Duotrope: Our Story, Our Mission, Our Values
Everyone has a story. Here is ours. We exist to help you tell yours.
Photo by Maegan Martin.
Our Origin Story
Let's take you back to 2005. If you were a writer back then, all of this will sound painfully familiar. At that time, the
internet was fairly new and shiny. When writers wanted to find places to submit, they reached
for a big, bulky paper book that was already out of date by the time it rolled off the printing
press. There were some resources online, but they were all genre-specific, and while some
were well-maintained, others were simply… not.
Most submissions were sent via postal mail, and nothing was more frustrating than going
through the trouble of printing, collating, and mailing a submission, only to get a letter back a
few weeks later that said they "aren't accepting submissions at this time."
Duotrope began as one writer's attempt to bring some sanity to that chaos with a personal
database of publishers that she painstakingly kept as up to date as possible. After using it for
a few months for herself, she decided to make it available to other writers, and Duotrope was born.
Duotrope took off quickly, entirely by word-of-mouth. Before long, what started as one
person's side project became a fully-fledged business with a happy group of employees—the
Duotroopers.
Duotrope was self-funded from the very first payment of $29.95 that brought the site online.
(My, how the costs of web hosting have changed!) While we have had offers of partnership
and outside investment, we have always refused. We think it's better to stay independent, in order to ensure that we serve the needs of the community and
not the needs of outside investors.
In 2013, Duotrope transitioned to a paid, subscription service in order to be able to support our
full-time employees. Since then, we have not raised our prices. Not once. Not a single penny.
Not even as our costs have increased (and increased and increased).
With the unprecedented amount of data we have gathered in our 19 years monitoring the
publishing industry, we are able to bring transparency to a world that was previously hidden
behind a veil. How long do writers actually have to wait for a response? How often do agents
say "yes!"? We are proud that our statistics can answer these important questions and help
submitters make educated decisions about where to submit.