: Re: Why do most literature magazines take so long (several weeks or months) to respond to submissions despite having only a few hundred subs per month? I have heard that the the editor of F&SF

@XinRu607

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I think you're holding magazines to a very high bar here! F&SF and Clarkesworld are pretty amazing, but there are so many reasons for submissions to get replies more slowly than that -- and what they are will be different from magazine to magazine.

Some options include:

Batching reading windows. If an editor reads submissions on Thursdays, then nobody submitting on Friday is going to get a response the next day. If they do their reading in big batches every couple of weeks, the wait can be longer.

Holding submissions. Magazine submissions are graded relative to other submissions in the same period. It can make sense to hold a submission for months, seeing if stronger material comes in, or hoping a window will open, or waiting for an issue where it will fit well.

Limited submissions windows. Some magazines only open for submission sporadically -- so all their submissions come flooding it at once.
Then, there's also an extra consideration: once you start sending out acceptances and rejections, eord will start getting out, and people will try to guess (fruitlessly) why they haven't heard back yet. So it might make sense to send responses in batches...

Do remember it wasn't all that long ago that electronic submissions and responses weren't a thing. Submissions and responses would take months. A lot of magazines still operate on that schedule -- some for very good reasons.

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