The Submission Grinder (A Duotrope Replacement)

I rarely do two blog posts in a week, let alone in a day.  But I was just extremely excited that I couldn’t wait to share this with you.

I have made it no secret that I didn’t like how Duotrope handled their new business plan.  It seems there is a new alternative that arrived today.

The folks over at Diabolical Plots made an announcement today:

We have been actively working on creating a Duotrope replacement for which we will never require a subscription fee.  Anthony Sullivan has been our technical expert, as our resident web guru.  I have been the monkey with the wrench that hits things to see if I can break them, as well as market data entry.  The Submissions Grinder is already running and ready to go, though we have some work to do yet updating the market listings.

I was really excited to hear this.  I knew someone would put forth the effort to try to replace the void that Duotrope has left.  David Steffen appears to have had some of the same frustrations I had.  And a lot of his came from the same places mine did.  I just didn’t like how it was being handled.  And while many of us took to the blogging world to say we didn’t like it.  Steffen and his colleague Anthony Sullivan have put together The Submission Grinder.

I’ve already registered because I liked the idea and I know the folks at Diabolical Plots put out quality product.  And I will tell you what, I absolutely love it.  It is simple.  But what do you really need?  There is a market search, a submission tracker, and pieces manager.  In fact, those of us who are used to Duotrope will find the user interface and information to be virtually identical in most ways.

If you downloaded your Duotrope data from the site, you can upload that Excel CSV file right into their site.  I did that today and now all my submission data is saved right onto The Grinder’s “my submissions” section.  Best of all, your submissions will create a rapidly growing market listing on that site.  I’ve already pledged my support to these folks, if nothing else for the fact that they have proven that they care about writers.  Plasma Frequency will also happily do what it can to support these guys.

So please go check out the hard work these guys put into this.  Be patient with the bugs, as any new (and even veteran site) has them.  But I think you will see that this will quickly become everything you needed when Duotrope went paid.