Join in.

…OK, I’m getting worked up just thinking about it. Awful, just awful stuff. Bios–not my thing.

1) Publications that bar simultaneous submissions.
2) Non-standard ms. formatting.
3) Publishers/Editors that don’t respond to queries in a timely manner. If you’ve had my story for six weeks, or eight, or nine, and I get the response to my query AFTER I’ve finally received a rejection, SOMETHING IS WRONG. And yes, this has happened to me more than once.

I have an idea for a children’s book called Baby Animate Golems and I was wondering . . .

Rejection is part of the game, but it becomes frustrating during the reworking process that what you are trying to make better about the story may not be its true weakness.

Maybe a sentence would help, maybe not, but it would be feedback.

From the perspective of a freelancer, then, something I hate: People who want you to do work for them, but then refuse to write up a solid contract because they “trust you to do the work”. Then they order 5,000 revisions without increasing pay, and you dump the whole project in disgust and don’t get a cent for any of it..

Also, as an illustrator something I hear a lot is “Hey, I’ve written this children’s book and I want you to illustrate it. I can’t pay you right now, but when I get published we can split the royalties.” Invariably, the person does not yet have a publishing contract, or the remotest idea of how to obtain one.

Of course, if the conversation was more like “Hey, I’m Jeff Vandermeer and I have this story I’ve written, and I want you to illustrate it…” then that’s different.
From the recent blog posts I see that someone got that lucky recently.

This may be an entirely inappropriate venue to raise this (and probably totally hypocritical of me), but how would writers and editors feel about two suggestions made to me recently:

1. First limited simultaneous submission with full disclosure
This is an idea raised (as a possible short fiction industry standard) by a writer who submitted his story and just wanted to run it by us. It would work as follows: Writer submits story to market A, with note indicating simultaneous submission of story to Market B. The same information is included in the cover letter to Market B. Within these cover letters, it is made clear that first market to accept, gets to publish the story. The writer also added that this simultaneous submission would only be valid for the first two markets a story to which is submitted. I’m not sure why the writer has this firsties limitation. It would work on an honour system to keep writers honest (supposedly enforced by editors??)

2. One sentence rejection feedback
It would work with form letters by having a sentence like ‘The problem I have with this story is ____________. Of course, the blank space can be longer. For example, there may be 5 problems with the story, but the sentence should only highlight the BIGGEST problem with it.

While I have my reservations with regard to both suggestions, I’d like to hear the thoughts of both writers and editors on these suggestions.

Obviously, that can’t be fun for the publisher and/or editor, either (after all, they went into business hoping to succeed). But I’ve learned to submit my work to magazines with a history of longevity and some continuity at the editorial helm. Live and learn.