Simultaneous Submissions? What Say You, Kenyon Review?
Here’s a little blog by Kenyon Review editor David Lynn posted about simultaneous submissions, and here’s a blog about the blog. So yes, this is in essence, a blog about a blog about a blog about a magazine. For those who don’t know, a simultaneous submission is when you send a story or poem or what-have-you to more than one journal at the same time. Some journals allow the process, on the understood basis that if the work is accepted at another journal, they will be immediately informed and they will stop considering the piece. Now, you can have a piece accepted on the first submission, but most writers know that’s a rarity, some poems/stories end up not being accepted until 10 submissions, or even 20, 30 before it is finally accepted. Even great pieces. David Kirby, said in Best American Poetry 2000, that the poem they’d chosen as one of the best of the year, had been rejected 17 times before it finally found its home at Parnassus. Seeing as most journals ask you to allow 3-4 months, sometimes as many as 9 months for them to consider your submission before even checking on its status, your entire wardrobe could
be out of fashion by the time it’s accepted. You’d be wearing your Kris Kross overalls (backwards of course) writing a poem that may not be published until your mother sends you a pair of those ridiculous Croc shoes.
Anyway, there are two sides to the argument of Simultaneous Submissions, or, as I call them SS’s. It’s like pretending you’re Kaa from The Jungle Book… Trusssst in me. But yeah, most journals take SSs, but some don’t. Of those who don’t are the likes of The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Sewanee Review, American Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Playboy (for fiction, at least) and many more prestigious magazines. Some respond very quickly (Michigan Quarterly Review usually in under a month from personal experience, and Poetry right around a month) while others take many months. So basically, there’s a decision to be made. Your options?
- Submit your work only to one journal at a time and hope that your work attracts someone’s attention while you’re still stylish enough for an author’s photo on your dust jacket.
- Only submit your work to journals who accept simultaneous submissions, and cry bitterly that you’ll never be in The New Yorker unless they change their horrible ways.
- Submit your poems simultaneously everywhere, even to magazines that don’t accept simultaneous submissions, and if a piece happens to get accepted, sit under your covers with a flashlight hoping the editors don’t find you in the night and ruin your literary career with a publication embargo.
- Submit some poems simultaneously, and when poems happen to not have any overlap at other journals, venture a submission to a NoSS journal, and hope they send you a prompt rejection, or for that miraculous acceptance.