Editor Interviews
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Read all the editors' answers to Duotrope's interview question: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process? Learn more.
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Here is a small sampling from our recent Editor Interviews. We have interviewed over 2,300 editors.
Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?
A: Not reading the submission guidelines. It makes everything easier if you submit in the correct format, and following the correct rules.
A: Do not exceed haiku and haiga number of submission restrictions, 5 haiku, 2 haiga only. Read the guidelines fully to understand what we are looking for. Take part in the group THE DAILY HAIKU and seek mentoring from other members too and post work for discussion.
A: Not being on theme, or being insufficiently themed. If the themed element can be removed or changed in your story, it's not strong enough! The theme needs to be integral to the story.
A: Submitting fiction...
A: My magazine is based in Europe and I do get a lot of pieces from the States, but I need to be careful that the magazine does not become too US-centric or leans more towards an American perspective. I need it to feel universal. If you can make the setting somewhat non-specific, that helps enormously. Also, I am after quirky and slightly bizarre anthophilic tales, be they fiction or non-fiction. For example, telling me about your hunt for wildflowers in Colorado with your dog (albeit beautifully written), might work for an editor in Colorado but it isn’t going to be suitable for me on many different levels. However, telling me a true story about an eccentric Englishman in the 1900s who got lost in Colorado hunting for wildflowers, and his dog returned (who might have eaten him), is different! That’s the story I want to publish.
A: Submitting when we are closed to submissions. Not understanding the press and its cohort.
A: Forgetting that we only publish civics-themed books.
A: We're a new publication, so I've yet to see submitters getting anything consistently "wrong." But please read our guidelines before submitting.
A: There is no right or wrong, as long as the poem fits on one page.
A: They don't get our vibe. They send in works that are just so not a Folly story. Or really long pieces. Basically, they haven't done their research. Also, we don't publish erotica. There is a difference between sexy stories and erotica.
A: Sometimes we’ll get submissions that feel like the same packet is being sent to a ton of different journals without regard for what the journal has previously published. We’re more drawn to a submission if it’s clear that the submitter has read previous work we’ve published and has connected to it in some way.
Frozen Sea is not exclusively a queer journal — sometimes submitters think that we only publish queer contributors, but that’s not the case: while we do have a preference for spotlighting the work of queer writers, we only ask that contributors treat being published in a queer-affiliated journal with respect.
A: We publish a handful of prose poems. Sending just one prose poem, or sending other kinds of poetry are the most common errors.