Submissions

[ann_leckie]

I know it's annoying that for the most part, at least in SF & F, writers can only submit to one magazine at a time. It's particularly annoying when some magazines take upwards of a year to respond.

So I can see how it would be tempting to figure you may as well simsub--it's unfair not to be able to, and after all, how is anyone going to know?

Well. Anyone who could see more than one slushpile at once would notice immediately.

I read slush for Podcastle. I am editor of GigaNotoSaurus, and don't have anyone reading slush for me there. Today, for the first time ever, I had exactly the same sub come in to both boxes.

Now, I'm not too hard-nosed about guidelines. I don't care if your margins are exactly an inch or not, or whether your ms in in TNR or Courier. I don't care if your cover letter is exactly the model of what cover letters should be. In most cases, I'll read just about anything someone sends me.

But some things? Will get your ms automatically bounced. At Podcastle, sending attachments will do it. (Unless you've already got permission to send attachments, and no, don't query asking for it. You already know if you can or not. No, it's not fair, but that's life.) If you do it by mistake, no worries--you can always resub with your story in the body of your email, and it'll get read like everything else.

The other way to get bounced without my reading your sub? Is to send it to GigaNotoSaurus and Podcastle at the same time. Because neither place takes simsubs.

eta--sheesh, well, Podcastle does take simsubs--but you need to mention it in the cover letter. GigaNotoSaurus, though, does not.

So, I thought the one was strange enough, but then another one came in this afternoon. Very odd.

Anyway. Like I said, I totally understand the desire to simsub despite guidelines to the contrary, but...don't.

Comments

[themachinestops.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but I think that editors who are going to take 4+ months on their submissions (and I know you don't, but there are many who do; I've had something out for six months at this point) should probably allow simsubs if only to ensure that writers will keep submitting to their magazines. Because even if my story is accepted at the place it's currently at, I probably won't ever submit something there again, because I just don't like having one of my stories tied up for half a year.

Submitting the same story on the same day, though, is a little daft. They didn't even have the chance to get frustrated at long wait times! :)

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I admit there are places I don't sub to anymore because I waited more than a year to hear back.

I don't mind a longish wait if, say, someone tells me the story is on hold, or has been sent up, or whatever. I know it can take a while to make final decisions. But I don't particularly like waiting a year to get a form letter from a slusher.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

And, yeah, the same day thing kind of tells me it's not that they're frustrated with long waits, it's they don't think they have to follow the guidelines and who'll catch them anyway? Which I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for.

[jimkeller.livejournal.com]

I have to imagine this is a closely related phenomenon to the actors who put fake credits on their resumes. I was casting a movie one day and I turned over a headshot and saw a credit from a play I had seen, several times. I did not remember the actor in it. I showed the headshot to my roommate, who stage managed the production in question and was sitting right there as I was sorting submissions, and asked her if he was in it and I just didn't meet him. She laughed. Needless to say, this actor did not get the opportunity to audition, for that project or any other. All industries are small towns.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yeah, I suspect it's similar. It's amazing how small a world it can be, isn't it. Once you've been around a bit it's obvious that's the sort of thing that might happen, but I suspect the folks who do things like this haven't gotten to the point where they see that.

Of course, being honest and such will prevent that sort of thing from affecting you to begin with...

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

It's also embarrassing when both places accept the piece -- waste of editorial time, which means you'll never be wasting those editors' times again.