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Nadja Maril's avatar

What about BLIND submissions? An editor should always read with an open mind, albeit if the work doesn't grab them within the first three pages, move on.

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G. D. McFetridge's avatar

Here’s my experience with online submissions. From roughly 2000 to 2011, I sent out hundreds and hundreds of short stories via the postal service and had reached an acceptance rate of over four percent in academic reviews and journals. At the time, I was living in the outback of Montana and wasn’t even aware of online submission methods, though I stumbled upon Submittable sometime in 2012.

From that point until 2021, when I finally abandoned my literary ambitions, I submitted 973 stories via Submittable. Only nine were accepted—less than a one percent acceptance rate. Of those nine, just two were picked up by university journals; the rest were marginal publications.

How much money did I donate to Submittable? I don’t even want to know. The submission goes in one end, money lands in the coffer, then someone hits delete and a form rejection is automatically sent. It’s all too easy, too impersonal—nobody opens a manila folder, pages through a manuscript while reading, etc.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, and maybe I’m just crying sour grapes, but looking back, it sort of feels like a scam.

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