Out of the loop

The reading period for the May issue of Forbidden Fruit kicked off yesterday - we have just two short weeks to read all the submissions and decide which ones we'd like to use, so I may not be much in evidence until we've finished.

Disappointingly, the first two subs I read were both completely unsuitable, so much so that it was obvious the writers had not only never read the submission guidelines, but had quite probably never read the magazine either. *rolls eyes* Why do people continue to do this? Most of the market listings sites, not to mention magazines and publishers themselves, run frequent articles on the benefits of reading guidelines. Ralan has been running a campaign for months, and the Erotic Readers & Writers Assoc usually has an article or two on the subject on its site. And yet still the unsuitable stories come in, sometimes from writers who should know better. It's very silly, to say the least. It's wasting our time as editors having to wade through stories that have absolutely nothing to do with homosexual relationships. And it wastes the writer's time as well, because every week it sits uselessly in our mailbox waiting to be read and rejected is another week when they could be submitting to somewhere suitable and getting it published. And at the very least it makes writers look like amateurs, and nobody wants that.

So come, on, all you fellow writers and submitters. If an editor goes to the trouble of drawing up guidelines, they're there to help you. The least you can do is read them.