Once again, I have cleared out the submissions and caught up on all the necessary correspondence. If history repeats itself, there’s going to be a period of a couple weeks that I read every sub as it comes in, before I stop keeping pace and there’s forty unread emails in the account. So now is the time to send in that zany piece of fiction that no sane market would ever accept!
That being said, there has been a sudden and inexplicable tightening of the acceptance rates. Here’s how the process works in general:
*Step One, I read through the incoming emails and sort through the stories that I would like to see in the zine, and the ones that I wouldn’t. This ratio is about ten to one. The stories I approve I ask to hold on to while I send them to the other editors.
*Step Two, the other two editors read through the list of stories I have forwarded and they each get the right of veto.
In practice, this means that three human beings have to all agree that a story is awesome before it makes its way into Space Squid. Historically, about a third of the stories I have passed onto the second round of reading make it into print. I’m sure there’s some sort of statistical significance to that.
The drawback of this system is that stories have to fall into a narrow Boolean range of editorial overlapping interests and tastes. Too often this means that a story with a fart joke gets through while an edgy and experimental story gets put aside. Not to say that I don’t like a good fart joke, I would just prefer no more than one per issue.
Recently, the editorial review system has been unusually stringent. We’ve had over seventy submissions for the current issue, and so far we have accepted ONLY ONE STORY. This is the sort of submission/acceptance rate you would expect from a much better publication.
What I’m trying to say is, if you submitted and didn’t get in, submit again, because we need your work! At this rate we won’t be able to put out a new issue until July.
On a separate, yet tangentially related issue, Space Squid is looking to expand our work force with some volunteers.
This operation is getting to the point where it’s too much work for just three people. For instance, it took me four hours to read through the slush pile yesterday. That’s four hours I could have spent eating deep-fried eels.
There’s some areas where we could use extra help. For instance, folding and stapling. We’re going to have a folding/stapling party soon. I have committed to making pizza, because I’m just that kinda guy.
If you want to lend a hand, get your foot in on the Space Squid operation at the ground floor, then you should send me an email at the Space Squid address:
squishy ((at)) spacesquid ((dot)) com
And I can put you on the invitation list. Hope you can make it! And keep writing those Space Squid stories!
