Rejectomancy

Aggy B. said:

That is perhaps the one big plus about EDF - even when something doesn't make it past slush you still get personal comments on why they didn't take the story.

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And it is very much appreciated.

Rejection from Scott Orson Card Medicine Show. I really think this is one of my better stories, but it's been hard finding a home for it.

Aggy B. said:

Egh. Rejection from Lightspeed. Did come from JJA's email. Could be it's made it further than before, or the whole response system has been retooled.

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I think it's been retooled. My last 2 submissions were rejected allegedly from JJA's email, but neither lasted more than 3 days.

I'm not feeling the love from Ellery Q. I get world-record speed Rs from there... sigh.

Marzioli said:

I think it's been retooled. My last 2 submissions were rejected allegedly from JJA's email, but neither lasted more than 3 days.

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I had a rejection a couple of weeks ago from them and never even got an email (checked spam, etc). It said rejected on the sub page.

It sucked too, because I started thinking happy thoughts after not getting a rejection super fast.

2-day quix nix from Lightspeed. Waiting on a few crickets. Eyes crossed.

J.W. Alden said:

I had a rejection a couple of weeks ago from them and never even got an email (checked spam, etc). It said rejected on the sub page. It sucked too, because I started thinking happy thoughts after not getting a rejection super fast.

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Oh no! That's so horrible. I suppose it would have been even worse if it wasn't a market that had online status updates. You could have been waiting for months for a response that had already been sent and/or lost.

Just got a 2-day R from Andromeda Spaceways.
In fact, it was possibly a 0-day R since I just got the confirmation today as well, according to my e-mail client about 40 minutes before the rejection.

Does this mean I screwed up something formatting wise and got auto-rejected? Their guidelines are spread across like 10 separate web pages so it's pretty possible I messed something up.

Sorry about the R, Taylor. ASIM are pretty forgiving about minor formatting issues etc. Most likely you just had the (mis)fortune of being assigned to a slush reader who had the time to review and decide on your story quickly.

Super-fast (and very often personal) responses as well as clear communication about the status of each sub is what I love about ASIM, and why I submit to them a lot--even though I've never made it past round 2 with them, and only got to round 2 a few times.

Weird that duotrope has their average time listed in the 20s.
With that kind of quick turnaround though this definitely isn't going to be the last time I submit there.

Even on the weekend, the waiting goes on.

Still nothing on any of my subs, but one's only been out two days, one's been out about a week and a half and the last one's been out just over a month.

I'm still new to this submitting thing (I'd been working on a novel, not stories) so do places tend to keep business hours or do rejections come at any time of day/day of the week?

You guys are old hands at this, so tell me, is there any time that you feel like you're not expecting an email any moment?

--GreenSquares

They seem to come at any time.

No rhyme or reason to it at all.

It does leave you in a constant state of waiting and stress. Enjoy!

Yes, there are no weekends for writers or editors...

Taylor V said:

Weird that duotrope has their average time listed in the 20s.
With that kind of quick turnaround though this definitely isn't going to be the last time I submit there.

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Even though it may be post hoc reasoning, I've noticed when I got my first ultra quick rejection from ASIM, I HAD made some submission mistakes. Specifically, my formatting was wrong (header + Shunn style contact information and word count) AND (maybe more importantly) I didn't convert my doc file into an RTF. The next two times I made sure not to repeat these errors and it took 15 days for a personal R for the second and currently on 12 for the third. All this to say, make sure you follow those guidelines to the letter! Just in case.

Taylor V said:

Weird that duotrope has their average time listed in the 20s.
With that kind of quick turnaround though this definitely isn't going to be the last time I submit there.

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ASIM has a unique submission process, which I really like.

Your story is reviewed by a slush reader (quickly!) and either rejected or it advances to round 2. At this point it's reviewed by two MORE slush reader, and either rejected or advances to round 3.

Stories in round 3 are held for 90 days so that at least a couple of editors can look at them and consider them for the issues they are editing. If no editor has selected a story after 90 days, it is then released back to you (rejected).

So it is the round 3 stories (which spend up to 100 days if they make it to round 3) that drive up the average response time on Duotrope. Over 90% of their submissions however are reviewed and rejected within a few days.

You get email notifications each time your story advances, and a bit of personal feedback with most rejections. LOVE those guys!

Some serious cricket-y goodness (or whatever) going on over here. A grand total of three responses in the last eight days.

Just got R'd by DSF on a flash piece. They're starting to rack up on me.

MUST. BE. PUBLISHED. GRRR.

Hugs for all the rejections lately.

Nothing yet, but I have a sub at Clarkesworld and Asimov, and the latter is under review as we speak. I can definitely expect a response in the next few hours, if not days. That was quick for Asimov, considering they have the standard R at 30 days (with only three exceptions all month) and mine's only day 15.

Crickets all over me with my ST submission. This past Friday they rejected 6 Duotrope-reported stories, 3 of which were submitted the day mine was and 2 of which were submitted the day AFTER mine. I'm 3 days less than Duotrope's current longest submission there, but at 20 days I've lasted longer than any of the last 54 responses.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I'm allowing myself to think my story might be under real consideration. Fingers crossed!

O'Dandelo said:

Crickets all over me with my ST submission. I'm 3 days less than Duotrope's current longest submission there, but at 20 days I've lasted longer than any of the last 54 responses.

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Assuming you mean Shock Totem, me too. I'm out at 21 days, which has been "In Progress" since the aforementioned rejections. But, as per Aggy's posts on the subject, I believe "In Progress" is a step below "Under Review," so I'm forced to remain cautiously skeptical. Fingers crossed for both of us!

Yeah, "In-progress" doesn't mean anything. I have a story sitting at Vestal Review for 39 days and it has been "In-progress" for quite a while, despite other stories being rejected before me.

And I wouldn't count on statistics; they're only probabilities. As the saying goes: "There three kind of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."