“Many factors contribute to a submission being accepted but the quality of your work should always be top priority.” – dimitrireyespoet.com
Very recently, I put together a How to Sign Up for a Submittable Account video where I discuss how to register, why Submittable is important, and some tips on how to navigate the website. Upon the release of that video, a poet who I know personally brought up some interesting questions as a follow up to submitting poems, one of them being if titling your submissions, “x Poems” as in “3 Poems” or “5 Poems” will hurt your chances of getting your poetry looked at.
This was an excellent question because in actuality, there’s no cut and dry answer. Every publisher operates uniquely and this doesn’t take into consideration the tastes of the reader as well as what themes/ topics they’re looking for in their next issue. With that being said, the requirements for each publisher varies slightly. I explain this well in the 6 Great Tips for Submitting Your Poetry for Publication.
Nevertheless, the quality of the work submitted still outweighs any other part of the submitted documentation, but all the other parts can aid you in being paid close attention to or even stand out in the sea of other submissions.
What I am about to share with you is my accepted list on Submittable that was last updated June 12th, 2020. My hope is to help illustrate the many different ways I’ve submitted work with different titles and additionally will highlight which methods I’ve had the most luck with. To be clear, I’d like to stress one more time that the quality of the work is the most important, but there are also many other factors that attribute to an acceptance. Don’t be discouraged if you’re receiving many rejections because that simply means that your work wasn’t their style or you may need to return to the revision process. Either way, this contributes to the need to read poetry, not only to know what’s out there, but to gauge what’s publishable material.
You’ll notice that I don’t choose to just submit a submission under “X Poems” instead I’ve broken up my submissions into 4 different criteria:
- “X” Poems (general)
- Thematic Titles (most creative)
- Title Poems or Listing all titles (spotlights a work & can appear most uniform)
- Name of publisher & initial or name (most formal)
Examples:
- 5 Poems (or) Dimitri Reyes- 3 Poems
- Take Me to Church (or) Introspection of Brick City Living
- Heartlines & Other Poems (or) On the 7th Day
- Kenyon Review- DR (or) Kenyon Review- D Reyes (or) Kenyon Review- Dimitri Reyes
I was interested to see (through math!) if any of these methods were favored by publishers over the other, and this is what I came up with according to my Submittable submissions:
As you can see, it seems publishers favor the “x” poems and title poem/ all titles while they favor the more formal name of publisher and initials the least. Personally, out of the chosen styles i’ve used to submit my work, there isn’t any “correct” way to do so as these all do quite well. For these title methods that have helped earn an accepted publication credit, there are plenty of others that followed one of my 4 ways and ended up getting rejected.
My suggestion is to experiment with them all and see which one feels right. Your choices are truly dependent upon your preference and what each submission calls for.
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