It’s an exciting day at Scape – we’ve made our first acceptance!
I thought this would therefore be a good time to provide some feedback on the submissions process to date. There are lots of sites out there that list the essentials of submitting to zines – what authors should and shouldn’t do when sending their work out into the ether.
For good measure, here’s a Scape Top 5:
1. DO follow the submissions guidelines. All of them. Pretty please.
Standard manuscript format – yes please. Multiple or simultaneous submissions – no thanks. Word doc or rtf attachments, not stories in the text of an e-mail. Please provide your full contact details and a 100 word or less author bio. Pretty basic stuff, really. But when an author submits a story in a manner that is consistent with ALL the submissions guidelines, they stand out from the pack. In a good way.
2. DON’T argue over rejections.
We realise that feedback is invaluable when you’re subbing a story around the marketplace so I’m trying to send out personalized responses when we decline a story. However, the rate of submissions prevents us from always doing this. That being said, please don’t argue over the points made in personalized responses. Story preferences are extremely subjective and yes, another editor may think your story is the perfect fit for their magazine. But arguing with any editor’s decision only makes you seem unprofessional.
3. DO think about Scape’s YA focus.
I have acknowledged on several occasions that it’s a challenge to know prior to submitting whether your story is suited to any zine, let alone one that is yet to be launched. However, please have a think about whether your story is at least in the realm of YA or not before sending it. There’s quite a bit of flexibility in this, but it isn’t infinitely elastic. For instance, our first accepted story contains both adult and child characters and dark themes. But, importantly, its protagonist is brave, resourceful and in his mid-teens (though we’re not sure exactly how old he is). On the other hand, stories solely about middle-aged adult relationships seen through the eyes of middle-aged adults, or tales with an all 10-year-old cast of characters, are less likely to fit our remit.
4. DON’T send us a short-story synopsis.
Please, please, please don’t include a synopsis. Unlike the submissions process for novels, I, or a volunteer reader, will read each short story in full. Please don’t spoil the experience by telling us what it’s about – we want your characters, not your submission e-mail, to take us on a journey (and it’s the stories that do this that get short-listed for acceptance). At best, a synopsis deprives us of that enjoyment. At worst, it puts your story under greater scrutiny because we’re reading it with the expectation that it’s going to live up to the ‘hard sell’ presented in the submissions e-mail.
5. DO consider adding your submission experience to Duotrope etc.
This obviously has no bearing on whether or not your story is accepted. However, whether or not you were successful on this occasion, we’d really appreciate you accurately reporting the submissions data to any market database you may use, such as Duotrope or to the ‘Submitting to the Black Hole’ site. We’re making a particular effort to get back to authors as soon as we can. I’m one of those poor souls sending out my own work on a regular basis and I know how frustrating it can be to have to wait for over half a year to get a rejection. We’re therefore hoping to build a reputation as a well-run publication at the swifter end of the response-time spectrum.
