how dare you submit to multiple publications at once?

“No simultaneous submissions” is open to interpretation, I feel.  I think one could reasonably take it to mean that the writer is expected to refrain from submitting the same piece to multiple venues on the same day or in the same week.  It would be obnoxious/unreasonable for a publication to ask that a writer refrain from submitting anything that is currently under consideration at another publication, no matter when the submission to the other publication was made.  I mean, if you sent something to Magazine A in mid-2009 and they never responded to the submission (even though you queried them), you can’t reasonably be expected not to submit that piece to Magazine B, which doesn’t accept simultaneous submissions, six months later.

My personal feeling is that the vagaries of the submission process are so extreme that “no simultaneous submissions” is a guideline that should be interpreted as “do not submit a piece here if you have submitted it in the last three weeks to any other publication at which you have a reasonable expectation of it being accepted.”  And I think three weeks is a pretty generous interpretation on the part of the writer.

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