Fantasy and Science Fiction-How does Charlie do it?

[chuckt]

Have you seen on Submission Grinder how many submissions he gets? And he consistently responds within a week. I get it that you can often make a decision on the first page. The first paragraph or sentence even. Still. How does he have time to do anything else?

[RSchibler]

I don't think he does much else, he probably reads really fast, and he's been at this for a long time - I've assumed he has a smooth system for rejecting or holding stories. I've noticed this before, too. He's so fast, and frequently gives feedback and comments to boot. Not to mention curating one of the best publications in the business. He's amazing!

[chuckt]

I hope to break the 4-day barrier this time. :) I imagine there will be a sonic boom if I do.

[Andy Dibble]

I think there are other slush readers for F&SF. I read the bio of a Swedish writer that said he was a First Reader for F&SF, and not all my rejections are from him.

On the other hand, I think that Grinder only represents the minority of submissions F&SF receives. There's Duotrope and many writers use neither. I know some 'zines that only have 20 or 30 submissions in a submission period in Grinder, but their blog says that they received 300! I think Mike Resnick said in a recent WotF anthology that top zines get over 1k submissions a month!

It all makes me wonder why I gave up on applying to PhD programs and opted to submit my work to markets with significantly lower acceptance rates!

[chuckt]

I think there are other slush readers for F&SF. I read the bio of a Swedish writer that said he was a First Reader for F&SF, and not all my rejections are from him.

On the other hand, I think that Grinder only represents the minority of submissions F&SF receives. There's Duotrope and many writers use neither. I know some 'zines that only have 20 or 30 submissions in a submission period in Grinder, but their blog says that they received 300! I think Mike Resnick said in a recent WotF anthology that top zines get over 1k submissions a month!

It all makes me wonder why I gave up on applying to PhD programs and opted to submit my work to markets with significantly lower acceptance rates!

Yup. I multiply what I see on Grinder in my head to imagine how many they probably are receiving. Everything I've gotten is "signed" by Charlie. And they've always included some note on the story. But maybe he is sometimes just relaying what the reader noted?


The acceptance rates are crazy. Approaching that of being struct by lightning at some point in your life. Of course, that's not really true. From what I've learned, the vast majority of the slush doesn't survive 15 seconds of reading.

[Andy Dibble]

From what I've learned, the vast majority of the slush doesn't survive 15 seconds of reading.

I think this is plausible, at least for top markets (some markets are gracious enough to read everything they get sent). I also think some markets are more forgiving than others. My WotF winner had a missing word in the second sentence :p I've heard from people serially published in F&SF that F&SF looks for new and original writers. If that's your approach you can't read with the assumption that if the beginning is anything less than stellar, the story isn't good enough.