By: Cheryl Taggert
This blog entry is mostly for those who are interested in submitting work to Juicy Secrets, but I hope it is of interest to everyone. It will provide some “behind the scenes” information and ask for patience when submitting work.
So, here is the process and how we handle things here at Juicy Secrets.
Let’s say an erotica author, Ima Writer, submits a story to the Juicy Secrets email address ([email protected]). First, Ima gets a gold star because she read the Submission Guidelines like any author submitting to a publication would (either online or in print). If Ima is truly a writer, she is aware that all organizations that accept work for publication are not joking about those submission guidelines. In fact, they are actually misnamed. They should be called “Submission Requirements.” Calling them guidelines suggests following them is optional if you want your work considered for publication. They aren’t. Mainstream editors (i.e., those who get paid to read submitted material) discard any submissions to them that don’t follow the guidelines without reading a word of the text. That is a completely true statement.
Next, one of the site’s staff (unpaid, by the way) opens the site email, which is checked every few days, though sometimes a week or more might pass before we get around to it. (Hey, it’s our email; we can check it as time permits.) The staff member who opens the email notices Ima’s submission. He or she probably reads a bit of it, if not all, before forwarding it to the rest of the staff for consideration. If an opinion has been formed by the first person to see it, that opinion is usually included in the email. We will see things like, “I looked at it and think it would be good for the site with a little tweaking,” or “It’s not bad, but it needs a lot of work.” The worst thing to see is, “I really didn’t like it because (various reasons discussed here).” Another bad thing to find is a story that is good as far as the story itself goes, but the work will need a lot of editing before it is made available for our readers. Remember, you come here to read what is offered because of the quality of the fiction we share. You want wankers (fast tales with no build-up or sense of character) or numerous typos? Go elsewhere, please. Speaking of typos, they demonstrate an amateur approach to writing. You should be sending things you’ve at least cleaned up a bit. Any writing you send us should always be the best you can make it before you press “SEND.” As I’ve said before, a first draft is good for only two things: editing or the trash can. And that goes for every author you’ve ever read, even the really famous ones (in fact, especially the really famous ones.)
Another good thing to try is reading your story out loud. You can catch far more errors doing that than if you read it silently. If you’re like me and have a spouse who also enjoys erotica like ours, it can be a LOT of fun, believe me!
Okay, so staff member A opens the email, reads at least some of it, and forwards the rest for us to read and make a decision. Staff members B, C, and D (yep, that’s all of us) read the story and we exchange emails, sometimes over the course of a week or more, about the story and our individual reactions to it. The clincher here is that the site owners (at this point JetBoy and I, since Naughty Mommy is unable for the time being to participate more than sporadically at best) have final say on any story. If either one of us says no, the story will not appear on the Juicy Secrets website. When Naughty Mommy returns full-time, she will also have veto power on a story. It’s not a “majority rules” decision, and it never has been. Occasionally, one of the site’s owners voting “no” has been convinced to go along with publishing a story if the other(s) are in favor of it, but that is a rare occurrence. Amanda Lynn and PoppaBear have input, but their votes lack veto power.
Once a final decision is made, one of us will contact the author and inform him or her that the story has either been accepted or rejected. If it is rejected, we try to give some of the reasons why. None of us are much in favor of the “form rejection.” Also, even acceptances can come with a “but it needs a little more work” comment. Usually, a “no” response from the author regarding our offer to help improve the story results in a “Then no thanks” from us.
This process can take as much as two or three weeks if we are busy with lots of things. For instance, since the transition involving bringing Amanda Lynn and PoppaBear on, things have sometimes been rather hectic. They’re calming down a bit now, but any change in how things are handled causes a hectic atmosphere for at least a little while.
Now, let’s compare this to the “real” publishing world in which non-erotic stories are submitted for publication in print and/or electronic periodicals. I submit to these publications. At least once a week, sometimes more often, I submit a short story (non-erotic) to a journal. This is accomplished through a service called Duotrope, which has listings of hundreds of periodicals and what each is looking for in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, etc. I submit to these with full knowledge of their “average response time.” For each of these periodicals, there is generally a small percentage of submitted work that never receives a response, either positive or negative. In other words, an author will submit his or her work and never hear back from the periodical. Never. Generally, the average response time is around 3-6 months. That means that when I submit a story, I can expect not to hear one word about it for at least three months.
Fortunately, many of these publications accept what is known as “simultaneous submissions,” meaning they will accept a story, etc., that has been submitted somewhere else at the same time. It’s a “first to accept gets to publish it” kind of thing. Mostly, however, stories receive a form rejection. It’s worded something like this: “Thank you for your recent submission to XYZ Magazine. Unfortunately, it does not match what we are looking for at this time.” That’s it. I have many emails that say this. However, the good news is that I have also received an email from one publication that has accepted a story of mine. Now, if I can just get a few more of those.
So, dear writers of erotica, keep in mind that if we take two weeks or even three to respond with a decision, it could be much worse. Also, consider this: Perhaps we’ve not contacted you because one of us is trying to convince someone to accept your work instead of reject it. (Yes, that happens here at Juicy Secrets, as well as at mainstream literature publishers, though it’s not successful often in either case.)
Once we have accepted your story, we edit it before it goes in the queue. A date is decided by our webmaster, Amanda Lynn, for when your story will be published at our site. It could be a week, or it could be longer. If the story needs editing, it could be considerably longer. JetBoy, PoppaBear, and I all do editing. (I’ve done more since feeling much better.) This includes the stories from other sites we wish to publish in our archive as well. There is always a lot on our plates as far as editing goes, and adding unpublished stories to that mix can cause a delay to get your story posted on the site.
The good news is once we accept your story, we will usually accept more from you. If we accept the first few chapters of a longer work, we expect you to complete the work at some point. If you don’t think you can finish it, don’t submit it.
A quick story here about that. Purple Les sent us the first chapter of her now famous “My Family, Friends, and Sex,” with a note that it was her first effort at writing a story. While there were some things to clean up, I daresay anyone who has read it knows it’s a very hot, and immensely well-told narrative. Purple Les has talent. Chapter 28 of that saga was posted recently. She knows how many more chapters will be written before the book is done. She would tell you she was never a professional writer, but she also has perseverance in addition to the talent, and she will see things through to the end. Of course, it is our sincerest wish and hope that this is not her LAST effort by any means. She promised to keep at it until she’d told the whole tale, and she has–or at least she will be finished soon. We understand when life interferes or a sort of writer’s block occurs with a story. But you should plan on finishing a work. You don’t need to be a professional writer to accomplish writing a long work, as Purple Les has demonstrated–very admirably.
So, please be patient when you submit to us. We try to reply to all emails when we open them to assure the author their work has been received and is being considered. That is something we are trying to do a better job of. Also, please remember we are all volunteers. Nobody gets one penny for doing any of this. It is all strictly a labor of love.
Thank you for reading this. If you have a story you wish to submit, by all means, send it on. Just be sure to click the link to the Submission Guidelines above first. Then read and follow them! Also, if you see a story somewhere else that you think is good enough for the archive, tell us that as well. But we ask that you PLEASE use the email for that, not the comments section of a story or any of the website’s different areas. Our acceptance or rejection of a story for the archive, for whatever reason, should not be a public discussion.
Now, happy reading and writing!