To Magazine Editors

For those not invested in the business of literary journals, please forgive the momentary departure from the more typical personal essay format of this blog. I assure you, I’ll be back to more regular programming in my next post.

Think of this as an open letter/conversation starter/short rant. I’d like to preface it all with a note that I don’t intend this post as passive-aggressive, but rather as edifying for editors (as well as submitters). Rest assured, this post is not meant to target anyone in particular. The complaints, implicit or explicit, are based not in any singular, but rather multiple experiences. I’ve opted not to name any specific, real-life names, good or bad, as a professional courtesy, and because I know there’s always the possibility I happened to catch an editor on a bad day and run into an aberration rather than a habitual practice.

Another note--I can sympathize with the role of the editor. While I've never been the shot-caller at a literary journal, I was the managing editor of one for a year, and have served as a contributing editor for another over a year now.

I’ve submitted to literary journals a lot over the last couple years and I’ve had the honor to have work accepted by a range of venues--a few fairly well-known, well-established journals; some fledgling online-only ones. I tend to tier off my work and submit to publications that seem appropriate for how I evaluate each individual piece. I know that strategy isn’t for everyone, but it’s worked for me and the volume and types of work I’ve been writing.

When it comes to whom to submit to and whom to publish with, most of the onus is on the writer to do her/his homework about what she/he is getting into. For example, I have had some work published online in a format that I did not find very aesthetically pleasing. The responsibility for that result is at least equally, and probably more so on me than any editor, because I looked at previous publications and accepted the journal’s aesthetic (or rolled the dice and trusted my work to an inaugural issue).

I do, however, feel compelled to pose this humble list of six (in no way exhaustive) best practices for editors of literary journals:

1) Promote the work. We live in an era in which social media has made a lot of promotion literally free of charge. I get that time constraints and social media savvy vary, but a minimum of posting to Facebook or Twitter and sending a message to let an email list know that a new issue has gone live seems fair.

Options for going above and beyond--the kinds of things that make a writer really appreciate and feel appreciated by an editor--include: making individual social media posts related to the individual piece by an author; re-tweeting an author’s other work that has no direct connection to the journal to support the author on the whole; offering to post an interview with the author on your website; inviting the author to do a reading. Not all of these options are reasonable or realistic to expect of every journal, but trust me when I say that authors do remember when they happen, and the journals that go that extra miles are the first ones that I’ll throw subscription dollars to, refer my friends to, or help to promote the later issues of that I’m not directly associated with.

2) Let the author see proofs before a piece goes live. It’s my finding that old school, primarily print magazines tend to be better about this, probably because there’s no easy way to retroactively fix a printed magazine. Just the same, giving authors a look--with a tight deadline--can spare headaches and embarrassment later. As the author, it was my responsibility to proofread my work before I sent it in (and I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been guilty of not doing so carefully enough on occasion), but if there are errors related to formatting, or line-level edits by the editor, or the editor opting to use a different name than the one the author submitted under (if I submit as “Michael Chin” please don’t make the choice to us a “Mike Chin” by-line instead), that’s on the journal. I get that giving writers rubber-stamp privileges can prolong the process, but I think a tight deadline (especially for online publications) along the lines of forty-eight hours to review the draft before it goes live is fair to both sides.

3) Be honest about the timeline for publication and keep writers posted. Here’s the thing--if you have no idea about when you’re going to publish my work, that’s actually fine with me. The trouble comes in when an editor:

a) offers a specific publication date,
b) doesn’t live up to it, and
c) lets significant time pass without any communication.

I don’t think I’m alone among writers who compulsively check a website if we have reason to believe our work is about to go live. Delays will happen, and if an issue comes out a few days--even a week or two--late, that’s understandable, and a part of life. I remember, however, meeting an editor at AWP, thanking him for accepting my work, and then being told it should be out “any day now.” It took over three months for it to actually happen, with absolutely no communication in the interim. I completely understand that not everyone can be as timely or as on top of email as they (or apparently I) would like, but it’s a great show of respect to the writer for an editor to be as open and honest as possible to the extent that they know timelines.

4) Contact the author first, then publish. Maybe I’m mistaken, but from personal experience and from my sphere, most writers submit most pieces simultaneously, unless they’ve submitted somewhere that explicitly disallows it. If an editor is excited enough about a piece to want to publish it, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for an editor to contact a writer to let them know they’re accepting a piece before publishing it. I have had multiple instances of receiving an acceptance email that included a link to my piece, already live on the journal’s website. As a professional courtesy, I’m very principled about withdrawing simultaneous submissions the same day I get an acceptance, or as soon as possible if I’m traveling. While I doubt most editors are looking this closely into it, I do feel it looks poorly to withdraw a work after its already been published somewhere else. Besides that, it sends a message to me the journal that published without even waiting for the writer to agree to any terms doesn’t really have its act together in terms of having terms, and, in a sense, views the work as simultaneously good and disposable, to cavalierly throw it up on a website before notifying the author.

5) Send rejections. This is a strange one, and I’d actually be very interested in hearing counter-arguments from those with more wisdom than me. I struggle to understand why it’s too onerous for some journals to send a form rejection if you’re not accepting work. Mind you, I appreciate those that are at least forthcoming that that’s their practice. Moreover, I completely understand not sending personalized feedback to the overwhelming majority of submissions--that’s time consuming and, frankly, sometimes the author’s work might not deserve it. But a form rejection? If The New Yorker and Tin House have time to send them, I struggle to understand why anyone else can’t.

6) Don’t put weird provisos at the end of submission guidelines. Maybe this is just me, and this just grinds my gears because I submit a lot. But if you’re going to have an unusual, restrictive guideline such as a demographic restriction in terms of who can submit to a particular issue, or require an unusually large reading fee, that information really ought to be foregrounded. Again, maybe just my personal axe to grind, but there’s a special place in literary hell reserved for journals that tag onto the end of lengthy guidelines that, oh yeah, they don’t accept simultaneous submissions.