Last month I wrote about the “Slow Magazine,” and my letter to inquire whether or not my submission was still up for consideration. As their current Duotrope’s stats are 9 responses vs. 16 assumed rejections/withdrawals, I wasn’t really expecting a reply, I was simply wanting to give them a chance to reply if they still wanted to look at it, and to withdraw it from consideration if not.
But, to my surprise, this week I received my manuscript back. There was the form letter, and then a note which said:
“Our apologies for the wait. But, do note we have a simultaneous-submission-is-ok policy, and you could have sent the poem out elsewhere at anytime.”
Hummm. To be honest that hadn’t crossed my mind. Personally, and I KNOW this is a personal thing, I dislike doing simultaneous submissions. I feel like it is much easier to keep track of knowing what is where, most of my submissions are not out that long, and I don’t have to worry about anything crossing anywhere. Plus, a lot of markets dislike simultaneous submissions, and in general I like to keep my submission process the same. So, while the note isn’t going to change my submission strategy, it did make me stop and wonder if some magazines accept them because of they have long response times?
In any case, I also received a rejection from American Short Fiction. Time to get some of these stories back out on the road!
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March 12th, 2008 - 9:34 pm
I used to be really respectful towards publishers’ simultaneous submission preferences until I heard that on average writers submit on average 80-120 times before landing a print publication. And as a whole, those numbers probably aren’t too far from the truth. In the last two years, with relatively lax submission activity on my own part, I’ve submitted sixty-six times. And out of those, I’ve garnered two publications and a 2nd place prize, resulting in a 4.5% success rate, which, granted, at my level is pretty fabulous. Looking through my response times, 45 days seems to be a low average (probably closer to 60–but I don’t feel like doing the math). If I were to wait for each story to return (and I usually send the stories in batches of 5 or 10), it would take me a year or more to get that story the same amount of submission coverage.
So ultimately, here’s my feeling on the topic: if publishers decide to start giving personalized rejections, I’ll start observing their simultaneous submission requests; do something for me, and I’ll return the favor, but don’t expect me to wait on you to send me a slip of paper after 190 days of waiting.
March 14th, 2008 - 6:11 pm
ROFLMA Your post title is missing an ‘r’ so… You finally got head from a publisher, hmm? Better than the usual screw authors may get
ooops! I fixed it, but your comment is just too funny!
March 20th, 2008 - 11:12 am
None of my markets give me head. I’m jealous.
I do the sim-sub thing, but it is an enormous pain in the butt withdrawing pieces when one is accepted. Then I feel like I need to wait at least a month before subbing again. I don’t do poetry though and have only started subbing flashes. It does run pretty true, though, that there is one acceptance for every 20 subs.
September 7th, 2008 - 1:38 pm
[...] currently have 9 stories out to 22 different markets. (I gave in on my avoidance of simultaneous submissions, although I don’t usually submit to markets that specifically say no to them in their [...]