We’ve all dealt with this because I’ve seen the conversations on other blogs and forums. We submit work and don’t hear anything about our submissions. We wait, we write asking about our submission and still hear nothing.
Recently, I e-mailed a lot of editors asking if they buy reprints. I got many answers saying yes. So of course I submitted to them. Now the editors don’t seem to be around. I always use my subject line properly, which might explain why in a matter of minutes I got answers about reprints. But I use my subject line wisely when it comes to submissions also.
Personal replies are nice, but if that’s not possible (who has the time with all the submissions editors must get), why not use a form letter? After all, it is better than nothing.
Here are my questions for you, my fellow writers:
1. If the guidelines don’t state approximately how long it takes to hear from them, how long do you wait before sending your piece elsewhere?
2. Once you realize that an editor doesn’t respond, do you give up submitting to that market? Or do you keep on submitting, just keeping yourself to a strict schedule when it comes to moving on with that piece?
3. When you move on with a piece, do you send an e-mail withdrawing your submission from the first place?
Any other tips or ideas you have for what to do when you submit to markets where editors don’t respond if they’re not interested?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
When Editors Don’t Respond
Posted by April at 12:56 PM
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2 comments:
Since I started running Fantasy Debut, I've come to have a different perspective on handing out rejections. I no longer take review copies from authors at all, but when I did, the authors would sometimes get quite insistent. The self-published authors were the worst. I therefore made my "how to contact me" post very forbidding and I have been guilty of not responding if a letter-writer makes me uncomfortable.
Now that I'm submitting to agents again, I assume a rejection after a month. In most lines of business, you send out marketing letters and expect maybe a five percent response rate. Imagine if you had to respond to all your junk mail.
On the other hand, if an editor is going to demand an exclusive submission, then they owe the author a response in a timely manner. If they have an exclusive submission policy, I would probably send a cancellation email once I gave up on any hope of response from that market.
Thank you, Tia. That is so helpful!
I've heard a lot of people say they give it 6 weeks, so a month is close. Either one would work for me. I'm known to be too patient and wait a few months before getting back to it to submit elsewhere. I would never act impatiently toward an editor, I know how busy they have got to be. But there are so many cases these days where a rejection is not responded to, you just don't know what to do. I've waited a few months and ended up getting acceptances! Tough decision to make sometimes I suppose. It's also not unlikely that a submission never reached the editor. E-mail isn't perfect, so I have e-mailed and politely asked if my submission had been received.
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