Whisper House Press

Notes from the desk of the editor are offered in the interests of personal posterity and transparency for writers and other potential editors who wish to learn from my experience

the editor

With 20 days remaining in the second deadline, we’re sitting at around 550 submissions for Dread Mondays (our second anthology).

In my “first pass” email inbox I have 230 submissions remaining for checking. The others have all gotten that first look for basic fitness and iso glaring errors.

My questions as I make this first pass are “Is this a story about a workplace?” and “Are there any glaring errors in the text that suggest this will need a lot of work?” We want a “yes” and a “no” to those questions, respectively.

The pace, at this point, is quick. I spend an average of 40 seconds on each submission. Some require more close examination for basic comprehension, but most don’t.

Stories that are moved to the “additional review” folder for a second, third, fourth, and some a likely fifth reading will all get significantly more time on pass #2. I’ll be reading then for a closer fit and for tone.

For those making it through the first round, I send submitters this note:

Howdy!

We wanted to let you know that after a first round of reviews of over 500 submissions to Dread Mondays, your story has been selected for additional consideration. You’ll be hearing from us again after we begin our official reading period (which starts December 1st) and get to our “second pass”-tagged stories. The goal of 45 days after that closing date remains our target for all final responses.

I had one author ask what it really means to pass through the first filter, and I want to provide any info I can to help authors understand this process in terms of our press’s methods. In the first pass, we are skimming and occasionally looking more closely, checking for basic fit and ensure that basic writing principles (we’re really just talking about basic readability and no glaring errors) are followed in the piece. This is our pass when we’d say “no thanks” to pieces that are obviously not a good fit. In this phase of the process we expect to whittle by approximately 33%.

The next time you’ll hear from me it’ll be with a final decision. We just wanted to keep you informed!

Thank you, and do follow up with any questions. We are here to serve the art and the authors. (Apologies if it sounds self-congratulatory—it is genuinely how I feel about the purpose of my press.)

Steve

Second and third paragraphs added 11/6/2024

Submitters whose stories are rejected on the first pass receive this response:

Thank you most sincerely for your submission to Whisper House Press’s call for horror submissions for its anthology Dread Mondays.

We’ve received well over 500 submissions, and many have been high-quality submissions that fit our theme better or worse to the eye of this editor. Given this highly subjective evaluation, your submission isn’t a great fit for our collection. Despite our wishes to the contrary, we cannot provide personalized feedback.

Sometimes, people ask why a submission is declined. The reasons are myriad and often overlapping. Though most of the time our subjective judgment about story fit explains things, other common reasons for rejection include the formatting being unclear, that the submission doesn’t follow submission guidelines, or that it wasn’t fully prepared for submission. If you’ve covered these bases, then it’s probably the subjective side of things that explains this editorial response. Please don’t take it personally! Remember that you and your work are distinct entities.

We hope you continue writing and submitting.

Thanks again,

Steve

The whole project takes a long time and many process iterations. I really enjoy all of it.

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