Okay, so it’s a stupid title. I’ll come up with a better one. But our blogmeister, Liz, strongly nudged me to do this on an occasional basis–answer questions from the literary cyber world. I can but obey. Feel free to ask!
So I thought I’d begin today with a question I’m often asked: what’s the deal with multiple submissions? Why is it okay with some magazines and not others? When an author sends a story, an essay, or a set of poems to more than one magazine simultaneously, it’s dubbed a “multiple submission.” Almost all literary magazines state an explicit policy in their guidelines on whether they willingly accept them. (There’s no way, of course, ever to know if an author has sent something to more than one place, unless they say so up front.) For younger writers especially, who don’t have a great store of material, it’s understandable that they don’t want to tie up their work for months while waiting for a single editor or magazine to reply. If that’s your situation, I urge you to send as many multiple submissions as you like to those magazines happy to consider them. It makes perfect sense.
For those of you who, between these two paragraphs, have checked KR’s guidelines and found that we ask authors not to send us work that is being considered elsewhere, here’s why:
We pride ourselves on reading everything that comes in our door. (Well, the door doesn’t figure in this anymore, nor does the veritable “transom” over which manuscripts were said to pass.) Anyway, we read it all. Yes, all the “slush.” For KR it’s part of our mission–to discover and publish promising new voices–and the slush pile is where, through hard work and long hours, we find hidden gems.
Last year, for example, we won two O. Henry prizes. Pretty cool. And both were discovered among thousands and thousands of unsolicited manuscripts. Talk about eureka! moments.
But the slush pile, electronic or not, keeps growing. Even though we officially accept submissions only between September and February, we’re still reading those that came in this year, some from before January. We have a very small staff in a very small college. Our most precious commodity is time, and reading submissions takes a great deal of time.
More often than you might expect, a story or set of poems will be passed from an initial reader to a more senior editor, such as Nancy Zafris or David Baker, who may read the submission several times, weighing and considering it, before sending it along to me with a recommendation to publish. I’ll spend more time with it before contacting the author with an acceptance. Only to be told, usually sheepishly and with great embarrassment, that it’s already been accepted by another journal or magazine. This is frustrating, not only because we loved the piece and wanted it for our pages, but because of the amount of time we’d invested.
(Once, some years ago, an author didn’t have the courage or courtesy to confess that a particular poem had already been selected elsewhere. Imagine my own chagrin when the editor of Poetry, a friend of mine, called to ask why we’d just published a poem that was also in his journal.)
Now don’t get me wrong. As a writer myself for more than 30 years, I know only too well how annoying it is to have a story I’ve sweat blood on sit in someone else’s slush pile for six months or more. That’s not fair or courteous either.
Here’s my take: that there ought to be a fair understanding on both sides of the relationship. If authors want to have their work considered by The Kenyon Review or another magazine that prefers not to receive multiple submissions, then they ought to honor that request. Likewise, the editors of those journals should do everything they can to respond to the submission in a reasonable amount of time. Say three months? If after that period an author has received no word, then a letter or email of inquiry is entirely justified, or even a withdrawal of the submission so that it can be sent to another publication.
What do you think? I’m curious to know.