Hello, Online Submission Manager

January 5th, 2009 / 6:07 pm Don—

Also Poetry magazine:

https://submissions.poetrymagazine.org/

January 5th, 2009 / 6:26 pm ryan—

i haven’t decided how i feel about this system yet. i definitely appreciate online submissions but there are times where i miss printing it all out, slipping it into an envelope, and having my wife kiss the envelope for good luck. i worry that having her kiss my moniter before i press “send” might leave smudges on the screen.

January 5th, 2009 / 2:39 pm pr—

I don’t miss printing out anything but no one every kissed my envelopes. I have submitted to every one of those places through their submission managers, except quarterly west. I will go submit to them now.

other places with sub managers are-
opium
a public space
42 opus
glimmer train

January 5th, 2009 / 2:47 pm ryan—

girls have lucky lips, you should kiss your own envelopes before you send them out

another one with a submission manager is Inch… oh and i think Quick Fiction’s system would count, too.

January 5th, 2009 / 7:15 pm Blake Butler—

google ‘online submissions manager’ and you get the mother load

January 5th, 2009 / 11:08 pm Lincoln—

I don’t miss printing things out at all. Just a waste of paper. If you’ve ever read for a journal you know that at least 80% of submissions are rejected after a page (if that). Much more efficient online.

January 6th, 2009 / 2:15 am barry—

“80% of submissions are rejected after a page”

thanks lincoln. its great to know you’re giving everyone’s work the full attention it deserves. you must be awful proud of the job you do.

January 6th, 2009 / 4:04 am graham—

what? barry, if it doesn’t snare you from jump why would you waste more time reading? most magazines are quarterlies. most magazines maybe publish between 5-10 stories per issue. if you’re receiving thousands or even hundreds of submissions, why continue reading to see if a story ‘works out?’ that shit should fucking sing from word one. maybe you need to re-up YOUR standards.

January 6th, 2009 / 4:17 am ryan—

i’ve worked for a lit. journal, and i know the grind that going through submissions can be. i helped take a journal through a major transition and we only accepted print submissions. there were days where i felt like i was slogging through the material. and i certainly believe it’s a good thing to save paper. none of that, however, keeps me from enjoying the tactile experience when i do send something out the “old fashioned” way.

January 6th, 2009 / 5:08 am jereme—

80% of submissions are rejected after the first page?

why the fuck does it take so long to get a response?

January 6th, 2009 / 4:32 pm James—

i’ve read submission for a few places and i agree with lincoln and graham and will add that sometimes, i think, it’s more of a negative thing that makes me put something down: that a story does something so bad and egregious that it casts a fundamental doubt in my belief in the author’s ability to successfully say something to me.

of course there aren’t any categorical things not to do — often, i feel the best stories (or perhaps, most interesting and difficult to classify) are the ones that do those kinds of things, but do them in such a way that you become aware of a greater storytelling slash organizing intelligence.

basically, it’s a care thing: if the author shows me they don’t care on the first page, how can believe they will care anywhere else? this is possibly unfair but probably necessary.

January 6th, 2009 / 12:32 pm pr—

when I worked at a lit journal, and when I worked for a publisher, i never rejected anything after the first page (often, the first page needs to be cut, thats what editors are for) unless the first page was something like this:

The unicorn walked up to the beautiful princess and said “hello, would you like a ride to the castle?” The princess, who had been picking flowers in her barefeet gasped with pleasure. “why yes, fine unicorn! I would love to ride your fine white back to the castle!”

otherwise, i slogged through half if not all of every submission. I worked my ass off. now i don’t do that anymore.

January 6th, 2009 / 12:36 pm James—

there are a lot of typos, i should proofread better.

*1st paragraph: submission=submissions

*3rd paragraph: how can i believe they will care anywhere else?

January 6th, 2009 / 1:06 pm jereme—

pr,

i am an angry unicorn.

January 6th, 2009 / 5:19 pm james—

I like “the martian did not have regular hands”.

January 6th, 2009 / 1:19 pm james—

I like “the martian did not have regular hands”.

January 6th, 2009 / 1:26 pm pr—

Here is another submission I would most likely reject after the first page:

Layla Lee had long thick red hair and pale white bosoms. She was a lonely woman during the cowboys times of long ago. She really needed to meet a strong, tough cowboy to take her away from her sad life of sweeping up at the OK corral.
Then one day, while she was sweeping the dirt away, her bosoms heaving as she bent ot sweep, suddenly, the doors to swung open and in walked the strongest most handsome man she had ever seen! Who was this stranger?
“Howdy,” said the strange man. “My name’s Earl and I need a drink.”

January 6th, 2009 / 2:05 pm ryan—

i agree that the cowboy one is a definite rejection, but wouldn’t you read on anyway, just for kicks?

January 6th, 2009 / 2:08 pm jereme—

YEAH WHAT THE FUCK DOES EARL GET HIS DRINK OR WHAT?!

January 6th, 2009 / 6:30 pm ryan—

i think i’ve seen that one

January 6th, 2009 / 6:44 pm Sam Pink—

what happens to the unicorn?

January 6th, 2009 / 6:51 pm Lincoln—

thanks lincoln. its great to know you’re giving everyone’s work the full attention it deserves. you must be awful proud of the job you do.

Barry, I’m telling you what the average is based on various journals I’ve worked for and the many editors I’ve talked to. I’m not saying what I do, but what is done. I’m probably being generous saying only 80%

Although if you want me to be frank, probably most of them are rightfully ejected that quickly. If you have never worked for a journal you would probably be utterly shocked at the material that is submitted to your average journal. A good portion of the material isn’t even remotely appropriate for the journal in question, just a carpet bomb submission (for example a hard sci-fi novel excerpt sent to an all poetry journal) . Another good portion is full of typos or other obvious mistakes. And a lot just is not good.

Keep in mind that most journals only publish 1-3% of the material they get, if that. If you are only looking for the best three or four stories, why publish a story that you dislike the first page of?

January 6th, 2009 / 6:56 pm Lincoln—

I guess all of that is another way to say that it doesn’t take long to realize whether a piece has the potential to work for your magazine or not.

January 6th, 2009 / 7:05 pm jereme—

“Tom said, in a deep, manly voice”

this made me smile

January 6th, 2009 / 7:31 pm james—

“bosoms” is good

January 6th, 2009 / 11:09 pm scott g—

i like all those stories, pr. either i’m easy or you’re a failure at sucking.

January 6th, 2009 / 7:54 pm pr—

Scott-thank you. I’m now thinking those might be the best stories I’ve even written. I can now die peacefully.I’m going to read your story on Dogzplot now.

January 6th, 2009 / 9:41 pm barry—

lincoln and graham:

my standards are just fine. thank you for expressing concern. all im saying is that if a writer thinks enough of you as an editor and as a journal, at the very least they deserve to have their work thoroughly looked over and evaluated. if you can’t even do that then what the fuck are you reading for a journal for. i read every submission a minimum of three times. the writer desrves it.

besides, there are plenty of stories that have an awkward beginning or first page but end up being great stories.

January 7th, 2009 / 1:55 am barry—

i love you too baby.

its not you, its dumb assholes like that who say stupid things like, there’s no reason to read past page one, and i know right away, and all the other bullshit things people say. everyone who takes the time to submit deserves to have their work evaluated. if you are too fucking arrogant or lazy or whatever to read a submission all the way through, dont criticize people who do.

its not about standards its about writing and involving yourself in a community and sharing and creating and expressing ideas and having conversations because its fun and thats what you love to do. when did people start taking themselves so fucking seriously that they somehow believe they are entitled to dismiss a writers work without giving it a fair shake. so maybe you might have to fucking edit. what ever happened to providing feedback and helping people improve or encouraging people to succeed.

what about common fucking courtesy what about it

January 6th, 2009 / 10:41 pm pr—

Barry- I am drunk. You know I totally agree with you on tthis. But you actually work reading– I don’t anymore. Tell me you you know what I mean. I never NEVER didn’t read anything that didn’t deserve a reading. I am soooo old (you hatet that, I know…) but I did it for so long, i read some really wrongly submited stuff. I was the most neurotic reader when I read for the places I read. I read it all.

PR LOOOOOVES BG

January 6th, 2009 / 11:18 pm Lincoln—

all im saying is that if a writer thinks enough of you as an editor and as a journal, at the very least they deserve to have their work thoroughly looked over and evaluated.

Well, again Barry I’m not really discussing what I personally do (I don’t read for any journals anymore and when I did I tended to read for than other people), I’m just describing how the literary magazine world tens to work, fair or not.

My only point was that most submissions do not get read in full (again as a fact, not a judgment) and thus paper submissions seemed like an environmental waste.

I think your insults and anger are really misplaced here, so I’ll just skip past that. I don’t quite understand why you think anyone is criticizing anyone else for reading every submission all the way through. I did not notice that.

January 6th, 2009 / 11:29 pm Lincoln—

Although for the sake of a genial argument, I might point out that most submissions occur from people who have never read the journal they are submitting to much less bought the journal. And a significant portion of work submitted is completely inappropriate for any given journal (again, due to submitters not bothering to read or research the journals they send to). As such, I’m surprised you seem to be acting like the editors are the ones being disrespectful in this relationship. How respectful is it to submit inappropriate material to a magazine, maybe not even following their basic guidelines, and then expect them to spend hours re-reading your work?

To take my example from before, why should I, as the editor of a hypothetical poetry magazine, read more than a page of a Sci-Fi novel excerpt that is sent to me?

Writers who do read journals and do treat the journals they submit to with respect are likely to be amongst the ones whose work is read in full.

Although I’ll stress again all I was saying in my first post is that it is a fact most submissions are not given a thorough reading and thus it seems like a lot of paper is being wasted.

I think it is fantastic you read every submission three times. Seriously, that is commendable. Most editors I’ve known work at their journals part time without pay and get hundreds if not thousands of submissions a month. Reading them all three times would simply be impossible. I suppose they could muster an army of volunteers to get each one a full solid reading, but it would probably still be unfair that the submissions aren’t being read by the actual editors. So I tend to cut editors some slack here when they skip past work that is instantly recognized as inappropriate for their journal.

January 6th, 2009 / 11:30 pm Lincoln—

and that is to say nothing of providing feedback….

The man hours involved in reading every submission thoroughly multiple times and providing feedback on every piece is almost mind boggling for your average journal.

I wish the literary world worked that way, of course, but….

January 7th, 2009 / 12:26 am Lincoln—

A friend who reads HTMLgiant, and is a reader for a big journal, was just chatting with me about this. He says the journal he works for gets about 70 submissions a day (this is popular journal obviously). So just to play with some numbers… what would reading a story thoroughly twice take? 1.5 hours? So 105 hours to give thorough readings…. with an eight hour work day we are talking 18 full-time staff (40 hours a week) just to man the slush room…. and this isnt’ including any extra time spent with the stories that are going to be accepted, editing them and so on…and then of course, no journal can pay for 18 full time readers, so we are talking volunteers who if you are extremely lucky work 5 hours a week…

So if my math is right we are talking about: 147 part time readers for this journal to give thorough readings to every submission and that isn’t including the editors doing the editing of the ones that get passed to them.

Obviously that is a popular journal, to give another example, a more typical journal I worked for had about 80 a week. So 120 man hours or 24 part time unpaid readers working 5 hours a week.

Note: None of the above takes into account time spent rejecting pieces or working on edits for accepted pieces, much less writing comments to rejected submissions.

In reality, the first journal has 4 volunteer staff that work 8 hours a week, the second journal had about 6 volunteer readers who met once a month for a handful of hours.

So while I think it would be nice for everything to be read thoroughly multiple times, I just dont’ see how it is possible for most journals.

January 7th, 2009 / 12:31 am Lincoln—

woah, four posts in a row is too many.
Interesting point to debate at least.
peace

January 7th, 2009 / 12:34 am james—

i am that friend and i approve the above message.

January 7th, 2009 / 4:35 am james—

5 actually, if you count the last one, lincoln

January 7th, 2009 / 12:39 am Lincoln—

Man, lots of typos in my first post and what the hell did I mean by “genial argument”?

I’d reject that post after the first line…

January 7th, 2009 / 12:46 am jereme—

lincoln,

okay so how long does it take for this popular online journal to respond?

the amount of time needed to read the submission is meaningless if not compared to the amount of time for response.

i am curious to hear the name of said journal and writer experience in regards to response time.

January 7th, 2009 / 12:53 am Lincoln—

jereme:

I’d like to consider myself a wanna be writer not a wannabe editor, so I feel your pain with submission responses. Believe me. I’ve had stuff take over a year many a time. etc.

Neither of the journals I was citing were online journals though. Maybe you mean online submissions? At the second journal, we were converting to online submissions when I was there so I couldn’t tell you. Most journals I’ve worked for have read in batches… maybe once a month? So we would gather the volunteer readers and go through the whole slush pile, if we could, and reject all the rejections on the spot. The maybes took longer of course. So…. if you submitted during a school semester period you would likely be rejected in a few weeks.

But obviously we were faster than most…. since I’d guess the average journal takes 4 months these days?

January 7th, 2009 / 12:57 am Lincoln—

On the other hand, in my example if you sent in a summer month, like June, you likely wouldn’t get a response till the end of september….

January 7th, 2009 / 1:03 am jereme—

lincoln,

you used math to back up your argument. i am saying the math is meaningless without all variables of the full equation.

nothing more.

January 7th, 2009 / 1:07 am Lincoln—

I guess I’m not sure what response time has to do with the math I was using?

I was just trying to show that for most journals, it is simply impossible to devote over an hour to every submission with the staffs journals have. There simply aren’t enough hours in a day.

How does response time factor into that?

January 7th, 2009 / 1:13 am james—

hi jereme,

i just looked online at the magazine i work for’s duotrope listing and it’s around 120 days average, or 4 months. we actually prefer online but still receive physical manuscripts, which are also considered. i don’t know why i’m being all mysterious about where i work, but no point to change now. (i’m not sure what you mean by “writer experience”? do you mean how much experience the average writer who submits to us has? or are you referring to the amount of experience that the published writers have?)

like lincoln, i’d also prefer to consider myself a wannabe writer more than a wannabe editor. i read for magazines because i enjoy it and because i enjoy working with and talking to people who feel the same way and also because it is so very hard to support yourself through only writing and if you have to get a job, i think it makes sense to get one in something you care a great deal about. the way the magazine i work at works is not due to arrogance or laziness, but due more to the impossibility of considering every single piece we receive equally, with equal seriousness and equal time. some pieces deserve more time, some less. (for example, the sci-fi novel submitted to a poetry mag.) does that mean it’s fair or that we’re 100% right? of course not. but we’re trying, i think. maybe there is a better way?

i guess the biggest thing i can say is that out of all this is that i applaud places like elimae who are able to get responses back within days, if not hours. if only everywhere could be like that. unfortunately, it can’t, due to exactly the reason lincoln describes: sheer, immense, overflowing volume.

January 7th, 2009 / 1:46 am barry—

lincoln:

“Neither of the journals I was citing were online journals though. Maybe you mean online submissions?”

the title of the post is ONLINE SUBMISSION. it was assuming that you at least read the title of the post before you commented.

and i wasnt angry, i was referring to graham’s point telling me i need to re-up my standards. really? thats a douche bag thing to say.

also, i agree with your point. i do not read 80 submissions a day, and our flash site is 200 words or less. ha. i know i know.

but i agree with jereme. if you reject in 5 seconds, why not send a fucking email in 5 seconds? at least i respond within 48 hours.

January 7th, 2009 / 1:53 am Lincoln—

Heh, I think we’d moved past the title of the thread by post 40.

I’m completely with you and jereme in response time. I think it is the most criminal aspect of the lit mag world. I always worked my best to respond quickly when I read for journals.

I think there is no excuse for taking more than six months to a year to reject, which seems to be annoyingly common these days…

January 7th, 2009 / 1:55 am james—

it’s not like the rejected stories are put into a queue to be released 4 or more months later. the reason it generally takes so long (and this is according to other editors and readers i know) is because of the backlog of submissions that big and/or understaffed journals often have.

also, thanks to your post, i just realized how elimae and others are able to respond so fast: the pieces they are looking at are so, so, so much shorter than the ones at bigger places. i can’t believe i didn’t see that earlier. 200 words vs. 5,000. suddenly response times are a lot more comparable.

January 7th, 2009 / 1:57 am james—

i still don’t understand the 6 month thing though… if it ever gets like that, close down the submissions and catch the fuck up!