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on submitting stories
Apr. 14th, 2007 03:12 pmThere is a discussion going on on rasfc right now that befuddles me so completely I just can't wrap my head around it enough to formulate a response. The OP has suggested (apparently in all seriousness) that he finds markets closing to submissions to be unreasonable, and that instead editors should, when they get far behind on the slush, simply send a bunch of them back unread:
Maybe an editor only has time to look at 500 submissions, and picks the best 5 from that (say). If they got 1000 submissions, maybe a couple of the second 500 would beat one or two of the best from the first 500, but there wasn't enough time to look at them.
But wouldn't it be better to reject the second 500, with a fast and fair rejection ("Due to the volume of recent submissions, we have been unable to give your submission the consideration it deserves -- you may resubmit it, but we cannot guarantee it will be considered: it's a matter of luck which comes out of the sack first") rather than wading through the second 500, and then closing for submissions for three months?
Maybe this is just me, but if I send a story off to a market it is with an expectation that it will get read (or at least read far enough for them to decide it's not for them). Not read instantly, of course, but in some reasonable amount of time as defined by both their stated response times, their actual response times as reported at BlackHoles, and my level of interest in that market. If I'm looking at a market and their average response is 300 days, I'm going to weigh that as part of my decision of whether or not to submit to them. And yeah, sometimes none of those things really tell you how long it'll take; I've had two things I sent out over the past year that were gone for more than twice the reported average response time, but that's pretty atypical in my experience.
Likewise, before I submit to a market I always check their guidelines to see if they are accepting submissions. If by some bad fortune they happen to be temporarily closed to subs, then I have to decide if there's another market that's just as attractive to me I can send to first (and if they reject me are they likely to do so in a timeframe that will allow me to then hit the first market's next reading window) or if I want to sit on a story until that market reopens. I tend to be very generous with the "margin of error" on response times regardless, but I've withdrawn stories twice now from markets because unreasonable lengths of time had passed (which I may not consider unreasonable with other markets and other circumstances).
If there was a market that followed the OP's advice and returned submissions unread, I'd never submit to them again. Period. I'd consider that a gross violation of the unspoken writer-market contract, which as I understand it is:
I write the best story I can, format it properly, and send it off to a market which seems an appropriate venue for that story and which is open to submissions. Then I go do other things and don't think about it for some window of time related to that market's typical response.
The market, when they can, reads the story (or part of the story) and decides if it's for them, and they then respond to me with their decision.
An addendum to that would be that, as both reader and writer, I believe we should support the short story markets to the extent we are able, by subscribing to them -- after all, if they can't sell enough magazines and end up going under, they aren't going to be buying *any* of our stories. And at this point a lot of the short fiction I'm personally finding worth reading is in the "smaller" magazines.
Which brings us back to the two things I sent out last year that hit double the average response time: I sent polite queries to both in March. A week later I got a reply from one market to the effect that if I hadn't heard from them already, they must have forgotten to respond but must not have wanted it anyway. They were polite about it (apologetic, even), but to my thinking that violates the market end of that unspoken contract -- if I sub to them again (well, they did apologize), it'll be after a much more critical assessment of the worth of doing so. The other market I'm still waiting on, and they get extra patience from me because I know for a fact that they're stupidly busy and will get around to me when they can, but again that goes back to making a judgment call based on what I know of that *specific* market.
Anyhow, I think if you're going to be in this business you need to have reasonable expectations. They don't need to be the same as everyone else's, and they shouldn't be the same for every market, but they have to be reality-based. You gotta do your homework.
The OP seems to be wavering from his initial positon, but it still boggles my mind that anyone would prefer to sub something to a market and have it returned unread than to just spend the 2 minutes it takes to figure out what markets are open and what their response time is and send it off accordingly?
I dunno. Maybe I just don't get the OP's point.
Maybe an editor only has time to look at 500 submissions, and picks the best 5 from that (say). If they got 1000 submissions, maybe a couple of the second 500 would beat one or two of the best from the first 500, but there wasn't enough time to look at them.
But wouldn't it be better to reject the second 500, with a fast and fair rejection ("Due to the volume of recent submissions, we have been unable to give your submission the consideration it deserves -- you may resubmit it, but we cannot guarantee it will be considered: it's a matter of luck which comes out of the sack first") rather than wading through the second 500, and then closing for submissions for three months?
Maybe this is just me, but if I send a story off to a market it is with an expectation that it will get read (or at least read far enough for them to decide it's not for them). Not read instantly, of course, but in some reasonable amount of time as defined by both their stated response times, their actual response times as reported at BlackHoles, and my level of interest in that market. If I'm looking at a market and their average response is 300 days, I'm going to weigh that as part of my decision of whether or not to submit to them. And yeah, sometimes none of those things really tell you how long it'll take; I've had two things I sent out over the past year that were gone for more than twice the reported average response time, but that's pretty atypical in my experience.
Likewise, before I submit to a market I always check their guidelines to see if they are accepting submissions. If by some bad fortune they happen to be temporarily closed to subs, then I have to decide if there's another market that's just as attractive to me I can send to first (and if they reject me are they likely to do so in a timeframe that will allow me to then hit the first market's next reading window) or if I want to sit on a story until that market reopens. I tend to be very generous with the "margin of error" on response times regardless, but I've withdrawn stories twice now from markets because unreasonable lengths of time had passed (which I may not consider unreasonable with other markets and other circumstances).
If there was a market that followed the OP's advice and returned submissions unread, I'd never submit to them again. Period. I'd consider that a gross violation of the unspoken writer-market contract, which as I understand it is:
An addendum to that would be that, as both reader and writer, I believe we should support the short story markets to the extent we are able, by subscribing to them -- after all, if they can't sell enough magazines and end up going under, they aren't going to be buying *any* of our stories. And at this point a lot of the short fiction I'm personally finding worth reading is in the "smaller" magazines.
Which brings us back to the two things I sent out last year that hit double the average response time: I sent polite queries to both in March. A week later I got a reply from one market to the effect that if I hadn't heard from them already, they must have forgotten to respond but must not have wanted it anyway. They were polite about it (apologetic, even), but to my thinking that violates the market end of that unspoken contract -- if I sub to them again (well, they did apologize), it'll be after a much more critical assessment of the worth of doing so. The other market I'm still waiting on, and they get extra patience from me because I know for a fact that they're stupidly busy and will get around to me when they can, but again that goes back to making a judgment call based on what I know of that *specific* market.
Anyhow, I think if you're going to be in this business you need to have reasonable expectations. They don't need to be the same as everyone else's, and they shouldn't be the same for every market, but they have to be reality-based. You gotta do your homework.
The OP seems to be wavering from his initial positon, but it still boggles my mind that anyone would prefer to sub something to a market and have it returned unread than to just spend the 2 minutes it takes to figure out what markets are open and what their response time is and send it off accordingly?
I dunno. Maybe I just don't get the OP's point.
