I thought my Master's thesis was half decent, and after presenting it at a seminar in Berlin, I was persuaded to try and get it published. Little did I know how long it would take!
I obviously couldn't get it published in New Classicists (as it didn't exist at the time), so I was advised by an academic friend that I should research the types of journals it could be published in and then send them my article. This research took a while, because finding which journals your article could be published in turns out to be a lot harder than I'd thought. You have to think about credibility, the peer reviewing process, the editors of the journal and most importantly, the FEES!!!! Most journals seem to charge APCs (Author Publication Charges), some also charge Open Access charges (which are the bane of my existence!! After all these years, I still don't understand why authors have to pay to have their research electronically published!) and then one journal charged £300 per image included in the article - considering I had 32 colour images, this was simply not financially possible.
So, I finally found 2 journals I wanted to submit to. I chose the more prestigious one, because why not? I submitted my article, was told I would be contacted by one of the editors and then NOTHING. For 6 months! In that time, I was checking the submission website for updates, I emailed the editors twice - nothing. I'm patient, but this is pushing it. After 6 months I just decided to submit the article to the other journal. Again,nothing for 6 months! Finally, after nearly a year since my original submission, I received an email from both journals, within a few days of each other, with rejections and anonymous feedback from reviewers. I appreciated the feedback, which I used to improve the article, but the submission process left me feeling deflated and asking several questions about the industry. (This is definitely NOT how things are done at New Classicists!!!)
Finally, I was ready to submit my article again, and whilst chatting to a professor, he suggested I post it up on my Academia page as a draft and ask people for feedback. It is by far the best advice I've received. About 20 people took the time to read my draft and comment on it and 1 academic emailed me asking if he could include it in a volume he was editing. Things went quickly from there. The editors fast tracked my new peer reviews (as I was late to the party and the volume was nearly ready to go to print) and the article was published within 8 months of me posting it up on Academia. So, from start to finish, it took just under 3 years to get this 1 article published! And that appears to be the norm, both in print and online (again, not how we do things at NC!).
My words of advice, and I am by no means an expert, is to be ready for long waits, be prepared to go through several rounds of peer reviews, be prepared for rejection (but that doesn't necessarily mean that your article won't be published in the future), be prepared for multiple revisions and endless drafts and shop around - choose the right publication for your article and for yourself!
I like that you did proper research about the journals you were submitting to. For me, I kind of forget about writing articles until I see a Call for Papers and then I see if I have something I've teased out earlier as a draft or notes or something that I can finish off to submit. I've been quite fortunate so far with the odds and ends I've sent out. I haven't been in a position to submit to a journal with a fee yet. I'm too poor and if it's more than a token amount I would be iffy anyway - it's already expensive to license images for publication. My piece for New Classicists was maybe my third or fourth article that I've submitted. I had a piece that I'd worked on during my third year of undergrad that I thought was pretty original so when I saw a CfP of an interesting new journal I tidied it up and sent it off. Reviewer 2 was not kind, but between the feedback given in the two reviews I managed to revise and elaborate in some areas so that the final product is a piece that I'm very proud of. The turnaround was pretty quick and now I have a pretty article to show off. My other experiences with publications have varied, sometimes I've had a lot of feedback in the reviews, sometimes just a few lines. I try not to take the negative stuff personally. I'm also trying to get into the habit of writing conference papers that can later be revised into articles so that I can get some feedback and address concerns before I reach the submission stages. Plus, I like show and tell. I haven't submitted anything to any of the big name journals that would please my supervisors, but perhaps the article that I'm writing now will fit somewhere.