I have sent off a proposal... what next?

I recently finished my proposal for and adventure and sent it off to Dungeon Magazine. The adventure it pertains to is roughly 4000-5000 words. Now that I have emailed them the proposal, what should I do? How long does it usually take to hear back from them? If they are not impressed, amazed, amused, and bewildered, is it still ok to send it off to other companies to see if perhaps they see something Dungeon did not? If so, with whom would you recommend me sending it too? Thank you for your time in responding.

Christopher

Most companies would prefer that you not send them material that you've already sent elsewhere at least not until a reasonable amount of time has passed since you first submissions.



For Dark Quest, we ask for 60 days to evaluate material before we make any decisions. After the 60 days you are welcome to send the submission elsewhere.

I have no idea what Dragon's particular time frame is.

Writing for Dungeon...

First question is, did you send a disclosure release form with the proposal? If you didn't, you'll never hear anything, because they will trash your submission. Legal stuff is the bottom line there.

Freelancing for any magazine can be frustrating, because the persons in charge of sifting through the gobs of material they get need time in order to give your submission real consideration. It'll probably take the crew at Dungeon up to twelve weeks to review your work and get back to you. (I think it says so in the guidelines, at least for Dragon.) If you have heard nothing in that much time, drop them a line ... that's not unprofessional after three months.

I'll give you some pointers on professional etiquette. It's completely acceptable to submit material rejected by one publisher to another. It's unacceptable to submit the same material to two publishers at the same time, however. It's also unacceptable to submit material currently under review by one publisher to another or to submit an article on its way to publication to another publisher. (A contract usually handles things like this.)

On the flip side of that, it's been said, "As a writer, if you sell something once, you're still an amateur. If you sell it five times, then you're a professional." That doesn't mean selling the same dungeon hack five times, it means using the same ideas to write different things ... like a story, or a play, or a rules article based on a situation in the adventure you wrote.

FYI, I submitted two proposals to Dungeon in late May and I've yet to get the word, although the editor did let me know he'd reviewed my stuff and was about to get back to me before Gen Con.

Good luck with your submission!

The folks at Dungeon seem to be backed up at the moment. In my experience over the past few years, it usually takes around four weeks to hear back from them.

Once I had a few adventures in print, I seemed to get a little faster turnaround on proposals and I could o on hearing back from the editor in about two weeks.

At the moment, however, I have a work in the revision stage that is taking months. This is probably due to a number of things coming together at the same time. First, there was a change in the editorial staff a few months back, then the recent sale of the magazine and then Gen Con. All together this has probably thrown the poor folks working there for a major loop.

Be patient and give it some time. If you followed their instructions, the folks at Dungeon can be depended upon to get back to you eventually. I'll also give them credit that they were always considerate and helpful with their feedback, even if my proposal was complete crap.

Once you send out a proposal what's the absolute next thing you should do? Send out another proposal - or five.

Find other companies looking for adventures (or other material), and send them proposals. I don't know which ones are currently taking open submissions off the top of my head, but the vast majority of them have "Submission" sections to their websites. Check those out and send out proposal after proposal until you get too much work to keep up.

Just make sure not to submit work that is currently being reviewed by another publisher. That's a huge no-no. Talking with the editors from Paizo at GenCon, one even remarked that there's no freelancer blacklist, but simultaneous submissions will pretty much have the same effect. Every publisher is too busy to spend time on a submission to later find out they can't use it because it was submitted elsewhere and bought there.

As stated above, once it's rejected, it's free game, and you should definitely consider trying to make it better and submitting it to other publishers.

So, I'd suggest looking at other publishers to see what they are interested in. Send them (entirely new) submissions. And be sure to write, game, write, and game some more. Good writing only comes from practice, and good design largely comes from knowing the rules extremely well.

One thing that I'd like to point out is that Dungeon and Dragon moved recently, and at the Paizo Publishing Q&A at GenCon, they said that they know that they lost some stuff in the move. In this particular instance, it may be worth giving the editor a call or email, just to double check to see if they have the manuscript. I wouldn't ordinarily suggest that, but due to these special circumstances, I think it's warranted.