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I have a question about normal reponse times when submitting stories. I submitted a story to a contest in October 2004. The submission guidelines stated that the organizers would send acknowledgment of the submission within a week of the receipt, and then they would send acceptance or rejection letters in a few months. The organizers requested that authors not inquire about their submissions. I never received the acknowledgment, so I thought my submission had been lost. Today (August 21, 2005) I received an email from the organizers letting me know that my story had not been chosen--normally, I would have been disappointed, but since I'd written it off long ago, I was just interested in the fact that the story hadn't been lost after all.
Is ten months normal for a response to a submission? In the past when I've worked up the nerve to submit stories, I've heard back in 4-8 weeks. I'm curious to know if the length of time indicates anything, either positive or negative, about the story or the publication.
posted
This is a link I go to from time to time, when I'm bored enough. Also, it's good motivation seeing how many rejections there are, but gaining hope when someone posts a sale as well.
From what I've noticed, ten months is a bit on the long side; there's a tracker there which has some stats for different publications. But it's like Beth said: response times vary.
Ten months is not even close to the longest response time I've heard, although if they had not sent me so much as an acknowledgement and refused to accept queries I probably would have sent the story elsewhere months ago. I'm not incredibly patient when it comes to short stories. I learned which markets seem to think tha a year is acceptable and I stopped sending stories to them. I always check the black hole before submitting and the markets who can get back to me in a month or two always get my stories first.
posted
The Black Hole doesn't claim to provide a representative sample, although it can give a rough idea. After seeing suspect entries for the magazine I used to work for, I don't take the Hole too seriously any more .
Posts: 245 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
When you use the Black Hole, you can't just look at the summary stats...you have to click on the magazine and skim through the indidividual responses. This helps you to rule out the 523 day response times when everything else cam back in under a month. It also helps you to see recent trends...for example, Assimov's has recently become much faster in their responses whereas Strange Horizons has become slightly slower.
Especially for the most popular magazines, I do pay attention to what the black hole has to say. I just make sure I pay attention to the right things.
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Over the years, I've had [counts on fingers] six sizeable manuscripts completely disappear on me, at one end of the process or the other.
Speaking also as someone who actually works for the USPS and handles the mail personally, I'd advise three things: (1)always save a copy or file, (2) be prepared to query if it's gone over a year, and (3) forget about trying to trace it if you've waited that long.
Under a year isn't terribly long for some of the markets I've submitted to. A major publishing house once held onto a "3 chapters and outline" for over a year...when I queried them, I had it back in three weeks, with a rejection and an apology.
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Many markets will tell you how long their response times are running. Some will also tell you how long you should wait before you query.
Glimmer Train--a high paying pro market--says their response time is 16 weeks. That was the longest I'd ever seen. But now...
I'd say that in your situation the market didn't keep their end of the bargain by failing to send you a confirmation. In my mind that voids any responsibility you have to follow their guidelines.
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Wow! The Black Hole was eye-opening. I will definitely check it before I submit anything else. It did make me feel better to see some of the high averages, like one company that averaged 400 days for responses. Suddenly, ten months doesn't seem so bad.
Posts: 150 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
There are also a few publications that simply have too few data points to really take seriously on the black hole. I still find it to be an invaluable research tool because personally, I feel that a year is too long for a short story. Novels are a different story and I'm actually just starting to learn about that, but short stories -- the thing is, it's not even like the pro markets take forever and the semi-pro markets are fast. Some of the best response times come out of the pro markets and some of the worst come out of the lowest paying markets. There's simply no reason you need to hold onto a short story for a year to determine whether or not to buy it and I suspect that most of the time with those year holdovers they're not ... they have a year high pile and they should stop taking submissions until they're through it.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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I agree--a year is a ridiculous amount of time to make a decision on a short story. Especially given that the story usually doesn't spend that year being considered--it spends it in a pile of other stories, working its way to the top.
I think having a reading period is a good option for a magazine that has few staff but lots of subs. At the magazine I worked for, we sometimes had enough good stories awaiting decisions to publish the magazine once a month for a year--when we were only publishing thrice yearly.
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