Falling through the cracks?

[eimarra]

I'm in no hurry to court rejection, but I have to wonder whether I should follow up on a submission. I submitted a story via e-mail to Jim Baen's Universe just about the same time they were switching to the new submission system--beginning of May. The link to their new system didn't work, and I noted that in my e-mail. I received a response that said:

We'll be handling your current submission by e-mail, but we'd like to ask you to send future submissions through the above address. This will allow you to track the current status of your submission online: when you think you may not have received an e-mail from us, you can just click a link that we'll send you to check.


Responses on story submissions are currently taking two to ten days. If you have not received a response within four weeks, feel free to inquire.

So it's been almost six weeks. Should I inquire? As I said, I don't want to court rejection, but I do want to know that the submission didn't get lost as they changed over their system.

Comments

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how to interpret that except to say it looks like it was not outright rejected, and is even now pile-mates with Kiyoshi's younger, more impetuous self.

In which case you're probably halfway through your wait, but I'd email as suggested to confirm.

[bonniers.livejournal.com]

I'd inquire. I don't think it's courting rejection; that's just writerly paranoia there. You'll probably get back one of several answers:

1. Oops, we lost it, please send again

2. Yes, we got it, and it's being considered.

3. Yes, we got it, and we're just that far behind.

4. We already sent you a rejection. Didn't you get it?

At least those are the ones I've had so for. Except for number two.

[b-fallenstein.livejournal.com]

Hi Erin,

One of Universe's slush readers here.

Please do enquire. If you submitted to the submissions address six weeks ago, you should have received a reject, a rewrite request, or a "we passed your story up to our editor" by now. (The oldest story currently in the system that's waiting for a decision from us -- as opposed to a decision from the editor -- is from May 24th.)

The response you quote is an auto-response that the system sends for each incoming mail, so at least your mail got to our servers, but it was probably lost after that. Perhaps it got stuck in a spam filter. Or perhaps the computer gremlins ate it. I honestly have no idea.

Feel free to attach your story to the inquiry, then we'll enter it into the system if we can't track it down :-)

All the best,
- Benja Fallenstein

By all means inquire

[(Anonymous)]

We had serious email problems on or around the time our servers were crashed by a massive denial of service attack.

Please simply mail paula goodlett and she'll be happy to check for you.

Rick Boatright
head geek
Baen's universe