Fair Submissions

You are probably all familiar with the site we run about fair submissions: https://www.fairsubmissions.co.uk/ The site is fully searchable and browsable. Currently there are over 800 opportunities on there – and that is after the 30 November cull:  twenty-two opportunities ran out on 30 November.

We define “fair” as:

·         Being a reasonable price or free to enter

·         That there is the opportunity of publication with royalties or a fee, of prize money, of excellent exposure or of just great fun. Note that there are only a very few of the latter two. Most of the time it’s about earning.

We’re taking less notice of how long response time is and whether they allow simultaneous submissions.

A publisher’s perspective

I can understand why some publishers are not too keen on simultaneous submissions. It can be very annoying when I’ve taken quite a while to read several submissions to CafeLit and    scheduled one for publication only to be told by the writer that they’ve had the piece accepted elsewhere.  We reckon to reply about a CafeLit submission in under a month but sometimes we take a little bit longer and often a lot less time. In any case, we expect you to let us know if your work gets taken up by another publisher before we get back to you.  

A writer’s perspective

Many publishers say how long they will take. If I’ve not heard back from them within that period of time, I assume I’m not going to and I submit elsewhere. I feel a little miffed that some publishers are telling me I can’t submit to someone else if I’ve submitted to them. I feel it’s my work and I should be able to do what I like with it. However for the sake of my own sanity and a little out of regard for other publishers I tend to only submit to one place at once.

If they don’t say how long they’re going to take, I assume three months. This all seems to work and so far there have been no problems.