[New-Poetry] Submissions (not necessarily electronic)

Fri Mar 28 19:36:33 EST 2008

I was editor of a print magazine for five years (Porch) and am editor of The
Salt River Review (now in its 11th year) and in both cases I have been the
sole arbiter of what gets selected - fiction editors have the same autonomy,
as do guest editors.  I don't believe in selection by committee because,
frankly, the resulting content has that selection by committee feel.  The
results of sole and exclusive editorship can, of course, be considered
eccentric or arbitrary.  But, I've had no complaints, and compliments often
include the word "eclectic."
Continuation of response in a post responding to Tad Richard's post today,
"Electronic Submissions."

- Jim

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 3:58 PM, <millb at aol.com> wrote:

> Greetings--
>
> I was involved as an editor twice.
>
> The first situation was quite awhile ago on a small journal called (at the
> time) Contact.  We'd receive poems and each editor was responsible for one
> (for lack of a better word) pile of submissions.  I'd read through my pile
> and select a few favorites that I would then (for lack of a better word)
> fight for at our semi-monthly meetings.  At the time we had an academic
> advisor who also had a vote (but more like 2 votes).  Kind of a
> representational democracy.
>
> The other time, I will not mention the publication. But, same thing,
> academic.  As an editor, I received piles of poems.  Again we sat around and
> discussed "maybes" and "strong possibilities." But the similarities ended
> there.  Between the prize winners, the solicited mss, the former students,
> the faculty and the famous names, at the end of the editing meeting, we were
> lucky if there was room for one or two poems from the slush pile.
>
> Mill
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org>
> Sent: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 3:32 pm
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Electronic Submissions
>
> I wonder if the carloads of irrelevant submissions are any worse for
> online journals than print journals. The major print journals generally say
> that they accept -- what? one to three percent of what's submitted to them.
> Or less. Georgia Review, for example, says it accepts less than one half of
> one percent. North American Review says it gets more than 10.000submissions a year. If you put those two figures together, which is
> reasonable, you get a magazine receiving over 10,000 poems a year and
> accepting maybe 50. So there has to be a lot of inappropriate stuff..
>
> I wonder how much more of a breakdown one could get. You're reading an
> average of 200 poems a week. Out of those, how many make the first cut? How
> many receive more than the "less than then seconds" that most of the
> visitors to my blog give me? I'm guessing the cowboy poetry, etc., that Amy
> got would need no more than that -- and even that is a lot, given that
> editing a poetry magazine is basically a labor of love, and rarely a full
> time job. So of the 200 a week that you're reading, out of which you'll be
> selecting one, how many do you look at for more than a few seconds? Ten?
> Twenty? Fifty? If Vince Gotera sends you a little note along with your
> rejection slip, the rejection slip means you're one out of 199 for that
> week. The note means you're one out of...50? 20? 10?
>
> Here are some arbitrary numbers, for which I'd be delighted if someone
> would plug in some more accurate numbers.
>
> In a given week
>
> Received: 200.
>
> Scanned for less than ten seconds: 150.
>
> Read all the way through once: 50
>
> Read all the way through twice: 10.
>
> Kept in the "strong maybe" pile: 5.
>
> What am I trying to prove here? I have absolutely no idea. The point I
> started out trying to make was that it's probably just as bad for snail
> submission mags as it is for e-submission mags. But I digressed somewhere
> along the way. .
>
> Johnathon Williams wrote:
> > 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
>
> -- Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
> The moral is this: in American verse,
> The better you are, the pay is worse.
>  --Corey Ford
>
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