I'm ready to start collecting rejection slips.

Does anyone know of some good places, magazines, etc., to submit unsolicited short fiction to?

try finding a book called Writers Market. Its published yearly..has all kind of places to submit your work along with any submission requirements

Is it literary fiction, genre fiction, etc.? The markets differ based on the type. There are a lot of small magazines and websites out there, though, so they should be easy to find.

If you dabble in mysteries, Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine are two good options.

http://www.themysteryplace.com/

It's important to match your story to the right magazine, so reading a lot of magazines helps. Send for sample issues if you are unfamiliar with a market. I used to be an editor at Northwest Review, and we got a lot of stories that were clearly sent to us only because they featured Northwest locales (something that has nothing to do with the focus of the magazine).

If you write sf, good online resources for both markets and online workshops are www.critters.org and www.speculations.com.

Good luck!

Ditto Tasha. I used to read submissions for a short fiction magazine, and the biggest problem (besides the fact that most people are just unimaginable hacks) was that people were submitting with clearly no idea what the magazine was about.

Another DON'T - in your cover letter, don't tell the editor how great your story is and why he should like it. And DON'T tell the editor how other, bigger publishers "almost" wanted it. I know the temptation (Weird Tales held a story of mine for more than a year before conceding that they just didn't have the space and it was all I could not do not to sing that from the rooftops on the next submission), but it just won't win anyone over to tell them it wasn't good enough for one person, but it should be for you.

DO list any professional sales you have in the cover letter (you're just starting, so this won't apply yet, but in time, it will). DON'T list unpaid publications, electronic "publications," or self-publications. Rule of thumb is that if the editor hasn't heard of and held the publication in question, he's not going to be impressed.