Hi Everyone!
It’s not unusual at all to wait a month or more to hear back about a submission sent in to either magazine. The reasons for the long delay are many, but pretty much everything that people have mentioned so far is correct. The offices are closed for the week now for the holidays, but once everyone’s back to work on the 3rd of January we’ll be doing our best to get caught up on the submissions caught in limbo.
My best advice to anyone waiting to hear back on the status of a submission is to wait one month. After that point, if you haven’t heard back from us, go ahead and send an email that asks about the status of the submission. 99% of the time you’ll get back an answer like: “We have your submission but haven’t had time yet to evaluate it,” but it’s always good to get in reminders like this. I certainly don’t want anyone’s submission to fall through the cracks into oblivion, and I don’t mind receiving “What the heck is the situation with my submission?” emails (as long as they’re worded a little more politely than that, of course.)
In any case, to all of you waiting patiently to hear back from us about submissions... I really appreciate your patience. I’ve been on the “waiting to hear from those editors” end of the process many times, so I know how it feels!
