[New-Poetry] Electronic Submissions

[Johnathon Williams]

I edit an online poetry journal at Linebreak.org, and we only accept  
electronic submissions. The benefits are many:

1. Our staff can work from anywhere
Electronic submissions allow myself and my two co-editors to  
collaborate remotely without the cost of photocopying and mailing. Our  
publication doesn't have an office or a mailing address — only an URL.

2. Organization
Electronic submissions eliminate the clutter of being inundated with  
reams of paper. There are no SASEs to track or manuscripts to return.  
We read, track, vote on, and accept/reject submissions through a  
shared Gmail account. All correspondence is archived online, which  
creates an instant record of everything we do.

3. Speed
This is a byproduct of organization, I think. The delay between making  
the decision to reject or accept a poem and notifying the author of  
the decision is a matter of seconds. And because we can all access  
submissions at the same time, we make most decisions quickly.

> Open electronic submissions can be debilitating, if one is not  
> careful.  MiPOesias allowed these for awhile; I became overwhelmed.   
> I had to get assistants, and what began as a labor of love became a  
> labor.  I found that many people did not read the magazine before  
> submitting.  I rec'd a range that included poetry I wouldn't look at  
> cross-eyed, even some cowboy poetry.  If many of the submitters had  
> read even two or three poets I was publishing at the time of open  
> submissions, it would have likely cut my submissions in half.


Amy's point above is true in our experience, too: some people who  
submit electronically obviously haven't read our archives. In our  
experience, though, the benefits of electronic subs far outweigh this  
one drawback. In our case, inappropriate submissions haven't been  
debilitating so much as slightly annoying.

Aside from submissions, we manage all of our internal documents (style  
guide, production schedule, etc) online as well using Google Docs. I'd  
recommend a similar setup for anyone doing an online publication.

By the way, we're a relatively new publication, and submissions are  
always welcome. You can check us out here:

http://linebreak.org

-----------------------------------------------------
Johnathon Williams
Co-editor and webmaster
http://linebreak.org
http://madething.org
me at johnathonwilliams.com