Do I Really Have To Follow Submission Guidelines?
We realize we have rather unique submission guidelines, you might even call them silly. We ask that someone submitting to our publication including the following sentence in their submission,
“I hate it when people spam submissions without even checking to see what kind of writing the publication is looking for. I didn’t do that. I looked over your writing, and I reviewed (or am familiar with) ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, and ‘The Trolley Problem’ and am sure this is the style of writing you are looking for.”
We do this for a few reasons. First, we do this based on the Van Halen theory. Van Halen had a clause in their contracts that said they should have M&M’s in their dressing room, but that there be no brown M&M’s included. They actually didn’t care about the M&M’s at all, what they wanted to know (or so I’m told) is that you actually took the time to read the contract. If you didn’t read the contract, how the in the world could you be trusted to do the reasonable things it actually required?
After Dinner Conversation is in a unique situation in that we are open to “all genre.” And that is true. We accept science fiction, fantasy, true crime, children’s stories, whatever! But that is because, in a way, what we are looking for is its own genre. “Short stories that ask ethical or philosophical questions.”
So, you send us an amazing story that isn’t what we publish, we turn it down. You send us solid writing that does do what we do, and there is a good chance you will make it pretty far in the process.
At the end of the day, we are trying to spare our hard working readers, working for free, from reading 10 totally ineligible stories that never should have been submitted. So, it’s not that we are anti-writer, it’s that we are pro respecting our readers.
So, why am I writing about this now? Simple. We recently had an email exchange that tested us on this subject.
A writer sent us an email with an attachment that simply said, “Enjoy!” Rather than delete the email as not meeting our guidelines, we emailed him back and requested he read our guidelines, and submit again.
He then informed us he was a well established writer with 40+ books, and had been published in every name magazine under the sun. Magazines way cooler than us. Which, after a google search, showed to be true. We responded wishing him all the best in his future endeavors.
Moral of the story, even if they are silly, even if you are “bigger than the publication,” follow the submission guidelines.
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