Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Mind Editor Manners

As a writer, I am told all of the time what I shouldn't do when submitting my work. I listen, take notes, and listen some more. But most people (a couple of bloggers have touched on this recently) don't talk about the other side of things, editors and their staff.

What brings this up? Well yesterday I received an E-mail response from a place I submitted poetry to. It went something like this:

We are NOT currently reviewing new submissions for SomethingorOther Magazine.

Signed,

Someone from SomethingorOther


Now, I can appreciate they weren't accepting new work even though their site says nowhere on it that it is the case. I can understand the brevity of such an E-mail as they sound backlogged. But it seemed very cold and, dare I say, kind of rude. The person writing the E-mail comes off as though I should have known already and just didn't heed the notice.

I will not be submitting to them again in the future.

How often do you guys come across rude editors? What have you done about them, if anything?

-Jennifer Jackson

3 comments:

  1. I completely agree...you don't need them!! And I hate those cold letters from editors. It turns me off from submitting again.

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  2. I don't come across them too often, thank goodness! Then again, I am almost obsessed with following submission guidelines to the letter so that probably helps. Sometimes, you just can't foresee things.

    Thanks for stopping by!

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  3. They go right off my list. There is no need for rudeness in any circumstance, and there are too many other sources to submit to. This happened to me. It didn't say 'no poetry' but did say 'accepting submissions.' They were quite curt on the subject of poetry. Needless to say, I dropped my subscription.

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