Removed Submission

For the first time in my writing career, I have removed one of my own submissions from a market. I submitted a story entitled, “Drugged,” to a market in December and have yet to receive word. I hesitate to mention the name of the market because I don’t want to give it bad publicity.

So, the story goes like this:

The response time for said market is 8-9 weeks. I waited 3 months and queried. I received no answer. The website for the market has not been updated since the summer of 2004 and there are no stories or any “real” content found on the webpage. In addition, after querying on speculations.com about the market, I found that one or two people had thought the market dead.

I had hesitated because the market still exists on Ralan.com and the owner of the site is notorious for long response times because he has a couple different mags and runs them all by himself.

So, I gave it a few more weeks. Now it has been five months with no word, and I really like this particular story.

I didn’t like doing it, but I sent a concise letter to inform the market of my intent to submit elsewhere.

The worst part is I have another submission (which has been out for about 4 months) with this editor’s other publication. He has also failed to respond to my query sent there. I will give it some more time with that publication because it has been active in the past months. Not to mention I really like that particular mag.

So that’s it. My exciting experience with unresponsive markets.

Cheers.