5. If we like your idea we will be in touch. It may take months, so be patient.
Read between the lines. They’re saying, “We’ll hold on to your work for an arbitrary amount of time and only contact you if we want it. Otherwise, keep waiting suckers!”
This kind of policy is condescending in the extreme and disrepectful of writers. I mean, it takes all of perhaps 30 seconds to fill out a form rejection, probably less, and yet each of us labours weeks and months on our pieces. It boggles the mind how any magazine that treats its contributors this way can survive. The problem is that these magazines pay well, and therefore will always find a few willing victims.
I’ve heard a writers suggest a boycott. I (of course) have something more evil in mind.
SEND THEM EVERYTHING.
Yes, you heard me. Screw their “no simultaneous submissions policy”. Forget about their “no multiple submissions” (How could you know which pieces they’re still considering, right?). Who cares if it’s not in their genre? Make them waste the 30 seconds they saved by not responding to you in the first place.
What if they respond and say the want to buy your work? If it’s still unsold, thank them, pocket their check, and keep going. If it’s sold, apologize and explain that you didn’t hear back so you thought they weren’t interested.
These magazines don’t respect writers, why should we treat them any different?
* I think this idea has some legs. If these guys start getting overwhelmed by the slush, maybe they’ll change their ways. Please send this posting out to every writer you know and get them to blog about it. Maybe if we all work together we can actually convince these guys to change!
13 Comments(+Add)
Jordan: How long do you think it would take the average publication to decide to just stop taking unsolicited submissions altogether in the wake of an email storm such as you suggest? Ten seconds? Thirty?
– Steve
I’m not sure that they would. They must have open submissions for a reason even if they’re unfriendly to writers.
Regardless, if you’re not going to submit to them anyways, it makes no difference whether they’re open or not, no?
It makes no difference to me whether thay are open to unsolicited subs or not. It may make a difference to a lot of other writers.
On the other hand, if people campaigned to stop buying these publications, and these publications realized that their rude policy were a detriment to sales, then the policy might be changed. That would seem to me a more positive result all the way around, rather than prompting a market to say, “You know what? Forget this unsolicited sub crap.”
The reason they are open to unsolicited subs is the off chance that something good will come over the transom; the reason for the stupid “no reply” policy is that a lot of really bad stuff comes over the transom. Now, there’s an apparent balance in which the publishers are willing to at least look at some of the unsolicited subs so long as they don’t have to bother to respond. If we collectively tip the scales so that even doing that little bit becomes a gigantic ass pain because of an even more enormous load of stuff coming in, I have no doubt that publishers will say enough is enough.
You’re right, it doesn’t matter to me if these guys stop taking unsolicited subs. It would matter to me, though, if they changed their dumbass policy so I could send them my stuff without having to wonder if they got it or not. I don’t think your “submissions tsunami” is the way to bring about that change.
– Steve
I’m not sure I like the idea of a boycott any better. You’re suggesting we financially hurt short fiction markets, and this is an area that’s already struggling. My suggestion might close them down to unsolicited subs. Your way might close them down entirely.
Even if the boycott gets lifted relatively quickly, there’s tons of examples of products that never quite recover from the loss of business. Even a temporary boycott might permanently cost them readers, and that might lead to the loss of a market (albeit an arrogant and unfriendly one).
We seem to be disagreeing a lot recently. What’s needed is an innocent third party upon which to focus our collective ire. Will any Young Earth Creationists reading this please step forward?
Honestly, I would hope the mere spectre of a possible boycott would be enough to get the attention of publishers. It’s conceivable that a bit of a stink might just do the trick, and a boycott wouldn’t be necessary. Anyway, I’m not issuing any clarion calls or anything.
– Steve
As a programmer not a writer I would suggest doing something like upload.com does.
When you submit something to there service they email you your location in line,
“Currently you are 2597 in que of 3500, at the current rate it will take 17 days for an editor to get to your submission” Each week the send me anther email telling me where I am in there que with the option to buy myself to the front of the que.
I don’t suggest letting your users buying them selfs to the front of the que but telling your submitters where they stand is a good idea. Gives them hope and stops them from submitting there stories to other websites.
it wouldn’t be that hard to implement either maybe a day of coding and a day of testing.
This world needs more programmers to automates the simple tasks.
This world needs more interfacers to make programers code easy to use.
This world needs more writers.
Actually, you don’t need either one. You can just choose not to sub anything to them, unless you WANT to effect a policy change on their part. In that case, there might be a way of doing it that won’t involve boycotting or a massive multi-sub.
We just stop being patient. After a maximum of two months simply withdraw the submission. They say it’ll take “months”, but they don’t specify how many. Two months is plural…so two months it is. Or whatever amount of time it says on their listing at Ralan’s.
Steven,
That would be a great idea! It would require a little computer savvy on the part of editors (even if it’s just basic interaction with a database), and computer savvy is in short supply in some quarters.
Still, it’s a great idea, one we’ll have to remember.
Scott,
The simultaeneous submit everywhere problem is a toughie. It is one thing to screw over markets that screw over writers, but I wouldn’t want to do the same thing to RoF.
I suppose we can just treat these “no-responder” markets as automatically simultaneous submit okay markets no matter what their guidelines say.
What I’m talking about is send the sub, wait two months, then after two months send a query e-mail stating that you’re withdrawing the submission, and THEN send it to the next market. It’s not a sim-sub then, because it was officially withdrawn.
It’s within a writer’s rights to do so.
I like the idea of two months and then withdraw a sub. That’s plenty of time for a yea or nay and getting the word out to writers via blogs will get some notice as well. It’s just curteous to let a writer know they need not wait any longer, but until that happens, I’ll go with the two month idea.
DJ
DJ,
To be fair, most markets get back to you in 3 months, so two might be close.
Jordan,
True. But most markets also let you know if the story’s been rejected. At the very least Adbusters, if they don’t want to send rejections out, should specify a maximum waiting time before the sub is considered rejected. Until they do one or the other, I don’t see why two months is a problem; it’s more considerate than what they’re doing.