Submission Grinder Literary Market Scraper

Scrape The Submission Grinder — the leading free literary market database for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writers. Extracts market name, genres, pay rate, response-time averages, acceptance rates, and submission guidelines for 6,000+ markets.

The Submission Grinder is the primary free alternative to Duotrope. Its community-sourced response-time and acceptance-rate statistics are not available from any other free source. Market list browsing is login-gated, but individual market detail pages (/Market/Index/<id>) are fully public — this scraper enumerates them by ID to collect the complete database.

What you get

Field	Description
market_id	Numeric market ID
market_name	Publication or market name
market_type	fiction / poetry / nonfiction
genres	Genres accepted (Fantasy, Science Fiction, Literary, etc.)
pay_rate	Pay per word or per piece (e.g., "14 cents/word", "$69.50/piece")
response_time_avg_days	Community-reported average response time in days
acceptance_rate	Acceptance percentage with average days (e.g., "1.49% - avg 33 days")
submission_url	URL to the market's submission guidelines page
guidelines_summary	First 500 characters of the market's self-provided description
simultaneous_submissions	Whether simultaneous submissions are allowed
reprints_accepted	Whether reprints are accepted (when listed)
status	open / temporarily_closed / closed / disqualified
source_url	Source URL on The Submission Grinder

Use cases

• Build a searchable literary market database
• Filter markets by genre, pay tier, or acceptance rate
• Track response time trends across fiction magazines
• Power submission-tracking tools for writers
• Research SFWA-qualifying or pro-rate markets

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
startId	integer	1	First market ID to crawl (inclusive)
endId	integer	25000	Last market ID to crawl (inclusive)
maxItems	integer	—	Cap the total number of records scraped

Markets with IDs outside the active range return empty pages and are silently skipped. To scrape the full database, use startId: 1, endId: 25000, and omit maxItems.

Example output

{
  "market_id": 11,
  "market_name": "Clarkesworld Magazine",
  "market_type": "fiction",
  "genres": ["Fantasy", "Science Fiction"],
  "pay_rate": "14 cents/word",
  "response_time_avg_days": 3.2,
  "acceptance_rate": "1.49% - avg 33 days",
  "submission_url": "http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/submissions/",
  "guidelines_summary": "Note: after receiving a rejection, wait seven days before submitting again. Clarkesworld Magazine is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine...",
  "simultaneous_submissions": false,
  "reprints_accepted": null,
  "status": "open",
  "source_url": "https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/Market/Index/11"
}

Pricing

Charged per market record scraped. Uses the standard pay-per-event model — you only pay for data you receive.

Notes

• Market IDs are sequential integers. Some IDs in the range may be unused or point to disqualified markets — these emit a minimal record with status: "disqualified" or are skipped entirely if the page has no market data.
• Response statistics are community-reported and reflect the aggregate of all user-logged submissions over the past 12 months.
• The scraper respects the site's public/private boundary: only the public Market/Index/<id> pages are crawled. Browse, search, and account pages are never accessed.