about your submissions to us via the contact form is not what that editor meant by "reporting your submissions". They meant that you can register for an account for free and then log the submissions using the web interface. Your submissions and other submissions are combined and anonymized to give users information about market response times--editors sometimes suggest you track your submissions, because it rewards them for responding promptly by attracting more submitters.

No relation. Yes we have heard the jokes. Yes we have also heard jokes about how funny it is to add the word "Submission" in particular since that also has sexual connotations.

You can start by just using the search engine without registering, to see if you find some new markets you are interested in. Or you can start by using just the submission tracker to make sure you don't forget about a submission.
If you want a walkthrough of the major features, you might want to watch this user-made YouTube video that features a walkthrough of the site. The walkthrough is based on a previous version of the site, so the look and the some the features might differ some, but it's still a good overview. The site has had a major upgrade since then, so some of the look and features may differ, but as a whole this gives a sense of it.
If you do register, the most important page on the site for you is the Manage Submissions page under the Account menu, which you can use to track and view submissions.

You don't. The Submission Grinder does not communicate with publications for you. The Grinder has no purpose for having your manuscripts.

Use the Suggest Market form and we will write up a listing as soon as possible.

A full listing means that it has information visible on the listing and is fully searchable. Listings that have the "does not qualify" text can still be found by name, and users can still track submissions against the listing, but won't come up in the Advanced Search.
Often, the reason that the publication does not have a full listing is in the description box after the "does not qualify" text. So please read that text before submitting any questions.
A "does not qualify" state for a listing is not necessarily permanent and users can ask questions though the administrator may not always be able to give a detailed answer. Sometimes we call these "delisted" or "stub" listings.
There are many reasons why a publication does not have a full listing. No publication is guaranteed a listing, and listings are provided at the discretion of the administrator. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list nor is the list meant to be unchanging. As new situations occur and new situations come to our attention this list may change.
In most case The Submission Grinder does not have access to the contracts that a publication uses, unless the publication posts a sample contract on their website. But the guidelines themselves may be used as a basis, or in some circumstances writers may share a contract with The Submission Grinder (preferably with personal contact or payment information removed) for evaluation for whether the contract terms merit a "non-standard contract flag" or even a delisting. These contracts are only used for the purposes of these changes and are held in the strictest confidence.
SOME REASONS WHY A PUBLICATION DOES NOT HAVE A FULL LISTING

• The editor/publisher has asked that their listing should be removed. They can ask for this for any reason and they do not have to provide any reason at all. This listing can be reinstated again at the publisher/editor's request if this is the only reason for delisting.
• The publication does not appear to have publicly posted guidelines, or has guidelines but they don't appear to be discoverable through normal navigation on the publication's website. For guidelines to be considered "public" they need to be visible without logging into a site. Guidelines on sites like Submittable and Moksha are public. Guidelines on Instagram and Twitter are not public. Guidelines on Facebook and Google Docs, it depends on individual settings. Publications that hide their guidelines whenever they're closed for submissions may have their listing downgraded and upgraded as their submission cycles occur. To avoid this, a publication can leave a copy of their guidelines publicly visible as a record even when they're not open for submissions.
• A publisher listing that exists to link other publication listings to it, but which itself does not take submissions apart from those linked listings. This is common for anthology publishers, where each anthology call will have its own listing, and the publisher listing helps make those anthologies more discoverable but which isn't a full listing in its own right because every submission would be for an individual anthology that has its own listing.
• There needs to be editorial oversight of some kind selecting stories before publication. If all submitted stories are published, even if the results are voted on, then this does not meet our definition of "publication". Contests with posting of all pieces on a private forum for voting purposes where the final selections are chosen by popular vote are permitted.
• Accepted stories need to be published for it to be counted as a publication. If an accepted story results in only an award, or membership in a workshop, or etc, and does not include publishing the accepted story, then this does not meet our definition of "publication".
• A publication used to take submissions of this type, but no longer does, and they still take submissions of another type. For instance, if a publication used to take both poetry and fiction, but stopped publishing poetry, then the fiction submission would be a full listing, but the poetry listing would be a "does not qualify" rather than "permanently closed" so that it does not confuse users into thinking the entire publication is permanently closed when it is really not.
• A publication states that writers are granting publication rights by submitting. This often has language like "By sending us a submission you grant us First North American Publishing Rights". This applies even the wording states that rights are granted at time of acceptance IF it is combined with language like "by submitting". Two-way communication (however brief) for unsolicited submissions to be accepted is required to have a full listing.
• A publication claims the copyright to the piece as part of acceptance.
• A publication asks the writer to waive their "moral rights" to the story. The meaning of this is complicated but waiving moral rights has in some circumstances resulted in attribution to the author being removed, or for the work to be altered without the author's consent or even awareness.
• A publication asks for the right to sublicense the work to other publications without requiring the specific approval from the author for the publications.
• A publication makes onerous extra demands in exchange for publication. This can include the author traveling to a convention, or performing an unreasonable amount of mandatory marketing activities.
• A publication only takes agented submissions, or only takes solicited submissions, and this appears to be a permanent state. (If a publication sometimes takes unsolicited or unagented, and this is clearly stated, then it may have a listing)
• There are some sites that host publication guidelines that object to other sites reposting their information. So if vital submission information like open/closed state is ONLY posted on such sites, then we cannot make a listing for it (we can make a listing if the information is double-posted both to such a site and to public guidelines on another site we can use.)
• There are credible accusations of plagiarism, breaches of author contract, publisher fraud, or other activity against the publication or staff of the publication.
• There are documented cases or credible accusations of harassment or other abusive behavior against the publication or staff of the publication.
• The publication or staff of the publication has harassed staff or volunteers of The Submission Grinder. Criticism, suggestions for change is acceptable, insults, harassment, and vitriol are not. Volunteers run this site in our spare time. We are not here to take a publication's abuse and we reserve the right to simply not do that.

Use the "Suggest Correction" link on the market listing and we will check and update the listing as soon as we can.

We prefer "donation-based" to "free" because we depend on your generosity to keep running. Our operating costs are pretty low, but if we did run out we would prefer to close the site than to charge to access it. We take donations from users. We make royalties from ebook sales. We accept monthly sponsorships. We depend on user support to run the sites, and we appreciate every penny of it.

The pay value for any length category the LEAST that a writer can expect to be paid according to the market's guidelines, rounded down to the next lowest cent--For example, a market that only pays SOME authors will be marked as non-paying. In the case of pay schemes that are not simple per-word rates (such as flat payment amounts, the pay rate is estimated to cent-per-word rates for 1000-word intervals (the software was updated in 2020 to allow this granularity so some market listings may need to be updated yet!).

For instance if a magazine takes submissions from 0-10,000 words and pays $80, then the rate is:

• Flash: 0-1000 words: 8 cents/word (8000 cents/1000 words)
• Short Story: 1000-2000 words: 4 cents/word (8000 cents/2000 words)
• Short Story: 2000-4000 words: 2 cents/word (8000 cents/4000 words)
• Short Story: 4000-7500 words: 1 cent/word (8000 cents/7500 words) (ends at 7500 words because that is where Short Story category ends)
• Novelette: 7500-8000 words: 1 cent/word (8000 cents/8000 words)
• Novelette: 8000-10,000 words: <1 cent/word (8000 cents/10,000 words)

Yes! And here it is!

At the time that the site was launched Diabolical Plots had already existed for about five years, and had had a mad scientist writer image (based on artwork by Joey Jordan) for the site for most of that time. We came up with "The Submission Grinder" as a name by imagining how a mad scientist writer might deal with rejection letters, and we were amused by the idea of a tool on the mad scientist's desk that resembled a meat grinder where one could feed rejection slips and through some handwavy mad science it would produce a stream of statistics--based on the idea of users submitting their submissions and the Grinder computing response time statistics from them. The mad scientist would, of course, be cackling madly while they turn the crank.

While The Submissions Grinder is still considered to be a beta, we have taken steps to ensure your data integrity as well as protecting your identity.
We store all passwords as a one way hash, which means that no one can find out what the password is by accessing our data (not even us).
We host our sites on distributed cloud hosting which help minimize the potential for site outages.
We perform regular database backups as well to minimize data loss.

All of our listings, market response information, and search engines are publicly available and will remain that way. But why not sign up? It's free!

Yes. There is no reason you can't log very old submissions.

Yes. You will need a "stub" listing for that, which is a listing with just the most basic information--which is either set to Permanently Closed or DNQ (for does not qualify for a listing). A "stub" is lacking the information to be a full listing and may only have a title.

To get a stub listing, use the Suggest a Market page under the Contact menu like you would for an existing market. It's extra nice if you use the URL space to say something explanatory like "permanently closed" or "doesn't take unsolicited subs". This will save us the time of trying to find the guidelines.

Yes, you'll need a stub listing (see previous answer)

Yes, you'll need a stub listing (see previous answer)

First, stay calm. You aren't the first and I doubt you'll be the last. Next, try again and see if the bug is persistent. Finally, tell us about it.

It's easy to miss, but every time you add or edit a submission, there is an expandable section titled "Post-Acceptance Fields" that contains extra fields that you will typically only use after a market accepts your story. The pertinent fields here are "Date of Payment" and "Amount Paid" which are both used to populate the monetary totals on the Dashboard page.

There are plans in the works to provide that functionality, but that hasn't been written yet (at the time that I'm writing this. Hopefully I'll remember to delete this from the FAQ when it's released).

Our recommendation at this time is to use a bit of a workaround by logging a submission to a dummy listing called "Miscellaneous Writing Income". If you set it as "Lost/Never Responded" it won't mess with your Dashboard statistics much. Set the payment date and payment amount and you can either tag it for the story that earned you the money if it was related to a story, or you can make a dummy piece too like "Speaking Fees" or whatever.

This will be better at some point but hopefully this will serve your purpose.

The Search By Name feature is very literal. It will look for a market that has the exact string of characters you provide. The most common things that interfere with finding things via Search by Name are:

Searching with a string that includes the word "magazine" or "journal" or other generic word that marks this as a publication. A magazine called "Fantasy" might sometimes call itself "Fantasy" and might sometimes call itself "Fantasy Magazine". You're usually better off just leaving off that word.

Misspelling a word. For instance, if you search for "Gigantosaurus" you will not find "Giganotasaurus"

Alternate forms of a word. Most especially "&" is not replaced with "and" or vice versa.

Generally you get the best results if you pick the shortest portion of the name that is likely to be distinctive. The search engine does not assume that what you have search for is a WHOLE WORD like some search engines do. So, if you search for "intergal" you will find "Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show", for instance.

Also keep in mind that there is an alphabetical listing, so if you know what letter it starts with, you can look there (Markets that start with "The" and "A" are alphabetized under that article for now, that will be fixed at some point)

Our recommendation is to set "Rewrite Request" as the end of that particular submission and log a new submission if you decide to revise and resubmit to the editor.