Since we re-opened to submission last October, we’ve accepted slightly more than 1% of the stories sent to us. We only get a few hundred submissions a month so that means we’ve accepted about 15 stories over the past six months. It isn’t a ton of stories like the pro markets see, but it’s more than enough to keep us busy.
For example, our intrepid editor is some 125 stories behind on getting through recommended stories from our readers. While a story that doesn’t meet our standards is fairly quick to get through, a recommended story requires—and deserves—more time and attention.
Where this gets difficult is when there are seemingly more projects than time. While our editor really wants to get to submission reading, he’s working on the Glitter & Mayhem anthology which is due to the publisher in less than a week. There’s also two books he’s working on for Cheeky Frawg that are due about the same time. Oh, and he’s working on some freelance editing, some writing, and the new issue of some magazine called Electric Velocipede.
The point is, to help him out we’re closing the submission system at the end of the month. All undecided submissions will remain in the system until we get to them, but no new submissions will come in. We hate doing this, but we need to in order to get caught back up. Our oldest submissions are from December, and that’s too long to hold on to a short fiction submission.
We shouldn’t be closed for more than a month and then we’ll get right back into the swing of things. In the meantime, you’ll have a few new issues of Electric Velocipede coming shortly!