{"id":37,"date":"2002-01-15T11:22:31","date_gmt":"2002-01-15T16:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/sim_subs_redux"},"modified":"2002-01-15T11:22:31","modified_gmt":"2002-01-15T16:22:31","slug":"sim_subs_redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2002\/01\/sim_subs_redux.html","title":{"rendered":"Sim Subs, Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI had a number of responses to the simultaneous
\nsubmissions entry<\/a>. A couple of them mentioned that it’s acceptable to
\nput an “expiration date” on a submitted manuscript. That is, in your cover
\nletter you can state that after X weeks, the story is automatically withdrawn
\nfrom consideration.\n<\/p>\n

\nI admit that this method is a bit more efficient than having to manually
\nsend the editor a withdrawal letter.
\nIt probably has psychological benefits, too — it sets a hard limit, and
\nthus prevents you from dragging things out too long. “Well, I know what
\nI decided back in February, but maybe just a couple more weeks…”\n<\/p>\n

\nAs for the root of the problem:
\nTim Cooper<\/a> sent me an excellent
\nletter, which provided me with the only cogent
\narguments I’ve seen so far for disallowing simultaneous submissions.\n<\/p>\n

\nFirst, he points out that editors send out acceptances and rejections for a
\nmagazine at roughly the same time:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nSuppose I have stories in my slush that I like, from Writer A, Writer B, and
\nWriter C. I only have the ability to buy one of the stories. So, after much
\nagonizing, I accept Writer A’s story and reject Writer B’s and Writer C’s.
\nThe next day, maybe I choose to buy a very short piece from Writer D because
\nit works well with Writer A’s story. The day after that, Writer A writes back
\nto me and says “Oh, wait, I already sold it to Editor X.” At this point, I can’t
\nrecover the stories form Writer B and C, which could very well be better than
\nanything I’ll get in before the issue comes up. And I now have a short piece
\nI’ve committed to buy that doesn’t fit with anything in the issue at all…\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWhich is fair enough: perhaps given a busy magazine’s schedule, it isn’t practical
\nto hold off on rejecting Writers B and C until you have confirmation from
\nWriter A. (I don’t see how book<\/em> publishers could use this excuse, though.)\n<\/p>\n

\nTim also mentions that the no-simultaneous-submissions rule serves as a barrier
\nthat limits inappropriate submissions.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nIf someone can send a story to every market in the field at once, quite a few of
\nthem are going to do it, regardless of how appropriate the story is for that
\nparticular market. If sending
\nStan
\nSchmidt<\/a> a high fantasy story isn’t going to cost
\nthe writer anything, a lot of them are going to say “why not?”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd then there are authors who send cover letters that say
\nthings like “I have finished over 250 stories” — with no sales. As Tim puts it,
\n“I know that if simsubs were ok across the genre, the moment I opened for submissions
\nI would have gotten every one of those 250+ stories. I’m going to get all of them
\neventually, anyway, it seems, but at least they’re coming at a speed I can handle.”\n<\/p>\n

\nI sympathize with this. Barriers are necessary. After all, isn’t that
\nwhy so many publishers still require paper submissions?\n<\/p>\n

\nHowever, I suppose that again
\nthis explanation makes more sense for a magazine editor than a book editor.
\nFirst, unless our author writes with demonic speed, he or she will not have an
\noutrageous number of unsold novels. Second, while a book editor’s
\nslush pile might be large if you count pages<\/em>, my guess is that it is
\nrelatively small if you count manuscripts<\/em>. This means that the burden
\nof rooting out the inappropriate submissions should be lower for book editors.
\nFinally, novels are expensive and time-consuming to print out and ship — so again,
\nfewer submissions.\n<\/p>\n

\nFinally, Tim makes a very valid point (jeez, why didn’t I just print his
\nwhole letter verbatim?) about the responsibilities of authors. If authors
\ncould be trusted to track their submissions and inform editors when a
\nsimultaneous submission is accepted somewhere else, the rule would be
\nunnecessary. I couldn’t agree more.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe flip side is that publishers
\nshould at least be honest about why they do this. The non-explanation in the
\nSFWA FAQ<\/a> just doesn’t cut it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“If sending Stan Schmidt a high fantasy story isn’t going to cost the writer anything, a lot of them are going to say ‘why not?'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}