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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 2,200 editors.

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: We get a lot of questions about how to count the words. We have a strict word limit of 100 words or less, including the title. We use Microsoft Word for the official word count, which treats hyphenated words as one word. So the easiest thing would be to plunk your entry into Word right before submitting it to determine the accurate word count. Just be sure to omit any other info such as your name or the date.

A: A cavalier or cutesy-clever cover letter is a sign that you don't take the journal or the process seriously, or that perhaps you're too cool for school. Give us the standard letter and then let the poems speak for themselves.

A: Please no machine translations, no political or religious poetry.

A: That our magazine's theme is exclusively about practical witchcraft and that their submission that does not center around this theme will not be a good fit; and the other way around: choosing to submit material centering around practical witchcraft and crafting it that way to increase their chances of acceptance for publication.
That we accept book reviews by our contributors, and not review books ourselves.

A: Not reading the submission guidelines. We are open to a lot — but not everything!

A: Sometimes submitters think we’ll figure out what their point is. Their work is too vague, elliptical or unfocused. Sometimes writers will submit unedited work, hoping we’ll do the magic for them. We won’t. We are strong believers in the revision and editing process. We expect our writers to honor all aspects of the writing process if they want to get to the final step of publication.

Margaret R. Sáraco and Mary Brancaccio, Poetry Editors of Platform Review, 04 March 2024

A: Usually submitters will not submit the requested number of pieces (three, or one, or whatever it is!)— or say they are submitting three pieces, and only one will be in the document submitted. Other common omissions include leaving out other element of the submission (author bio, poetry prompt, etc).

A: it is often that submitters think the process of selection or rejection is straightforward and can be done in, say, 1 month. Saying yes or no to a work is not an easy decision to come too, not especially when there are many submissions per submission cycle. Each work goes through a layered process of review so that the final selections happen to share a bond with each other. This is how issues are generated. And like the cliche goes, rejections are not judgments.

A: Despite having 2 questions that submitters have to tick stating they understand our word limits and that they are submitting to a humour site, a depressing number of people send us sc-fi, gore, straight literary fiction, fantasy etc, often over or under the word limits.

Doug Jacquier, Editor of Witcraft, 28 February 2024

A: We don’t receive too many things that feel outright wrong. One thing that makes for a quick rejection is clarity. If the piece is riddled with errors or lacks the horse sense of good writing, we are quick to pass. Similarly, if a piece doesn’t share our mission, at least in some small way, it probably isn’t for us.

A: Most people do it just fine. Sometimes someone will query without describing the book at all and without attaching the manuscript: "I've written a mystery novel, would you like to read it?" I don't know, maybe? Probably not (just statistically, the odds are that any given submission will be one of our 999+ nos in a given year, not our one and only yes), but maybe? Don't email asking if you can send a submission -- just send the submission. And describe the book briefly in the cover letter so that I can quickly let you know if what you're submitting has any chance of being right for our line. (No reason you should have to wait weeks or months for a response you could have gotten in minutes if you'd just described the book up front. It's painful to get a no, but if you're going to, better to get it right away than have to wait weeks before getting it.)

A: 1) You are NOT an emerging writer (have 2 or more full length books)
and/or
2) You submit less than 3 poems for general issues or submit poems that don't fit the theme for theme issues.