Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.
A: Quality entertainment
Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?
A: Comma Press is one publisher that do a lot of great work with short stories. Their 'Reading the City' series is a great way to travel. Galley Beggar do a wonderful job of openly discussing the challenges of publishing.
Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?
A: I try to read widely (as any editor or writer should do), and of course favourites change and evolve over time. I often come back to Scott Fitzgerald, for various reasons. James Hogg is interesting as a writer's writer - his work is full of problems, but at its best it's amazingly vivid. Come to think of it, both of them are authors of enormous raw talent, who produced some amazing work but didn't quite live up to their potential.
Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?
A: It's hard to say. I'm not really aware of another publication that has the same balance of fiction that we do. If you're wondering what makes us different, it's probably best to pick up one of our anthologies and decide for yourself!
Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?
A: You know, the best answer to this question is always going to be the same, from any journal or anthology series: read us. Get a sense of what we publish, and it will be much easier to send in an appropriate story, or write something you think we'd like. Writers should always read *any* publication before submitting to it. Most don't bother, so it's an easy way to give yourself an advantage when you're looking for potential publishers for your work.
Q: Describe the ideal submission.
A: In terms of the submission, the writer has obviously read a little of what we've published before, and selected a story that complements those other stories without duplicating them.
In terms of the story itself, an ideal submission is one that I start reading and can't stop. When I finish, I completely believe what I've read, and later that day I find myself thinking about the characters as though they're people I've met.
Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?
A: Probably the most common mistake writers make is to send in stories that aren't like anything we publish, in tone or genre or style. It really is important to read a publication before submitting to it, but the majority of people who send in their work don't actually do that. Submitting to publications you haven't read is like playing pin the tail on the donkey; just pick up a back issue, and you can take the blindfold off!
Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?
A: Our submissions form has a space for an author biography, but a couple of lines is fine. It's good to know if there's anything in a writer's background that's relevant to the story. If there are previous publications, it's better to summarise and maybe mention a couple of highlights rather than list dozens of magazines. If there aren't previous publications, that's fine too: we've published plenty of debut stories over the years.
It's important to not to confuse an author bio with a list of previous publications - one tells a publisher (or readers) who you are and where you're coming from, while the other tells them where else they can find your work.
After that, if I want to find out more about a writer, in terms of their bio or previous publications, I'll look to see if they have a website.
Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?
A: Sometimes you can tell very quickly that a story isn't going to be well written, or that it's not right for you, but beginnings are also very difficult to get right, and you wouldn't want to throw out an otherwise good story just because the writer has stumbled at the start. (Before now we've made an offer on a story, minus its first or final paragraphs.) It's best to take it on a case-by-case basis, forgive a few technical problems at the beginning, but not spend too long on a story if it's clear that the problems are part of its DNA.
Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?
A: In the early days - we've been around for a while now - social media was fantastic for helping us to connect to readers and authors. These days I think the tide is going out on social media a little: Twitter was going downhill for years before it collapsed into X. Particularly in these days of AI, I think readers are looking for authenticity, and writers are starting to want to reclaim their time and attention from the diminishing returns of social media. Over the next couple of years it will be interesting to see how writers and publishers work together to reassert the importance of authenticity, ways of connecting to readers, and the creative process in general.
Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?
A: We go through an edit or two on the way to publication, using Track Changes to discuss possible tweaks to the text if necessary. It's collaborative and usually a lot of fun. Naturally the author gets final approval. It's their story, and their name on the story.