Is there an advantage to submitting early?

I would suspect that applies to the quarters but not within a quarter. ie if you want to submit a well done but standard trope (eg zombies) you stand better chance with an earlier quarter as by time later quarters come around if its a common trope they may already have selected a (zombie) story with that style.

On the other hand, within a quarter, they will compare all the stories and select the best, so if they don't yet have a zombie story from prior quarters, and yours happens to be good enough to be top 3, even if theres another zombie story, I don't think they have an advantage from submitting earlier in the quarter.

This is of course all complete conjecture, What do I know? Not much.

I found two advantages in submitting early.

1. Less stress. Fire and forget.

2. Your eligibility is determined on the day you submit. If you become ineligible later in the quarter, your submission still counts.

I wondered the same thing.  I imagine Jody getting that first story on her desk early in the quarter.  She strikes me as someone who really enjoys reading the stories.  It seems reasonable that she would eagerly devour those first stories, appreciating the luxury of time, compared to the end of the quarter when there is a huge "stack" of stories to read.  This could be an advantage for someone whose story starts off a little slower.  But, I also imagine that that story would remain in a stack of the golden 32 possibles until the very last story is received. 

Posted by: @abeona

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I wondered the same thing.  I imagine Jody getting that first story on her desk early in the quarter.  She strikes me as someone who really enjoys reading the stories.  It seems reasonable that she would eagerly devour those first stories, appreciating the luxury of time, compared to the end of the quarter when there is a huge "stack" of stories to read.  This could be an advantage for someone whose story starts off a little slower.  But, I also imagine that that story would remain in a stack of the golden 32 possibles until the very last story is received. 

The stories go to the slush team first, in big batches. And the first batch isn’t usually released until after the end of the quarter.

When there was a single slush reader, there was a high chance of reading in order. And yes, a chance of fatigue setting in.

Now that there’s a team, though, I’m not sure how they divide up the stories. I’m sure somebody still starts at the front, but who knows where the others start? So an early submission is PROBABLY an early read, but a late submission might also be an early read.

Posted by: @martin-l-shoemaker

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I found two advantages in submitting early.

1. Less stress. Fire and forget.

2. Your eligibility is determined on the day you submit. If you become ineligible later in the quarter, your submission still counts.

Agree with both of these. I did this last quarter to stop me fiddling. Unfortuantely it also means even if you have a thunderclap of inspiration meaning you know how you can make the story `10 x better you can't make those changes. This quarter I took the opposite approach and just fiddled with it endlessly. I'm not sure it was significantly better by the end. But it ws different  

So I think either can work, depending on your mindset. Definitely if close to pro-ing out early is the way to go. Unfortunately I am nowehere even close to that  

Posted by: @abeona

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I wondered the same thing.  I imagine Jody getting that first story on her desk early in the quarter.  She strikes me as someone who really enjoys reading the stories.  It seems reasonable that she would eagerly devour those first stories, appreciating the luxury of time, compared to the end of the quarter when there is a huge "stack" of stories to read.  This could be an advantage for someone whose story starts off a little slower.  But, I also imagine that that story would remain in a stack of the golden 32 possibles until the very last story is received. 

I see Martin has already more knowledgeably answered this - my first thought on it however was that the above also supoposes that the only job Jody has is WotF, which is not true. She writes her own stuff, does interviews etc, so her work schedule doesn't necessarily follow exactly on WotF. She is likely busy all the time, not sitting around with 'bags of time' between quarters, and I'm quite certain the same goes for the slush readers. 

I think the end lesson I take from all this is... don't overthink it, there's too many unknown variables, submit when you feel ready.  

If you submitting early then it reduced stress. Set it and forget it. Your qualification is assessed at the time of submission. Even if you lose eligibility later in the quarter, your submission remains valid.