We get tons of submissions at Heeb. We definitely read your unsolicited submissions and even consider publishing them, unlike the pissed-off assistant-of-assistant types at Vanity Fair, who’ll trash anything you send in without reading it. We also get tons of questions about what it is that we’re looking for in a writer or artist. I was considering posting an entry full of detailed suggestions, but all you have to do is email [email protected] and we’ll send them to you. For free.
So I’m going to sum them up for you here, in one sentence: Read the magazine. If you want to steal your friend’s copy, or read it at the library, we understand. Go through the pages. Think about what you like from the magazine and what you’d like to see more of. Observe which editors seem especially hot, and contemplate ways to stalk them.
As a freelance journalist, I know how hard people work on submissions and how much of their soul goes into writing or illustrating. That said, you have to do your homework. If all you know about Heeb is that it’s a “Jewish magazine,” you’re off to a bad start. Hell, so is the Forward, but we’re not interested in cutesy hamentashen recipes. Don’t insert random Yiddish into your poem just because you think we’ll like it better. Have you ever seen a cheesy story about dating mishaps that is blatantly ripped off from a bad later-years Woody Allen flick appear in our publication? Yeah, me neither.
Here’s to all of your submissions, and an end to tsuris.