Social media interactions with editors... is there a line?

Ty Schalter said:

So I'm coming up on a full year of getting back into the genre short fiction world. I've learned a lot and met a lot of awesome people. I've started going to cons, made some writer and editor e-friends and e-acquaintences, and a very small few have come to know and like my stuff. All along, I've tried to keep a pretty clear demarcation between We Are Friendly Nerdfolk Interacting Mode, and I Am Submitting My Work to You For Consideration Mode.

The other day, I saw an established pro "announce" a submission to a big market on social media, while tagging the EiC. It kind of caught me off guard. To a wannabe slaving away at the keyboard and refresh-monkeying The Grinder, that looks like a public, explicit call for the editor to ruffle through the slush and pluck their story out.

Is that crossing a weird line, or am I being too sour-grapes sensitive here?

Peace
Ty

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I think you have a mistaken notion of how slush works. You don't think stories by established pros go into the slush with the stories of brand new writers, do you?

Many come in from agents, rather than from the writer, and the rest get routed to the main editor's desk instantly. It isn't a first come, first serve situation where every story gets read in the order received.

Estabished pro writers have proven they can write stories that the editor likes, and that readers like. The bigger the name of the writer, the more he has proven this. So of course that writer receives faster, better treatment.

If you were the editor, would you want to read through eight hundred stories by new writers, hoping that someone in that mess you'd find four of five stories by established pros that would keep your magazine going? Or would you have first reader told to separate those stories from the rest, and send them straight to you. Or, if you don't use first readers, would you separate those stories out yourself before doing anything else?

I mean, really, almost all the stories form new writers are going to be bad. Almost none are going to be pro quality. All the stories from the established pros will be good, and you know it. This doesn't mean you'll buy them all, but the worst of them will be better than pretty much anything else in the slush.

The point is, established pro writers don't need to make a pubic, explicit call for the editor to pluck their stories out of the slush. This is going to happen, anyway, as well it should.

Established pro writers have a working relationship with editors that you don't have, and can't have, until you become an established pro yourself When you become an established pro, the same thing will happen with your stories because, at that point, you will have proven you can write stories that sell, stories that readers love, and stories the editor can't wait to read, and stories that keep the magazine solvent.

And, this Established Pro announces every submission? Isn't that just for sales? If they're announcing every submission, doesn't that take a fair bit of time? And if they're only announcing the 'big' submissions, w. editor's name, isn't that just trying to boast? Because, it seems to me that tagging the editor might not mean anything except that they know the EiC's name. Did they actually say that this person wanted the submission?

I think it's a weird thing to do in most cases. Even if a market does fast-track some writers through the first round of slush (which they don't all do, so this isn't universal), Twitter is not the common method of doing so. Quite the reverse: I've seen editors and agents complaining about people trying to use Twitter for pitches, submission notifications, etc.

I don't discuss my submissions with editors on Twitter unless they bring it up.

Polenth said:

I think it's a weird thing to do in most cases. Even if a market does fast-track some writers through the first round of slush (which they don't all do, so this isn't universal), Twitter is not the common method of doing so. Quite the reverse: I've seen editors and agents complaining about people trying to use Twitter for pitches, submission notifications, etc.

I don't discuss my submissions with editors on Twitter unless they bring it up.

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Glad it isn't just me. I thought it was a weird thing to do as well. I'm probably wrong, but my first impression was that the writer was trying to twist the editor's arm by publicly announcing the submission. Fans of the writer might expect the story to appear, maybe?

Polenth said:

I think it's a weird thing to do in most cases. Even if a market does fast-track some writers through the first round of slush (which they don't all do, so this isn't universal), Twitter is not the common method of doing so. Quite the reverse: I've seen editors and agents complaining about people trying to use Twitter for pitches, submission notifications, etc.

I don't discuss my submissions with editors on Twitter unless they bring it up.

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Agents really don't come into it for short stories. It's a completely different world. Editors, and agents, for that matter, generally complain when unknown writers use twitter, or Facebook, etc., for making pitches, not when an established pro does. For an established pro, something like this isn't a pitch at all, it's just a way of communicating, and is usually more for fans than anything else.

The relationship between an established pro and many editors is very often not just a working relationship, but also a friendship relationship. I've never known an editor who minded something like this. Why should an editor mind it? There's no pressure, there's no, "God, don't I get enough stories I don't want to read?"

At least as often as not, it's the editor who initiates such things by asking a writer to submit more stories, or saying, "I wish I had more stories like this or that, or by him or her."

If you were the editor of a horror magazine, or even of The New Yorker, wouldn't you be thrilled pink to have Stephen King say he was sending a story your way? Wouldn't you be keeping a sharp eye out for that story?

I don't care which magazine it is, the story by Stephen King is going to land on the main editor's desk. No first reader is going to reject it. Nor is any editor going to buy as many stories as he can buy before finding King's story in the slush. This is how editors lose jobs.

Fast-tracking an established pro through the slush may not be universal, but it's damned close to it, and the effect is the same, even without a fast track.

Unpublished writers simply are not on the same track as established pro writers. They just aren't. It's having the names of established pro writers on the cover that sells magazines, and you;re lucky, very lucky, if any given issue has a single story by a brand new writer. Some editors try to reserve one slot for new writers, but even this doesn't work out with every issue.

Having writers give editors a heads up is far, far too common to be weird. They do it on twitter, or Facebook, on their blogs and websites, and always have.

Established pro writers are simply in another league, and are treated accordingly. This is why it's so difficult to sell a short story to a good magazine. In order to sell, your story has to be better in some than what these established pros submit during the same time period. Not as good as, but better.

If it isn't better, then any sane editor goes for the name recognition. This is simply how it works. Proven writers with name recognition have earned this right. Writing may, or may not, be an art, but publishing, whether books or magazines, is a business, and business always means you do whatever it takes makes your product sell better.

Ty: We don't really know the context of this tweet. Perhaps the editor and the pro discussed the story previously, and the editor had asked to see it. Perhaps they're buddies in real life -- I bug editors I'm close friends with on social media all the time, and they me. Perhaps, if the pro is more established than the market, the pro thought s/he was doing them a favor by implying "I submit here, and so should my Twitter followers."

So, anyway, the short answer is: there are times when it's OK to do this, but it's not something you should emulate unless the editor in question is a good pal of yours.

Beyond that, I'm in agreement with James. Pros absolutely get fast-tracked at most markets, and they deserve to be fast-tracked because they already paid their dues. No one started out getting fast-tracked without a good reason.

Speaking as someone who has had more than 50 stories published - in Analog, Amazing Stories, more recently in Buzzy Mag and Sci Phi Journal - I never announce a submission. I save the announcement for the acceptance (and then, of course, on publication).

PaulLev said:

Speaking as someone who has had more than 50 stories published - in Analog, Amazing Stories, more recently in Buzzy Mag and Sci Phi Journal - I never announce a submission. I save the announcement for the acceptance (and then, of course, on publication).

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It's all choice. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with announcing submissions. I've seen it done a thousand times. For many, many years, I saw it happen at writers conferences and seminars. Now I see it on social media.

If you're on a personal friendship level with the editor, why would you not announce it? Though "announce" is completely the wrong word. There's no announcing to it. It's just, hey, Charlie, I'm sending you a story next week.

It's basic human nature, harm's no one, and doesn't interfere with new writers in any possible way.

And as Alex says, when I'm friends with editors I bug them to death. . .almost as much as they bug me asking for a story. As an editor, I can't see anything at all wrong with a writer saying he's sending me a manuscript. Seriously, what negatives are tehre in any possible way?

Ty Schalter said:

Alex—


James—

"Announce" is the right word. When you have thousands of Twitter followers and you get on Twitter and Tweet anything, it's an announcement.
Thanks, again, for the conversation and education.


Ty

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I see your point, but when sending a message to a particular individual, few people think of twitter, or Facebook, as a worldwide thing linking them to thousands or millions. To most who send a tweet, or who post on someone else's timeline, it's still perceived as a one on one media.

This is how the human mind works. I do it often without thinking about how many will see my message. Because I'm aiming the message at one person, I don't even think about all the others who will see it. Everyone I know does. Most of the tweets and Facebook posts read this way, too.

Even if I did think about, my thinking would be that they could tell the message wasn't for them. We're tweeting or posting to one person, not all the people who follow that person.

If others read it, fine, but we're not talking to them, and they usually realize this.

And who the heck has time to read all the tweets or posts on someone else's feed, anyway> I sure don't, and wouldn't. I'm there to read what the owner of the that twitter or Facebook account has to say, not what all his followers say.

Ty,

I still feel like you may be overthinking this. An author who has thousands of followers (and I don't just mean 2-3000 people who all follow each other blindly, but real followers who read the author's tweets) probably does not need any "help" to "pressure" any editor into accepting their story. Even if their story is rejected, they're not likely in a position where this will especially bother them.

On the other hand, let's say someone like Mike Resnick posts on his Facebook that he sent a story to my anthology. Whether I buy it or not, this isn't pressure - he's doing me a favor by letting the world know he considers the book worthwhile of his submission.

There are any number of other scenarios but I don't think any of them are likely to result in an undue pressure being exerted over the editor in question.

Either way it's a perfectly reasonable topic of discussion and I think people will find the discussion useful, whether or not they agree with our opinions