Way back in June, I submitted a short story to Asimov’s. Normally, it takes them four to six weeks to come back with a response. However, it’s been almost five months and I haven’t heard anything.
I’m not the only one, either. According to The Submission Grinder, their slushpile is backed up to the end of May. The average wait time for stories currently on submission is 100 days:
Clearly, something weird is going on. In the last 30 days, only seven responses are logged. Seven.
What’s going on?
I queried the editors six weeks ago, and they confirmed that my story was still under consideration. So it’s not like they’ve dropped off the face of the Earth completely. Still, that was six weeks ago, and there hasn’t been much movement since then.
Maybe there was a personal tragedy or family emergency? If so, that’s completely understandable. But I can’t find anything online to indicate that that’s the case, and my friends in the industry haven’t heard anything either.
I really hope this isn’t the new normal for Asimov’s. I stopped submitting to Analog because their average response time is more than 150 days. In an age where self-publishing is the new normal, it really doesn’t make sense to have a story sitting on an editor’s desk for that long.
This particular story takes place in the same universe as Gunslinger to the Stars, which I hope to publish in a few months. I would really like to get this story out sometime next year, either in one of the magazines or by publishing it myself.
If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know.
Does this mean you’ll go back to solely self publishing?
No, but I may stop submitting to Asimov’s if this is the new normal. Right now, I’ve got seven original short stories on submission, and I hope to write several more. When I do self-publish a short story, it’s usually after shopping it around for a couple of years. That’s the nice thing about short stories: if you play your cards right, you can get paid for them twice or thrice. But not if it takes half a year for a magazine to get back to you!
Then could you do a post on your process? Which houses you go to to shop your short stories and the like? This is fascinating!
Sure, that sounds like a fun blog post.
Thanks!