Simultaneous submissions: A horserace

It’s time someone attempted to explain the ethical horserace of simultaneous submitting.

I am a big believer in simultaneous submitting—that is, submitting the same work to multiple outlets at the same time. It’s the only reasonable way for a writer to operate in today’s publishing environment. Thirty years ago, a few dozen journals considered postal submissions from a much smaller pool of writers, but today, new journals are created all the time, and all typically receive thousands or even thousands of submissions per year.

It’s hard to swim to the top of a submission pile when dealing with those numbers. Response times are frequently slow, if responses are offered at all—more and more journals seem to be adopting the “no news is bad news” model of submission responses—and serial, rather than simultaneous, submissions could mean a lot of wait time.

But there are right ways and wrong ways to simultaneously submit, and there is a cardinal rule that ethical writers must follow: The first journal to accept a piece wins.

To a savvy submitter, this cardinal rule should suggest a few practices for sending out work. 

* First and foremost, aim high. The only practical place to start with a submission is the top. I guess the top varies from writer to writer, but when I invoke the term, I mean to reach up, over our own head. I’ve been in Poetry, which is an excellent journal and a publication I’m very proud of, so for me the top is higher than that—maybe The New Yorker, if the top is determined by the number of readers.

* Also, aim equally. It would be the height of folly to submit simultaneously to The New Yorker and a brand-new, unknown journal. Submitting should be a patient practice, governed by the idea that we’re trying to get each piece into the best possible journal, and for my money, that means the journal with the biggest readership. With all else being equal, I want my poems, stories, and essays to be widely read.

* Aim reasonably. When I was first starting to submit, it made sense to send the same work to, say, eight different journals. I made progress quickly; at first there were more rejections than acceptances, but then my success turned—with a few good credits in my bio, probably, but also with more experience and growth as a writer and submitter. I gradually lowered my simultaneous submission rates to six or four or three journals, and I must confess that these days, I’m pretty lucky with poetry submissions, and I no simultaneously submit in this genre. (Fiction, my weakest genre, is a different story—I still simultaneously submit those few stories I send out because these aren’t as readily accepted by journals.)

* Remember, it’s a horserace. If we submit to multiple journals, and we were careful to aim high and to target journals of similar prominence, we should be prepared to allow the first journal to accept our work to print it. This is one of the main reasons we submit to similarly tiered journals; in the example above, if The Podunk Journal accepts our work on Monday morning and Poetry accepts it on Monday night, we’re honor-bound to go with Podunk. That’s the journal that won the race. Acknowledgement of any acceptance should be immediate, and so should withdrawal from other journals. We must drop everything to take care of this crucial piece of business, mainly so that editors won’t waste time on unavailable work.

* Know the journals you submit to. It’s best to obtain or view a full issue, but most journals have sample contents online. A lot of precious time can be wasted by writers who send poems to fiction journals or traditional work to experimental journals. Investigating the market helps writers to submit respectfully.

* Thank an editor. Respect should be the name of the game when submitting. Editing a journal is hard work, and most of the time editors are either uncompensated or poorly paid. I definitely think the respect should go both ways, and I have a dim view of disrespectful correspondence from editors. But both parties have to make an effort to achieve a positive atmosphere in publishing. No one wants an antagonistic relationship among people who operate within our field.

* Follow journal guidelines to a T. A journal announces its rules and intentions, and writers should abide by them or avoid them. There are enough journals that we don’t have to submit to journals whose policies we dislike. This is especially true for simultaneous submissions. Some old-guard journals don’t allow simulsubs, and that’s their prerogative, to an extent. (They don’t actually have a right to tell writers what to do with their work, but it’s the principle of the thing. There’s no reason to send to a journal with policies we don’t like.)

Beyond all of these rules and best practices, the most important part of submitting is the writing part. One reason I gave up simultaneous submissions for poetry is that it prompted me to finish and refine more work and to keep my creativity going.

Submitting should be a deliberate and thoughtful process, but it’s not a writer’s main job. When publishing is our primary focus, our writing suffers, and we become something other than an artist.

Writers write. And then, in their non-writing time, they work to find an audience—the largest and best one they can.

Why I Don't Simultaneously Submit

           Yesterday’s post introduced the topic of simultaneous submissions—the only sensible option for maximizing one’s audience. Today, though, I have to come clean—I typically avoid simultaneous submissions.

            Truth is, my workplace doesn’t care about publications. (As an instructor instead of a professor, teaching, not research, is my focus.) I have no outside push to publish, although I love to do so; the poems can make their public debuts on their own time.

            What’s more, when a poem is saying something that I feel deeply, I find a certain amount of satisfaction from just posting it to social media—Facebook, in particular, with its limited distribution—or from including it in a blog post here. When I’m communicating something essential to me—to my thinking, my spirit—I just go ahead and find an audience. (An important caveat from this long-time editor: A poem included in a blog post isn’t unpublished, and most journals do not accept previously published work.)

            But communication should be two-sided, and you won’t find my poems wrapped up in little ribbons in a trunk when I’m dead. I’m sticking them in the faces of readers whenever I want to, because for me, poems are both art and expression.

            I do like to publish my work in journals, though, in order to find different audiences, and more neutral ones—I daresay my friends sort of like me and have an interest in hearing what I have to say. The particularly accomplished poems, the ones I consider my strongest work, I reserve for journal and eventual book publication.

            Some journals offer lightning-quick responses—within a day, even. But there are plenty that take months or even a year to respond. Simultaneous submissions prod slow mags into faster responses, and they make good use of writers’ time. Simulsubs are also the industry standard, so they are expected by editors—they don’t even surprise those editors who announce a no-simulsub policy that writers violate, although I think that’s a pretty impolite thing to do.

            My submissions that are at magazines right now are, for the most part, simultaneously offered to three or four magazines, but my norm is not to simultaneously submit at all. I have been having very good luck with my submissions, and I find withdrawing inconvenient, so I like to try my luck one at a time.

            By not simultaneously submitting, I avoid a pitfalls that most active publishers encounter—the acceptance of a piece that we thought we had withdrawn, the sudden realization that work we submitted is previously published, or confusion about release dates for pieces that are being published in two forums, one of which allows previously published work (e.g., a journal and an anthology). The simultaneous submitter must keep meticulous records and communicate quickly and clearly to editors as the need arises. I am not a great record-keeper, so tracking submissions is a challenge for me.

            The most important reason that I avoid simultaneously submitting is that I am forced to write more poems to keep several submissions in the hopper at any given time. Quite simply, I have found that a single-submission practice results in the composition of more poems. If I have part of a submission packet ready to go, I’m likely to revise some work to complete the grouping, or even to write a new poem. A week of earnest work can result in a submission packet’s worth of work, provided I’ve come up with a few good poems in that time.

            I do not write a packet of poems in a week and send it out on Saturday, of course—I’m always writing, and two or three good submission packets may well present themselves at the end of the month. I usually get submissions together every month or two, so there is plenty to choose from (and rejections are always streaming in to pad those packets further!).

            It’s nice not to have to publish for any outside reviewer or evaluation team. Maximizing one’s writing career suggests that simultaneous submissions are absolutely the way to go. Personally, though, I like prodding myself to write more and more and more, if only to make up for the years when I did no writing at all. Avoiding simultaneous submissions won’t make me a household name, but it is a personal strategy that works quite well for the artist in me.

Finding Your Audience: Simultaneous Submissions

            Don’t let anyone tell you differently—in an effort to get your work in front of its audience, you should be simultaneously submitting to literary journals.

            A few literary journal dinosaurs don’t allow simultaneous submissions, and of course their policies should be observed. But maybe it makes more sense to avoid this handful of magazines and to send work instead to those journals that understand the simple fact that until you have their contract in hand, they don’t have the right to tell you what you can or cannot do with your poems or prose.

            The key to making simultaneous submissions work is rigid adherence to ethical behavior. I’ll spell out the unofficial rules of the game:

·      You should target the appropriate number of journals. A beginning writer may shoot for a dozen magazines. A famous name who publishes frequently may not want to simultaneously submit at all. A writer on the spectrum between these two extremes should target appropriately. I’m publishing here and there on a fairly regular basis, so I typically send work to one to three journals at a time. (Actually, not simultaneously submitting is often my choice—it forces me to write more.)

·      Work should be targeted toward journals with similar levels of prestige. It wouldn’t make sense to simultaneously submit to, say, The New Yorker and The Podunk Review.

·      If work is accepted by a journal, you need to withdraw it from other magazines politely and, most importantly, immediately. Don’t let the sun set on this important task; you need to withdraw right away.

·      The first magazine to respond to your work wins. It is the only ethical way to operate. I’ve known writers to try to leverage one acceptance against another, and I can’t think of any worse way to behave. Mind you, this means that if Podunk replies with a “yes” at 5 p.m. and The New Yorker replies with a “yes” for the same work at 5:15 p.m., you’re obligated to go with Podunk. And to receive payment in copies. And to have fifteen readers, total. Refer to the second bullet point to understand where you went wrong.

As long as writers operate with respect for editors’ time and effort, there is no reason to even think twice. Simulsubs pose no ethical dilemma.

            Sometimes people wonder what to tell editors when they need to withdraw a submission. Is an apology in order? And what kind of reaction can one expect? If we’ve followed the editorial guidelines and not submitted to journals that explicitly disallow the practice, a simple request to withdraw a single piece from a packet is sufficient, and conventions of common courtesy suggest that this request be positioned within a polite, formal note. Here’s what I usually say:

            Dear [Name of Editor],

            Please withdraw “Awesome Poem” from my February submission packet. I thank you for your attention to the other pieces there.

            Best,

            The One That Got Away Karen

Since I’ve done nothing wrong, there is no need for an apology, and if the editor is crushed by disappointment because she was just about to snatch up that piece (I have a rich fantasy life), the “thank you” goes a long way toward making things better.

            Mistakes happen, of course. Sometimes we misread or fail to check guidelines in a submission frenzy, and it turns out that a journal we have submitted to does not welcome simultaneous submissions. If we have to withdraw from a magazine that does not allow simultaneous submissions, a very large apology seems to be called for. We have, after all, prevailed upon somebody who welcomed us in with a simple request that we abide by a single rule. It’s not something we would do in our everyday lives; we wouldn’t take a covered dish of our famous meatloaf to a vegan shut-in. Even if we love beef, we understand that our friend lives by a different code, and because we value that friend, we abide by the code.

            Even so, work that is not contracted belongs to no one but the writer. Our poems and prose are ours to do with whatever we wish, and even when we err and must proffer a withdrawal, there is absolutely no need to explain our reasoning. Perhaps the best move is to send a note saying, “I must withdraw ‘Awesome Poem,’” or, if we’ve ignored the stated rules, “I apologize, but I must withdraw ‘Awesome Poem,’” end of story. It’s only right to own up to our errors, and it’s probably quite obvious how work became suddenly unavailable.

            Work needs an audience. Until it has one, it’s not quite finished. A writer owes it to herself, and to her art, to find the biggest or best possible audience for her work. Simultaneous submissions maximize our chances to find our readers, and we must find them.

Someone out there may be waiting to be changed.

Letter Writing, Jacques Van Bree