Why do short story submissions take so long?

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gettingby

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Why do short story submissions take so long? I keep checking on my online submissions and most of them haven't even been opened. After 40-plus days, I think it is a little crazy that no one has even looked at them. And I know 40 days is nothing. I hate this waiting game.

Are you guys obsessed with checking the status of your submissions? What do you do to take your mind of them? I know some people will say write more, but I seem to have enough time on my hands to write and obsess over my submissions. I feel like this process is making me a little crazy. Is it just me, or do you guys know what I'm talking about?
 

Jamesaritchie

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How long is long? Editors get to short stories as fast as they can. I don't believe in waiting for anything. I write and I submit and forget.

The only thing you get by even thinking about stories you have in submission is indigestion. Submit and forget. Concentrate all your mind on writing and submitting new stories, not thinking about ones you've already submitted.

Do this, and it won't be long before you're hearing back from one market or another every week.

Worry about things you can control, not things you can't.
 

lastlittlebird

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If the waiting game really bothers you, check on Duotrope what the response times of a market are before you send your submission out.
Some get back to writers much more quickly than others, and at least you will know a ballpark date of when to expect a response.
 

Chris1981

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Some publications receive more than one thousand submissions for one issue. That's a lot of reading; I can see why it sometimes takes months for somebody to get back to me about one of my stories.

I don't worry about it. In fact, I usually forget about stories that are on submission until somebody gets back to me about them. Worrying or wondering about the stories doesn't speed up the process--or accomplish anything useful on my end, either. I'd rather be working on the next story.
 

Mad Rabbits

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Some publications receive more than one thousand submissions for one issue. That's a lot of reading; I can see why it sometimes takes months for somebody to get back to me about one of my stories.

I don't worry about it. In fact, I usually forget about stories that are on submission until somebody gets back to me about them. Worrying or wondering about the stories doesn't speed up the process--or accomplish anything useful on my end, either. I'd rather be working on the next story.

I used to angst about my submissions when I started sending things out and I think that's natural.

However nowadays I don't really think about them much. The rejections faze me less and I just keep sending them out sort of on autopilot. It just becomes another task I do during the day.
 

gettingby

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I check duotrope everyday just to see if any new responses have been posted.
 

Ralyks

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You get responses to duotrope? I use duotrope to track, but didn't know you could get responses directly there. Do you submit directly from duotrope? I submit by e-mail typically, and get responses by e-mail. I didn't know about that feature. I will have to check it out.

As a small literary magazine editor, I’ll say it takes so long because you get tons of submissions and it’s just you or you and one or two other people reading them. And it’s not your full-time job, because most literary magazines don’t turn a profit. Honestly, if I’m replying very quickly, it’s probably because it only took me two or three sentences to know it was a rejection. I didn’t have to spend time thinking about it. I have a two-week initial reply time. Within two weeks of receipt, I typically say either “no” or “holding.” But then I re-read the pile I’m holding over the coming months and don’t make a decision on those for quite some time. Sometimes as an editor you want to see what else is coming. I like this, it’s good, but what if something better comes next week, and I only have so much room? So wait times will depend a lot on publishing schedules as well. If the submission period is March 1 – August 1, and you submit March 1, you may not hear until August 5. But if you submit August 1, you may also hear August 5. Not that I recommend waiting until the last minute, as the editor may already have plenty of favorites by then.
 

gettingby

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Skylarburris - You don't submit through duotrope, but it does track recent responses so you know if five new responses come out that day the editors are reading and responding.
 

bluejester12

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Most places have a "if you haven't heard from us by...please inquire." I wait that long then inquire if I have to.
 

Ralyks

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Skylarburris - You don't submit through duotrope, but it does track recent responses so you know if five new responses come out that day the editors are reading and responding.

Oh, I see what you mean now. Thanks.
 

Buffysquirrel

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Because there are so many of them. At GUD I rejected hundreds of stories for every one I bought. And reading the slush is only part of publishing a magazine. Not even the most important part, as 99% of slush reading is wasted effort, in the sense that you're reading something only to discover you don't want to read it.
 

gettingby

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I understand these publications get a lot of submissions, but why do some have such quick turnaround times and others take months?
 

Buffysquirrel

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Hard to say. Maybe some have more staff. Maybe some have professional staff rather than volunteers. When I was at GUD, the idea was that the editor for each issue would deal with all the slush, but frankly this was impossible. Just too much of it. I still read slush for ASIM and I get maybe two stories a week at most. ASIM have a large team of slushreaders. Different magazines, different approaches.
 

Deizelcore

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How long is long? Editors get to short stories as fast as they can. I don't believe in waiting for anything. I write and I submit and forget.

The only thing you get by even thinking about stories you have in submission is indigestion. Submit and forget. Concentrate all your mind on writing and submitting new stories, not thinking about ones you've already submitted.

Do this, and it won't be long before you're hearing back from one market or another every week.

Worry about things you can control, not things you can't.

Very wise words.
 

jaksen

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They take so long because they get so many submissions and the people buying stories are also running a magazine, or editing it, or a publishing enterprise of some kind.

Eighteen years ago my husband once asked an editor this - why it took so long - and she told him she got at least 100 submissions a week. She said she read every one, though many not all the way through, but far enough into the story to know if it was a contender or not.

Then she said that's 400 stories for around ten slots in the magazine each month.

He changed the subject.
 

scarlett9284

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I submit and then forget until I receive an acceptance or a rejection email. It's easier to forget than to fret!
 

Buffysquirrel

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Some stories are first line rejections, which is great for the editor. Then again, you may need time to recover.
 

Erin Kelly

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I read slush for Stupefying Stories (a great mag to check out!) and have worked as an assistant fiction editors at lots of other mags, and I think the reason some of them take so long is because:

1) They don't have enough staff to keep up with the submissions.
2) They have staff, but are so popular that the staff STILL can't keep up.
3) They prefer to give personalized feedback, which DEFINITELY takes longer. Some slush readers will only read about 4-5 paragraphs before saying "no," whereas some editors want to give the writer specific feedback on their rejection.
4) The publication takes short stories of varying lengths. A flash fiction pub only has to read 1,000-word submissions, whereas another pub may have to read 10,000-word submissions.
5) Lack of organization.

In my opinion, no publication should take longer than 90 days; if they do, I'd drop an email. : )

Erin
 

alexshvartsman

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I can't speak to literary publications, but in the SF/F field some of the magazines which receive the most submissions are also the ones that respond the fastest. Lightspeed and Clarkesworld are known for processing 600+ submissions a month each and yet managing to get back to authors in well under a week on average. Their slush readers are unpaid volunteers, just like elsewhere.

What that means to me is that it CAN be done. A magazine, even the one inundated with submissions due to their popularity and/or pay rate CAN get back to authors quickly. Just like any other business, it will do so if it is well organized.

But keep in mind that most editors only do what they do because they love fiction. And while they might be wonderful editors with great tastes who publish award-worthy stories, they're lousy managers. They don't KNOW how to streamline the processes very well, how to recruit the right slush readers, how to manage people and get the best possible results from their teams.

This is not a rant or a knock on the editors. When I go to a fine restaurant, I don't expect the head chef to be hiring waitresses, managing reservations and making sure the bar is well stocked. I expect the restaurant manager to do this, while the chef oversees the kitchen to make sure I get served an excellent meal.

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of money in short fiction and in most publications the editor and the manager are the same person, and that person has a "real life" job to worry about as well. And *that's* why submissions to some venues take so long.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I can't speak to literary publications, but in the SF/F field some of the magazines which receive the most submissions are also the ones that respond the fastest. Lightspeed and Clarkesworld are known for processing 600+ submissions a month each and yet managing to get back to authors in well under a week on average. Their slush readers are unpaid volunteers, just like elsewhere.

What that means to me is that it CAN be done. A magazine, even the one inundated with submissions due to their popularity and/or pay rate CAN get back to authors quickly. Just like any other business, it will do so if it is well organized.

But keep in mind that most editors only do what they do because they love fiction. And while they might be wonderful editors with great tastes who publish award-worthy stories, they're lousy managers. They don't KNOW how to streamline the processes very well, how to recruit the right slush readers, how to manage people and get the best possible results from their teams.

This is not a rant or a knock on the editors. When I go to a fine restaurant, I don't expect the head chef to be hiring waitresses, managing reservations and making sure the bar is well stocked. I expect the restaurant manager to do this, while the chef oversees the kitchen to make sure I get served an excellent meal.

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of money in short fiction and in most publications the editor and the manager are the same person, and that person has a "real life" job to worry about as well. And *that's* why submissions to some venues take so long.

I only submit to magazines that pay well, so maybe tiny little places are different, but no magazine I've ever dealt with took as long as they do because they lacked organization. To the contrary. Magazines that take the longest are often far and away the most organized.

I try to avoid most magazines that uses more than one unpaid slush pile reader, and many, many, many, many magazines out there do not use unpaid slush readers at all. Many that do take on just one. This is smart. Using several is not smart.

This aside, it's just not true that organization alone always has anything at all to do with response time. For some magazines, submission time takes so long at many mags because a six hundred submission month just never happens. If it did, you'd wonder why five or six thousand writers suddenly stopped submitting.

For other magazines, you have the editor and the assistant editor, if you're lucky. No other slush pile readers, paid or unpaid. You have, if you're lucky, four hours per week to read submissions. Most of this time is spent reading submissions form writers you know. You can't organize time that doesn't exist.

And getting back to writers in a week or less is usually NOT a good thing for writers. No matter how well-mentioned, too many chefs in the kitchen means inconsistency, and several slush pile readers always, in my experience, means inconsistency. Too much speed also usually means too little time spent per submission, which is also bad for writers.

Be that as it may, nowhere do I know what you say to be the case. Submissions take as long as they take for very good reason, and lack of organization plays no part in it.

And, really, submissions times are not unduly slow. Most writers are just unduly impatient.
 

alexshvartsman

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I only submit to magazines that pay well, so maybe tiny little places are different, but no magazine I've ever dealt with took as long as they do because they lacked organization. To the contrary. Magazines that take the longest are often far and away the most organized.

Please note that I was referring specifically to SF/F magazines (as I stated in my post). Perhaps your experience is different in other genres, but you would be at a huge disadvantage if you tried to avoid submitting to speculative magazines which rely on unpaid slush readers.

While there are a few SFWA publications big and small that utilize in-house staff exclusively (F&SF, DSF to name a couple), most of the SFWA-qualifying magazines use slush readers, for better or for worse.

The 600 submissions per month number is about right for top SF/F publications. Neil Clarke often mentions such statistics on Twitter. A cursory Google search shows that they averaged 700 submissions a month in 2010: http://clarkesworld.livejournal.com/164894.html
and while I don't have a more recent link handy, those numbers haven't changed much. If there exist publications which are receiving 6000+ submissions per month, they certainly aren't in the SF/F field.

Part of my day job is organizing events and tournaments with attendances ranging from 100 to 1000 people. Event registration for a 300 person event can take anywhere between 90 minutes and 3 hours -- using the same number of staff, same equipment and same venue. It all depends on how you do it. We constantly look for ways to streamline registration and train our staff in order to cut down on processing time. Some magazines do the same with their slush procedures and do it well. Some others don't. Organization is key.
 

lorna_w

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My experience editing is on one lit mag. When I got there, the response time was six months. Within three months, I had it down to a month. My coeditors whined at me for slave-driving them through the backlog, but they hadn't submitted like I had. If you don't multiply submit and wait six months for every "no," you'll be dead before a fraction of your work is published. I agree there is no excuse at all for taking longer than 90 days, especially if you're never ever going to pay the authors a dime. 90% of submission can certainly can be rejected by the end of the half-page 1--how long does that take? I'm saying that I suspect disorganization and laziness are the main culprits, as they were where I was. It doesn't matter if you're paid or volunteer; if you take on a job, you do the job responsibly. That's Adulthood 101.

I wish duotrope had been there when I was writing short! Any mag who takes 90 days or more would get piled into a "I'm multiply submitting to 30 of these lazy jerks at once" pile.
 

Mutive

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I think there are a lot of factors.

I highly suspect that Clarkesworld and Lightspeed (and the few others that manage their crazy fast turn around times) can do this because stories go into some central pen and any of their hoards of slush readers can reject. So things go crazy fast, even if potentially a slush reader makes a mistake and says "no" to what might be a great story if it was read by someone else.

My personal experiences are different. I slush read for a semi-pro magazine. As it is, all slush readers are vetted by the editor in chief (to make sure that we have some qualifications/taste), so there are a limited number of us. We're also unpaid, so...I (like I'd assume all my fellow slush readers) read when I have some free time, but it's not the #1 priority in my life.

Add to that that the magazine likes to give personalized feedback - so I try to at least skim the entirety of even the worst/least promising stories. Which means I can't instant reject.

When you throw all that in (along with that even paying some obscenely small amount, we still reject about 97% of our submissions - which means we get a lot), it's not surprising that response times are slow. The editor in chief has to receive submissions, send them out, wait for a limited number of slush readers to read and respond with feedback, then send the feedback out again. And he gets hundreds of submissions a month. (And he, like all us slush readers, works a full time job. So this probably isn't *his* #1 priority in life, either.)

The truth is, until there's enough money in short stories to justify an army of professional readers who plow through stories for a living (or people stop writing so many short stories), response times are going to be slow at a lot of magazines. Because, quite frankly, for most of us, this is a hobby. And while we do care about the authors who submit to us, we're really not stressing out over whether you have to wait an extra day (or week) for a response.
 

Buffysquirrel

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I used to go frantic watching the slush pile grow. It doesn't reflect well on the magazine when turnaround's slow and it's not helpful to the authors, either. But there were days when I'd slush twenty stories and twenty-five more would have come in by the time I was finished. It can be crazy out there.

At NFG we had the opposite problem. We'd turn things around really fast (large team of volunteer slush readers) and people would write in and say we couldn't possibly have given their story proper consideration.
 
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