Revisiting Reasons to Spread Your Work Around

I'm re-sharing this article I wrote for Becky Tuch's Lit Mag News to address a recent comment (by River) that made especially good points.

I remain concerned that poets/writers often do not feel like they have a lot of say or leverage in writer/editor conversations. This varies. And, increasingly, I get the sense more writers feel confident speaking up/out. That being said, it remains a problem that writers don't feel they have complete agency to speak their mind when engaging with editors/publishers.

Here, I want to focus on submission acceptances.

In recent times, to streamline the process for myself, I got in the habit of responding to acceptances with a note that says, "I'm pleased to accept..." and "I'm scheduling your poem(s) for publication on..." which, I realize, implies the author's willingness to move ahead with publication. My assumption (a problem with assumptions, of course) is that the writer would inform me if they did not want to move forward with publication. The question becomes whether or not the writers felt like they had much of a choice. It’s impossible to know unless someone tells you.

In the aforementioned article, I make the case that editors/publishers should be sure to give the writer choices and keep their best interests in mind. Given that, my policy has generally been to confirm a poet is ok with ONE ART taking more than three of their poems from a given submission. Increasingly, I’ve started to ask if it’s ok if I’m taking more than two. I don’t want to hoard poems and, again, as discussed in the Lit Mag News article, I believe in many instances it’s sensible for poets/writers to spread their work around.