Submission page-count tip

Here’s a submissions tip. I have given it before, but I can’t say it enough.

If you have never worked with an editor before, then applying for the MOST PAGES an anthology will accept is going to be an incredibly hard sell, especially because we have to keep to specific page counts.

You are much better off going to the LOWEST end of the submission guideline, as it’s much easier to take a flier on a story that is two pages than it is to take a flier on an eight-page story which is going to be a centerpiece story of the book.

I looked over a bunch of submissions this morning, and I’ll be honest, I pretty much passed through EVERYONE who did a two-page story from the ones my co-editor culled, because…well…it’s easy to take a flier on a two-page story.

A couple of reasons why:

1. If it’s not great, then I only have to pay a kill fee for two pages, not eight.
2. If it’s pretty good but not great then it’s only two pages.
3. If it’s awesome then I just found a collaborator who I’m able to work with for a long time.
4. If it doesn’t come in, it doesn’t affect the book hardly at all.

ALL of the eight-page stories I passed through so far are from people I haven’t worked with personally are from people with LONG histories of professional caliber art, that I have a personal relationship with, and personally asked to submit to this anthology.

I just do NOT take fliers on untested artists who I don’t know on eight-page, or even six-page, stories because the risk is too great.

Not only do I have to pay a big kill fee if the story isn’t great, but I only have so many places for big stories in a book, AND if they don’t deliver it severely hampers the book. What if they miss deadline? Now I’m out half a signature of pages that I have to scramble for.

No way.

But I’m ALWAYS looking for good two-page stories to shore up a book. Hell, I have even accepted two-page stories from people AFTER the deadline if I liked their style because there’s almost no risk to me. If they don’t deliver, they get blacklisted, but I still have a book.

In fact, almost everything left that’s undecided is in the “this is good but do they deserve this many pages?” category.

Submitting short is the smart way to submit for most things when you don’t know the editors personally.

I have talked to other anthology editors, and they say mostly the same thing…if you come in short and kill it, you have a place for life in their anthologies, but if you come in long, they are going to look at your submission a LOT closer.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “this is good, but not eight pages good” to a submission over the past few years.