Submission Tracking
Keeping track of your submissions is always important. However, what this post is about has nothing to do with software such as QueryTracker or Sonar. What I’m referring to is the online submission system some magazines have adopted. Does submitting through their site make the process easier for you?
Pros: Submitting through a site such as Clarkesworld and Fantasy Magazine could help you sleep at night. Not every magazine has adopted a “submission received” email system for various reasons. You submit your story/article/poem and are forced to wait weeks or months, wondering if the editors even have it. The wait could be prolonged if your story was lost in cyberland and you have to resubmit. An online submission system could help provide better communication between authors and editors.
Cons: I recently submitted a story to Fear and Trembling Magazine. A part of their contributor tools is the ability to review your story’s status. I can’t help but check the site at least once or twice a day. I know there are like forty submissions ahead of mine but I still can’t resist the urge to check. It can make a person obsessive.
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It does turn you into a bit of an obsessive online freak….where you watch your submission sitting there behind loads of others and you screaming abuse at the table in front of you as if the power of your voice alone will determine your stories acceptance or not…… Not that I have ever been in that situation of course.. have heard stories… ummm friends do this… ummmmmm
I’d like to mention the importance of keeping a track of your submissions on a spreadsheet at home too. Its easy to lose track of time with your stories being flung out there.
Its such a relief to have an editor actually makes the time to send a message to say that your submission has been received – automated no doubt – but courtesy that goes along way.
Interesting, I’ve never seen markets do that before. Though I haven’t submitted in a while. I’d be checking every five seconds too, though and part of me feels like online submissions would lose the romantic attachment I have to plain old-school emailing. (Yes, my parents can get nostalgic about snail mail, so I’ll get nostalgic about email :P)