Hey guys!
First of all, I just want to say that we are totally impressed by and excited about the submissions we’ve already received to our new short fiction zine, which we are officially re-christening “Tales of Wonder.”
That said, I wanted to check in with everyone about the submission process and create a space for you to ask and have answered any questions you might have. We know sending your work out can be scary and intimidating, and that’s not what we want for you guys to get out of this process. We want this to be an exciting opportunity to showcase your work as our friends and fellow creators, so to combat those fears and encourage more submissions, I thought it might help if you guys knew exactly what was happening on our end.
So what happens when you submit? Well, since we have a wonderfully convenient automated submission form on our website (cough https://ackerlygreen.com/submissions/ cough), everything gets streamlined into a specific section of my email that’s strictly for submissions. So when somebody submits, I get an email that looks like this:
I then click on that link, which immediately downloads your submission to my computer with a ridiculously long and incoherent string of letters and numbers as its title:
From there, I go straight to the submissions folder in our AGP Google Drive, and upload the submission file from my downloads.
Then I pretty much forget about it until CJ and I have time to read submissions.
What this means for you guys is I’m the only person who knows you’ve even submitted anything. (Somebody has to, so we can match the stories up to your names when we publish them.) However, because they download with meaningless titles and I don’t open them right away, I’d have to have superhuman memory to know which piece belongs to which person (spoiler: I do not). So I might remember that Hermione Granger sent something in, but I’ll have absolutely no idea which piece is hers when we actually get down to reading them.
So, if you were hesitant about submitting because you’re nervous that we’ll be judging your work based on the person we know you to be and will consequently think differently of you for it….well, don’t be! That’s not what’s going on at all. We’re reading them totally blind, so the only time I’ll match your name to your piece will be if it’s chosen for the zine, which will be by the end of December for the January issue.
I hope this is helpful and demystifies the process a little for everyone!! If you have any other questions about the submission process or the zine overall, please feel free to ask below in the comments or PM me :)
Happy writing!!!
