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So, I'm the Editor In Chief of a small local literary magazine that comes out twice a year.

Translated, that means I answer all of the email and have final say on inclusion of a piece. Most of the actual selection is done by my staff of editors, one for each genre we accept (poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction).

Currently, I'm in the middle of Submission Week Hell, that lovely time when people realize that a deadline is coming up and decide to flood me with email.

Thus, a few notes:

Submission guidelines with snarkily worded visual aides are there for a reason. You need to follow them to get published. When the website says we accept .doc, .rtf and .txt, you should not be sending me Windows applications, .pdfs or .pages. .pages in particular, as I have no way of even opening them at all. At all. That's why I say don't send them. I do it to save having idiotic back and forths with semi-coherent fellow members of the executive committee of the local writers' society about no, click 'Save As' that end in me giving up and just spending an hour reformatting it from inclusion in the body of an email because it saves me time. I am getting a new submission every half hour at this point, and have to have all of them processed by the end of the week - including the extended deadline for paid members I was browbeaten into accepting. I have no time for dealing with idiocy.

Similarly, if the guidelines say to include a brief bio in the body of the email, and specifies 30-40 words, that does not mean send 200. That does not mean send nothing. That does not mean put it at the top of your submission. That means a bio of 30-40 words, in the body of your email. This is so, if we decide to publish your piece, we have a bio to include in our bio section. We like to get those to our Art Director as soon as possible so that he can lay everything out so that we can proof everything faster.

You are not a special snowflake when submitting, unless it's been solicited, which our magazine doesn't do. You are paperwork. Paperwork is universally hated. That means that, if no cover letter is requested, don't preface the requested information with details about your confinement to a wheelchair, dyslexia, and that this is your first time sending things out. That annoys me as the person accepting it. And, since we have blind submissions, no one cares. Your work always, always stands alone. Make it worth my time spent on paperwork. That is the only thing I care about. Prefacing it with how you're so nervous and you have gonorrhea of the eye does not mean you're more likely to get published out of pity. And, on good days, it's nice to see people be brave. But there are no good days during Submission Week, so it comes off as emotionally manipulative bullshit, and I hate you for it. Generally, avoid that, as not every magazine does blind judging.

That said, if you have the editor in chief's mother's phone number and she knows it, don't rub it in by breaking all the rules and submitting like a douchebag.

Also, try to get things in before deadline. It ensures that fewer mistakes are likely to happen between receiving your submission and the editor reading it. It also ensures that, if you send an incompatible file format, you'll be more likely to have time to correct the mistake and resend the right one before the deadline, saving everyone's sanity.

And, when the guidelines say make the filename the title of your piece, it is for a reason. I have a lot of submissions to go through during a short time, and we have a naming system everything has to be translated to. If your file is properly labelled, I can just change the name and move on. If it's not - if it's something like 'submission' or '#204 - final' - I have no idea what it is and have to read the damn thing before I can title it properly. That wastes my time. And makes me hate you.

TL; DR: Follow the guidelines to the letter. It's the first test of whether you're good enough at the English language to get published.

If I could have sex with your post, I would.

I'm thinking of moving my magazine submission process to submishmash because I am so tired of getting screwed over by Gmail. But when I copy edited for The Oddville Press, we moved to submishmash, and were getting zero submissions, when before, we were getting plenty. So I'm iffy about doing that.

In any case, one thing that absolutely pissed me of was when a subber said that we could only publish his piece if we paid him, as if he had no idea how to read the guidelines. Our guidelines specifically state we pay for the 'best of' in each issue, so either this guy had the audacity to think he'd be gracing us with his presence in our magazine, or he had the audacity to think we were stupid enough to fork over the money should we happen to merely like his piece. I rejected without even reading the story.

But yes, I agree. I get plenty of subs that don't follow the guidelines, but since CCP is just starting out, I don't want to trash those subs--yet. However, if it's just so doggone awful that it hurts my eyes, I do reject it, whether or not it's a potential diamond. Even if we don't specifically state what format we'd like the stories in, there's a universal format for all short stories that even Duotrope recommends writers follow.

I think I just came out of my Submissions Week Hell. Went on a reading subs binge, but I'll probably have more to binge by the time the 5th comes around.

See if you can figure out what system Lightspeed, Asimov's and such use. It looks quite good. Easy for submitters I know. Never heard of submishmash or seen it. It may be that since all of thsoe use the same exact setup save for headers and stuff.

Don't see why submissions would drop unless people weren't reading the guidelines like you should before submitting each time and thus sent to gmail still. I love the system Lightspeed and such use. Strange Horizon's has a nice one too.

The one that require you to copy paste your text into I hate. Always can't tell if the formatting is there or not so it's hit or miss at times if you sent a wall of text or not. If you go and make changes, it may be huge white gaps. Messy...

Perhaps it comes out twice a year because that's what they can afford based on sales and other revenue streams. Also have to remember paying writers isn't a set cents per word. It varies. So it's not hard to keep it reasonable.

I'm curious, do you get many entries that use hard-to-read coloured text (extra points for the use of different colours for different characters), small and/or weird fonts?

I'm mostly thinking of seeing people who've posted stuff here in tiny fonts and bright colours, and horror stories I've heard of writers sending in manuscripts in odd colours to make them "stand out" to the publisher.