Analog Submissions

Should I risk a query to Analog?

Alternatively should I be sending for the men in white coats?

Their webpage says:

Our average response time runs about two to three months. If you have not heard from us in four months, you can query us about the submission at [email protected].

... so I'd give it a couple more days and then query. No need for the white coats.

One thing I do is save all submission replies (confirmations and rejects/acceptances/holds) in a separate email folder (This is the extent of my email organization. Everything else is in my inbox. Someday... )
This makes it easy to go back and see if I ever got an email confirmation from a particular publisher and helps preserve my false sense of sanity.

Thanks Aaron. Yes, I try to save acknowledgements now but I'm afraid I don't manage it consistently. Instead I send another submission in order to get admission to the database and check how the previous one's progressing. This is why I find it hard to believe I made two consecutive imaginary submissions.

Anyhow, I decided there's no need to wait four months to query a submission that they say I never made anyway, so I've sent off a query today.

Of course my queries are sometimes even more likely to disappear than my submissions. I'm currently on my second unanswered query to IGMS.

Meanwhile Asimov's have stopped emailing me the results of my submissions at all, so I only learn them when I check their database.

I feel like one of those fantasy characters who's ever so slowly becoming invisible and inaudible.

I'm currently on my second unanswered query to IGMS.

That makes me feel far less hopeful about the fact that I've had a story there for almost two months.

I don't think it should. Mine is pretty nearly off the scale - 173 days and first queried in early December. Two months is just nicely beyond about 80% of all rejections.

I have just now discovered that F&SF have also done an Asimov's. Checking their database I find a story that was ostensibly 39 days out also has rejected status.

I haven't changed anything on my system to the best of my knowledge. Nevertheless this is becoming annoying.

Mine is pretty nearly off the scale - 173 days and first queried in early December.

That is definitely a long time to be waiting from them! I hope they get back to you soon.

Analog responded to my query, stating that I had in fact made the submissions, one was rejected and one was still under consideration. It appears database maintenance can be less than perfect.

I've sent a third query to IGMS, in the hope that my previous ones had not been sent from the email address that matched the story. According to The Grinder there have been longer waits, but I'm afraid that pretty regularly when I get my hopes up it turns out to be just a comms failure.

I've given up IGMS altogether. Whenever I try to submit to them they're supposed to send me an email, and supposedly they do send it, but I never receive these emails.

I've given up IGMS altogether. Whenever I try to submit to them they're supposed to send me an email, and supposedly they do send it, but I never receive these emails.

Maybe they end up in your spam folder for some reason?

I've given up IGMS altogether. Whenever I try to submit to them they're supposed to send me an email, and supposedly they do send it, but I never receive these emails.

Maybe they end up in your spam folder for some reason?

No, I always check my spam folder. They just vanish into thin air. And I have tried other email addresses with the same result.
Anyway, sooner or later I'll give them another try, but they were never high in my list of markets-to-submit-to anyway.