
Unfortunately, a lot of markets are now closed for submissions until the new year. Hopefully I can find one that will fit this story nicely.
smashprose wrote:Received my form-rejection from Asimov's today--I'm just grateful they didn't keep it for too long. Off to the next!
Unfortunately, a lot of markets are now closed for submissions until the new year. Hopefully I can find one that will fit this story nicely.
smashprose wrote:(Long time lurker, first time poster)
Hello, fellow wordsmiths!
I have a submission at Assimov's at 38 days, and today it just switched over to "Under Review."
<snip>
Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:38 days at Asimov's is average for them, maybe even a little fast. 68 days at Analog is 40 to 60 days short of their recent response times. Patience is indeed the watchword there.
Gossamer wrote:I am curious whether Under Review means a reader has just been assigned to the piece, or if a reader is forwarding it to editorial for 2nd level reading. Could anyone shed any light into the editorial flow at Asimov's?
Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:Gossamer wrote:I am curious whether Under Review means a reader has just been assigned to the piece, or if a reader is forwarding it to editorial for 2nd level reading. Could anyone shed any light into the editorial flow at Asimov's?
Up until this year, Sheila had no reader. She read all her own slush. Now the rumor is that she has a reader.
My understanding is that the CWSubmissions system (created by Clarkesworld, used at Analog and Asimov's and others) switches to Under Review when the story is downloaded from the server to the editor's or reader's eReader. That doesn't mean they're actually reading it yet, but they probably will soon.
Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:Gossamer wrote:I am curious whether Under Review means a reader has just been assigned to the piece, or if a reader is forwarding it to editorial for 2nd level reading. Could anyone shed any light into the editorial flow at Asimov's?
Up until this year, Sheila had no reader. She read all her own slush. Now the rumor is that she has a reader.
My understanding is that the CWSubmissions system (created by Clarkesworld, used at Analog and Asimov's and others) switches to Under Review when the story is downloaded from the server to the editor's or reader's eReader. That doesn't mean they're actually reading it yet, but they probably will soon.
Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:I should add...
At Asimov's, IN MY EXPERIENCE, the wait from Under Review to a decision is usually days, maybe a week.
At Analog, I have never seen one of my stories in Under Review. Maybe Trevor has that feature turned off.
Davian Aw wrote:Got a form rejection from Tor.com after 214 days. My previous submission there had been my first, which got a nice personal rejection after 146 days asking me to send more writing; so I had really high hopes this time. I thought I'd at least be guaranteed a personal rejection after 7 months of waiting, but nope.
I'm really bummed out about this. Enough so that I created an account here just so I could have somewhere to be sad in.![]()
According to the Submissions Grinder, though, Tor.com just gave out a handful of form replies after similar lengths of time, so at least I'm not alone. I guess it wasn't so much that they liked it, but that they were busy.
Ishmael wrote:In a moment of middle of the night clarity I realised that the rejection from Nightmare wasn't personal after all. I'm sure I remember someone on the forum saying that "It's nicely written and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it didn't quite win me over, I'm afraid." was just a variant of the regular form rejection. I shall have to correct my records. It did say " I look forward to seeing your next submission" though. Maybe also standard?
george nik. wrote:Ishmael wrote:In a moment of middle of the night clarity I realised that the rejection from Nightmare wasn't personal after all. I'm sure I remember someone on the forum saying that "It's nicely written and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it didn't quite win me over, I'm afraid." was just a variant of the regular form rejection. I shall have to correct my records. It did say " I look forward to seeing your next submission" though. Maybe also standard?
It's definitely a much higher tier rejection, so you're well entitled to count it as personal. The concept of "personal" rejection is very much overrated, I think. I've got 7 personal rejections from Shimmer, and that's because I've submitted seven times to Shimmer. I believe if you send a recipe for tomato soup to Shimmer, or Beneath Ceaseless Skies, or a few other markets, you'll get a personal rejection. Getting a "It's nicely written and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it didn't quite win me over, I'm afraid." and " I look forward to seeing your next submission" from JJA is a much bigger achievement than a personal rejection from a lot of markets.
george nik. wrote:... you're well entitled to count it as personal.
E.CaimanSands wrote:Which is why I've always insisted on calling WotF honorable mentions "personal" rejections . . .
The concept of "personal" rejection is very much overrated, I think. I've got 7 personal rejections from Shimmer, and that's because I've submitted seven times to Shimmer. I believe if you send a recipe for tomato soup to Shimmer, or Beneath Ceaseless Skies, or a few other markets, you'll get a personal rejection. Getting a "It's nicely written and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it didn't quite win me over, I'm afraid." and " I look forward to seeing your next submission" from JJA is a much bigger achievement than a personal rejection from a lot of markets.
T. R. Napper wrote:18-day personal rejection from Strange Horizons yesterday. They made some positive comments about the content of the story, so it was an actual personal rejection (unlike the Shimmer rejections mentioned above).
A HM for WotF should certainly be considered a 'personal' rejection. You're in (roughly) the top ten per cent of stories with a HM, the least you can do is claim a step higher than a form rejection.
p.s. - I've only ever received form Rs from Asimov's.
Strycher wrote:george nik. wrote:... you're well entitled to count it as personal.E.CaimanSands wrote:Which is why I've always insisted on calling WotF honorable mentions "personal" rejections . . .
A higher tier form from a JJA publication might be harder to come by than a personal from Shimmer, but that doesn't make it a personal. When you log a higher tier form on The Grinder or Duotrope you [a person, anybody] are misrepresenting the market to other writers. That doesn't help anyone, and it undercuts the person who actually got a personal from JJA (or in the case of WotF, a Semi).The concept of "personal" rejection is very much overrated, I think. I've got 7 personal rejections from Shimmer, and that's because I've submitted seven times to Shimmer. I believe if you send a recipe for tomato soup to Shimmer, or Beneath Ceaseless Skies, or a few other markets, you'll get a personal rejection. Getting a "It's nicely written and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it didn't quite win me over, I'm afraid." and " I look forward to seeing your next submission" from JJA is a much bigger achievement than a personal rejection from a lot of markets.
A higher tier from Nightmare is an accomplishment. I've never gotten a higher tier from a JJA publication--but I do have two form rejections from Shimmer. It is what it is. I don't see how misrepresenting yourself, even to yourself, can possibly help someone become a better writer.
I agree personal rejections are useless other than for making you feel like you did well, but for completely different reasons.
george nik. wrote:...it depends upon the whim of the editor and not how highly he thought of the story.
george nik. wrote: ...most writers are interested in marking the stories that one way or the other made it a little above the slush pile and this is the only practical use of marking a rejection as personal. ...we should ask the Grinder to give us the choice of a "higher-tier" rejection as well.
george nik. wrote:By your definition, one should mark a semi-finalist from WOTF as personal but a non-winning finalist (which doesn't include a crit) as form rejection.
george nik. wrote:I can't see how this piece of information could be of any interest
george nik. wrote:or anyone else
Davian Aw wrote:I've had 5 form and 3 personal rejections from Strange Horizons since 2008; all three personals were this year. My writing seems to be at that aggravating stage where it's good enough to get lots of personal rejections from top magazines, but not good enough to actually get published by those magazines.
Strycher wrote:I'm a little confused at the shade being directed at Shimmer and to a lesser extent Beneath Ceaseless Skies on this forum. Yes, they try to provide personalized feedback to authors (and still manage to return subs in a timely manner!). Every such personalized note can help an author determine what that particular venue is looking for and perhaps point out areas of weakness an author might not notice otherwise. Why is that worth so little? Elsewhere on this very forum I've seen forumites lament the lack of available feedback.
Not every venue takes the time to do this for authors. And because art is subjective, establishing your improvement as a writer is difficult. There are not a lot of objective markers that show you progress in your work. For those other venues, upper tier forms and personal rejections are two distinct (still somewhat subjective) markers that a writer might use to note progress.george nik. wrote:...it depends upon the whim of the editor and not how highly he thought of the story.
I disagree. I think, if an editor who hasn't committed to personalized feedback to all/most responses sends a personal, that's a pretty good indication your story had impact. WotF isn't special in the amount of subs it gets. Most pro paying venues receive thousands of submissions a year. And slushing is just one of many duties an editor has--why would they take time to leave a note, even a negative note, unless your story provoked them to do so?george nik. wrote: ...most writers are interested in marking the stories that one way or the other made it a little above the slush pile and this is the only practical use of marking a rejection as personal. ...we should ask the Grinder to give us the choice of a "higher-tier" rejection as well.
The Grinder is in Beta. If that's a feature you'd like to see, they do have a contact form. I know of at least one other person who has made this suggestion.
In the meantime, each submission has a place for notes. For subs to places that often give personals I can mark personals from senior editors (ie Elise at Shimmer), and places that mostly do forms I can mark upper-tiers:
This allows me to go back and see two important things. 1) I can see if a particular story needs to go in the trunk. 20-30+ submissions and no personals, no upper tiers? Not a good sign. 2) I can see what kind of markets are giving me uppers and personals and determine which market would be best to try next.george nik. wrote:By your definition, one should mark a semi-finalist from WOTF as personal but a non-winning finalist (which doesn't include a crit) as form rejection.
No, I would mark a non-winning finalist as a personal rejection because Joni provides comments from the judges. (You may recall that Martin had a non-winning story that Jerry Pournelle loved.)george nik. wrote:I can't see how this piece of information could be of any interest
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it seems as though you're saying that personal rejection don't matter so why not give yourself one if you feel you've done well? To me, that makes no sense. If they don't matter, how does deciding you've gotten one when you haven't help you become a better writer?george nik. wrote:or anyone else
I don't understand this either. The entire point of using The Grinder instead of Ralan's and a spreadsheet is to see what kind of results other writers are getting. If you think it's pointless, why post there? Especially if you're going to post inaccurate information and skew the data for the people who do think it's of interest.
Davian Aw wrote:I'm guessing it's a higher tier of standard rejection, if so. I know that Analog has at least two different standard rejections, one of which adds the line "I rather like your style of writing and suggest you try us again" - which I received both from Trevor and Stanley, word for word. But I've also submitted stuff there that didn't have that line, so editors probably only use it when they mean it.
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