Question about the Submission Grind

I've never withdrawn something, but I have been 'lucky' - most of my rejections come back in the expected time window 😉

In seriousness though, I would give it a query in the window they say to query, if they do state that, then if I still didn't hear in the 2 week to 4 week range I'd give another query followup referencing the first query. If nothing at that point I would withdraw, if I had another market open I wanted to submit to.

I don't know that the above is reasonable but I also try to remember that most of these places are not some fulltime operation, they're usually one part-time editor and a whole lot of volunteers or very, very part time others on whom the main part-time person who has another job relies on. 

Unless we're talking small presses where they truly have fulltime people. I would expect quicker/more professional turn around from them.

You'd be surprised at how many markets just don't respond at all. Usually the lower paying ones, though not all. I've found anthology publishers to be the worst. 

I usually query once it's gone past their lead time. If they don't respond then I query again. After that I mark it as a no response and send somewhere else. Usually give each query a couple of weeks. 

It's annoying though. You stick to their guidelines, the least they could do is afford you the same respect. 

@pdblake Yeah. I submitted to The Mantelpiece 183 days ago and queried them once. I also submitted to a SpeKulative Stories anthology about aliens and haven't heard back from them after two queries.

Posted by: @amstard

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@pdblake Yeah. I submitted to The Mantelpiece 183 days ago and queried them once. I also submitted to a SpeKulative Stories anthology about aliens and haven't heard back from them after two queries.

Had a similar response from the same anthology. They did reply to my first query and then nothing. I think they bit off more than they could chew and got swamped. I just moved on. 

Posted by: @amstard

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I also submitted to a SpeKulative Stories anthology about aliens and haven't heard back from them after two queries.

I've also submitted for this anthology and now queried (they said to query end of August but I thought I'd leave it a touch longer). I haven't got an alternative market in mind for my story so will leave it a bit longer before accepting that no news is not good news and moving now.

I appreciate the insights!

@pdblake I agree on never responders. I have three that I never heard back from.

I've been using Duotrope for a few years to track my submissions. 

I just tried to mark one submission as 'never responded' that's been out for 190 days and Duotrope put up an error and said I should wait 306 days.  I've not seen that recommendation before.

I realize I'm late responding to this, but hey, better late than never, right? 😆 The short answer is that this anthology has been canceled.

I submitted a story for Train Tales, the anthology taking place alongside Aliens Among Us. When I initially submitted, I was fortunate enough to chat with the founding editor Jason Marchi. He told me to reach out if I hadn't heard anything by October, so I followed up in November. Again, I was fortunate enough to receive a very detailed response where he told me the reasoning behind their decision. I don't feel like it would be appropriate to share the whole email but here's the mention about cancelling:

The plan to publish the next two SpeKulative Stories anthologies, Aliens Among Us and Train Tales, as large open-to-all-authors anthologies is canceled. We will issue these titles in the future in a different form with just a limited number of authors by invitation only.

The gist for their reasoning is due to the previous anthology, Automobilia, not selling the way it needed to in order to continue funding subsequent anthologies. They didn't even break even, which undermined their plans to proceed with these two anthologies.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

@jtwrites Thanks for the info.  I wonder why they don't just put the cancellation on the page as a courtesy (without justification).  I submitted as well but haven't worried since it was a low-priority story I'm ready to put out to pasture.  The past few months I have been watching rejections slowly drip in with curiosity.  Will mark mine as a Never Responded.

@jtwrites That's very helpful. Thank you!

Coming back to just general submissions, I've let stories sit for a long time. My longest time to acceptance has been 298 days, and my shortest 2 days, but I've had some holds turn to rejections after over a year. One time, a hold turned to a rejection when the market died--that story was held after about 100 days, then the market died a thousand days later, with my story still on hold. But I was content to let it sit at the time, as I was churning through other stories by then, and regarded it as a kind of older, left-over trunk story.

(I was probably wrong, as I later revised it for WotF, and it then sold to Abyss & Apex. But that's a whole other discussion.)

I've never withdrawn a sub purely because of its long time with a specific market, but I have withdrawn stories a few times for other reasons.

- Withdrew one from a market that became associated with the Sad Puppies movement, after which I no longer would have accepted a publication there
- Withdrew another from a market after I learned that the editors were dealing with something painful that the story was too close to, subject-wise
- Withdrew one more, very recently, before it reached the slush-reading submission stage, when I decided I wanted to revise it and make a longer story out of it, rather than allow it to be published in that form

However, once a story has reached the stage of being reviewed or held, I won't withdraw it from a market, even if I otherwise might have. The exception being, just as in that first case, where something has changed or been revealed, leaving me with any kind of objection to the market that means I'll no longer accept a publication. I will, sometimes, mark stories as no response and then just continue on--you need to sometimes, with markets that rarely or never respond to their submissions--but that's more a case of marking a story as an implied rejection than anything I'd consider to be an actual withdrawal.