"But tell me... How do you get around the editors not wanting you to submit to more than one place at once, and still make the deadlines? I just got my first submission back, rejected 8 months after sending it off. If I had written it expecting to submit to another publisher for a contemporary anthology, I suspect I would be a bit late..."
And my answer:
Well, it depends a lot on what you're submitting. Broadly speaking,
magazines generally tell you (or you can ask) whether they accept
simultaneous submissions. When I'm marketing my work properly (which is
hardly ever), I submit to the top magazines first and wait for their
response, then to all the ones who accept simultaneous subs at once, wait,
and if the damn story still hasn't sold, then in sequential order to the
ones that are left (in order of pay/prestige, top to bottom). If I am
submitting simultaneously, I always tell them so in the cover letter, and
I never do it unless they say it's okay.
However, keep in mind that magazines are purchasing First North American Serial Rights (or the equivalent), and so they don't care whether it appears in an anthology before it appears with them. So you can definitely submit to a magazine and an anthology at the same time, and often anthologies also don't mind if you simultaneously submit to multiple anthologies (though this is also something to check first). Also, some do respond quickly, so you can often submit a story to several different anthologies in the same six month period, especially if they have different due dates.
- Mary Anne, hoping this cleared up the confusion.
And Lydia appended (reprinted by permission):
From: Lydia (maenad@aa.net)
Subject: EROS: CHAT: Simultaneous Subs
Anthologies also often, I've noticed, extend their deadlines. So I send something in by the deadline and give it a month or three for response (with a nudge after 1-2 months). If they extend the deadline, with or without telling me, I may have submitted the story elsewhere after a while, based on the original published deadline.
I don't wait forever for a response from the publication where I submitted something. If they ignore two queries from me (after deadline and suitable response period has already passed), I send them a message saying I assume they are not using the piece and that I'm sending it elsewhere.
Ethically OK with me, altho YMMV. Hasn't got me into any trouble yet.
I'm not much into $$$ or status, which means I mostly send work to publications I like, which often pay little or nothing, which also means they are shoestring labor-of-love operations that tend to just cease publishing one day. Has happened to me many times, sometimes after they "bought" my piece, and while I don't expect them to inform me they just died, I do operate on the assumption that not everywhere I send something WILL reply to me. I want to spare them, and myself, the embarrassment of duplicate pubs, but I also write to be read, and will keep my manuscripts in circulation.
Waxing philosophical and pragmatic at the same time,
Lydia