Comments on: Slush

By: Ujjwal Dey

Ujjwal Dey — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:30:56 +0000

Hi Gordon ,

I was wondering if I made it into your slush pile.

I of course don’t know because I didn’t include a SASE – it is difficult and expensive to get US postage from here in India.

You could just post a comment here if you got time (and pity)

Hope the story entertained you if not interest you into publishing it.

Best Regards,
Ujjwal Dey
Bomb-aye, INDIA.

By: Jim Aikin

Jim Aikin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:24:28 +0000

My guess is that that pile is perhaps just a tiny bit less intimidating than it looks. Not to say that Gordon isn’t doing yeoman work, because he is! But based on my limited experience (in critique groups and as an editor of a nonfiction magazine, for instance), I’d hazard that close to 90% of the stories in that stack can safely be rejected after reading the first page.

It’s the final 10%, I would imagine, that take up 90% of the time.

If there are 40 envelopes in that stack, it’s 20 per business day times 22 days per month — perhaps 500 manuscripts in all. Of which about 50 will need to be read and evaluated carefully, with the goal of purchasing no more than eight of them. That’s bound to be a protracted and painful process. The necessity of choosing the keepers and rejecting 42 other good stories would, I’m pretty sure, make me stone crazy.

–Jim Aikin

By: Gordon Van Gelder

Gordon Van Gelder — Sun, 18 May 2008 14:38:34 +0000

It was a random two days’ worth, and the pile is pretty typical for two days.

It would be a shame if anyone was dissuaded from submitting by seeing that pile. My whole point in insisting on hard-copy submissions (as I’ve said many times) is so that we *can* evaluate all the submissions as well as possible. And we’ve certainly found new contributors in there, and hope to do so again soon.

By: Daniel B

Daniel B — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:20:04 +0000

Wow. I think mine may well be in that pile somewhere…kind of daunting when you actually see it.

I wonder if that’s a normal 2 days worth, or if he took the picture due to the unusually high volume…

By: John Beety

John Beety — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:01:12 +0000

I wonder how many would-be submittters you just intimidated with that photograph.

By: Grant Stone

Grant Stone — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:59:01 +0000

My first thought was “doesn’t seem that much”, but then I realized that’s just TWO DAYS! Wow.

You do realise people are going to start sending you submissions in bright pink envelopes now, just in case you take another photo?

Grant

By: Chris McKitterick

Chris McKitterick — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:07:54 +0000

Wow! Y’know, we hear about the volume of slush submissions that editors have to deal with, but somehow seeing this makes it all seem more real.

Have fun! *g*

Chris