The Submissions Grinder was launched about a year ago, when Duotrope went behind a pay wall. Like Duotrope, the Grinder is a submission tracker and market database for writers. However, the developers intend to keep the service free forever, to encourage people to use the service. More data means better statistics!
Here’s the search window (click to embiggen):
The format will be familiar to Duotrope users, but with some nifty additions. You can search (and sort!) by Response Time, if you don’t want to send a story to a slothful market. You can search by Pay Scale but also Market Qualification (e.g. Award Winning, SFWA Recognized). The Exclusions panel lets you ignore markets where you currently have a submission, or ignore markets that a particular story has already been submitted to.
When you sell a story, there are post-acceptance fields in the database, where you can specify contract, payment, and exclusivity details.
And it just keeps getting better. As of earlier this month, there’s a brand new tab on the home page, My Market Response List, which contains recent responses from markets where you have unresolved submissions. The developers are responsive and continually working to improve the user experience. And if you register (for free), it’s easy to import your Duotrope data. Highly recommended for short story writers.
