Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Making the Cut.

Below is an email from an editor regarding a submission whose status I'd been wondering about for a while. My reply comes after it. I don't feel the need to provide commentary on this one because if you get the field in which I toil, you will know that this is a positive email:


Christopher,
My apologies for taking so long to get back to you with a response to your submission ‘The Gipper Memorandum’ intended for consideration for our upcoming Dark Visions anthology.
I want to personally thank you for making our call for author submissions an overwhelming success. With your help, we received a literal avalanche of quality fiction. But with the large number of submissions, comes an extended review process; and I appreciate your continued patience throughout.

I’d like to share with you some insights into our process. Our Acquisitions Team is conducting a two-step approach wherein all submissions are carefully reviewed by each member of the team. A small number of these submissions will then move into Phase 2, or what we call Second Review. Acceptance to Second Review is based on how the piece is rated by our editors on several variables. We estimate that only 20% of all manuscripts move on for Second Review.

We’ve reviewed your manuscript, enjoyed the read and the level of creativity that is very apparent in your work. As a result, I’m happy to let you know that ‘The Gipper Memorandum’ has moved into Second Review due to the fact that it was a favorite of one or more members of the review team. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘The Gipper Memorandum’ will ultimately be accepted for Dark Visions, but I can tell you it is far closer to that point since moving to Second Review.
It’s our goal to respect you, the author, and keep you abreast of all developments throughout our process. While this update may not have been exactly what you were looking for at this point, we hope that our efforts to keep you involved will be appreciated. We honestly believe that publishing quality fiction requires a team whose members work together with as much transparency as possible. And it’s our intention to create a publishing house where the author is a valued member of the team and one who is involved along the way, with the ultimate goal being to produce truly exceptional results.
The submission deadline for Dark Visions is 12/21/12. And, to be fair to all submitting authors, we’d like to hold off on any final decisions until after that date. In addition, it’s possible that Dark Visions could be a multi-volume release, the number of which is yet to be determined. For these reasons, I’m hoping that waiting on a final decision on your piece until shortly after the closing deadline will be alright with you. I don’t want to keep you waiting any longer than you already have, but hope you understand.

One thing I’d also ask (if it’s not too much of a problem), if you happened to have submitted this piece to another market and it is (or has been) accepted by that market prior to you hearing back from me, could you do me a favor and let me know? This would be greatly appreciated and will really help us out moving forward.
Also, if you do the Social Media thing, I encourage you to either Follow us on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/greymatterpress) and/or Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/GreyMatterPress) to ensure you get general updates on all current and upcoming anthologies. We often post information for submitting authors that you might find helpful.

Speaking for everyone here at Grey Matter, I want to thank you very much for sharing your work with us. And if you have any questions or concerns as we near the end of this process, please feel free to reach out to me. I am more than willing to either answer your questions, or get you the help you need.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Tony
 
 
Tony,
Thanks so much for the update. This is not a process that is foreign to me and I appreciate the fact that I made it into second review. This piece has not been submitted elsewhere.
Regards,
Christopher Nadeau

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