Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Response time on submissions


In my writers' guidelines on "Page 2", I state that I try to answer submissions quickly, certainly in not more than two weeks.  I made an amendment to that today asking writers to cut me some slack on that for the near term.  I am concerned that I have issues booked too far ahead. Issue #3 releases tomorrow (or perhaps later today), but I am fully stocked for #4 and #5, probably for #6, probably for #7, and I have plugged a couple of things into #8 already. So I might need to give myself a bit longer with stories that are in the "maybe-to-probably" accepted category after the first reading. I will probably still be able to be pretty rapid with rejects. I don't think anyone has a submission sitting with me longer than maybe a week right now, but if it gets past two weeks, then know that the chances that I am considering it for publication might actually be greater, but that it also might be a in a larger pool of "good" stories under evaluation. I'm just getting more submissions nowadays than I was in the first couple months, and I need to be careful not to find myself scheduled out so far that a newly-accepted piece can't see publication for a year. It would be unfair to the writer, and rather tedious for me. I remain confident that I can manage all this without having to resort to having periods where M-Brane is closed to submissions or has "reading periods."  I don't dig it when other zines do that.  I understand why they do it, but I don't want it to be my practice.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just curious: if I were to have a story themed for a certain time of year (say Christmas), about when would be the appropriate time to send it to you for a look?

Christopher Fletcher said...

You can send it anytime really...but if I remain booked ahead as far as I am right now, it would probably be maybe end of summer, like August possibly, that I might be filling up issue #11 (December). So no big hurry on it, but much later in the season than that might be getting too late.

 

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