I’m still waiting to hear whether some of my stories have made it or not. I know that it can take a very long time before you find out. Duotrope has lists of markets that are slow and swift. Response times range from a from a super-swift average of 0.4 days for a response, to a deathly slow 392.2 days.
392.2 days. That’s a year and a month.
The places I’ve submitted to won’t make me wait that long, I know it. Still, I look for a response every day. Even for the one that has over a month before the deadline ends.
I think it might take a while before I get used to waiting to hear.
In my experience it’s variable.
I submitted to one magazine and it took 4 1/2 months to get the form rejection back… I wrote to another and got a very nice rejection letter within the month. I sent off to another higher profile lit-fic magazine and was completly ignored.
From what I know the systems used vary a great deal from place to place. Which reminds me… I really must get more submissions out there.
Absolutely. Submit stuff!
Helen posted a piece on trying to understand the process that publishers use that I found interesting. It feels as if many publishers have a similar approach – first read, second read, final decision – but some are much better at making decisions quickly or sharing them with their writers. The high profile mags seem very slow in responding. I suppose they get a lot of submissions and don’t feel the need to be fast (or fastidious) in replying.
I’m planning to submit another few pieces (*not* Julia’s Dream) over the next few months so we’ll see what happens to them…
More submissions is definitely the way to go!
(I’m told that, eventually, the seasoned story-submitter no longer waits impatiently for responses. I’m not sure I believe it, mind.)
I suppose if you have 10 stories circulating, you’re less concerned about each one. I hope the jumping up and down and getting excited about acceptances never stops though!
I have to say you’re both preaching to the converted.
A bit more standardisation would be nice.
I appreciate clear submissions guidelines (do you want it SMF or not? If not how do you want it? If I’m sending it by email, who exactly do I address it to?).
So far I think that Clarkesworld have the best submissions policy I’ve seen: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/submissions/
And they let you know what’s happening. Of course they’re also extraordinarily difficult to get published in… [quite rightly]