Gooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you happen to be!
This week, a special journal issue I co-edited with a friend was published online. Ordinarily, this would be cause for unadulterated celebration. It’s a great issue (if I do say so myself)! I’m so proud of it, and so grateful to my co-editor and our wonderful contributors!
On this particular occasion, though, all I wanted to do was collapse onto my desk and cry.
You see, it had taken years—YEARS—for this issue to come out. That’s not unusual in academia, where some university presses can take a full year to get back to you about that book manuscript you submitted. But what with COVID-related delays, changes to the contributor line-up, and other totally unpredictable drama, we had gotten particularly unlucky.
In the end, we ended up publishing our wonderful special issue on medieval and early modern literary canons six years after we had first proposed conference sessions on the topic.
SOB.
During those six years, my co-editor and I, and our contributors, were forced to do something that all writers have to do: WAIT.
We’ve all been there, right?
There’s the wait before an editor or publication confirms receipt of your submission or proposal. The wait for feedback, for a decision, for publication. There’s just so much freaking waiting!!!
I’m not a patient person (can you tell?), so I find waiting really hard. But there are a few rules of thumb I’ve used over the years to make it easier.
Give people the benefit of the doubt.
Life happens. Sometimes it really happens. So if someone hasn’t gotten right back to me about a piece of my writing, I try not to presume that it’s because they’re criminally inconsiderate and/or evil.
Give it some time.
‘But, Mary, how much time?’ I hear you wail. Here are some rough guidelines:
When to give it a couple of days: If you’ve just submitted something to an editor and you’re only after confirmation of receipt, it’s fine to get in touch with a brief, polite email a couple of days later.
When to give it a couple of weeks: If you’ve gotten in touch to get a status update on a submission, it’s fine to get in touch with a brief, polite follow-up a couple of weeks later.
When to give it a couple of months: I hate to say it, but sometimes you’re gonna have to wait months for a response. It’s rare these days that you’ll get reader reports back on an academic journal article in less than two months, and The New Yorker’s ‘Shouts & Murmurs’ team is unlikely to get back to you in less than SIX months (*shrieks* *faints*). If it’s been a few months and you’ve heard nothing, send a polite and gentle follow-up email.
Keep it polite.
This is important. Studies have shown that people are a bajillion times more likely to be helpful when you’re polite to them.
Here are some helpful phrases you can use when following up about something:
‘I’m writing to follow up on my email from a couple of days/weeks ago.’
‘I’m writing to confirm whether X arrived safely/was submitted successfully. Could you please confirm whether or not you have received it? If not, I’d be happy to send it again.’
‘I was wondering whether you might happen to have a status update on X. Do you have any sense of when I might expect to hear back/receive feedback?’
‘I’m writing to check on the status of my book/article. Can you give me any sense of what the publication timeline is likely to be?’ (Note: If this is a publication with contributors, you can always mention that you would like to give your contributors a sense of when they should expect to receive proofs, contracts, etc.)
Always remember: editors, agents, publishers, and colleagues are people, too—yes, even the ones who reject your writing or make you wait for a response. And they’re probably not evil. Probably.
As ever, thanks for reading. This is a reader-supported publication, and the best way to support it is to become a paid subscriber (either at $5 per month or $50 per year), which gets you access to absolutely everything on PBP as well as access to a weekly Monday check-in Chat thread where you can receive support, encouragement, and tools for your writing!
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VB,
M
Congrats on the awesome journal special issue! Worth the wait 😊
Thank you very much for this piece.
I have an academic journal article that I have been waiting for a response to for close to 9 months now. I am not in academia anymore so I don't have that pressure to work for tenure, etc... but for those who do, it must be mental torture.