Hodderscape Open Submission Window

Two weeks after their supposed date for starting to get back to people, and still nobody's heard anything?
 
Nope, not a peep. Still, you have to admire Hodderscape's optimism...

Or wonder if they can't get that right whether it's a worrisome sign!
Which is good, innit?
I'd like to believe it's a good sign and that we're all going to get contracts any day now. However... it probably all depends on their process, and whether they email out the standard rejection responses before or after they contact their shortlist of potentials. With the sheer volume of submissions they received I wouldn't read too much into it either way.
 
Or wonder if they can't get that right whether it's a worrisome sign!

Well, quite.

it probably all depends on their process, and whether they email out the standard rejection responses before or after they contact their shortlist of potentials.

It would make more sense for them to contact the potentials first, but they did say they would be responding in the order the submissions were logged. It is the Frankfurt Book Fair at the moment, so maybe they just didn't take that into account when they set their deadlines.
 
When they say they'll reply in the order submissions are logged, do they mean when they saw the sub and contacted you to say they'd got it?
 
When they say they'll reply in the order submissions are logged, do they mean when they saw the sub and contacted you to say they'd got it?

Yes. All the subs has been logged into a database in the order they arrived and were logged in the competition. I don't want to speculate about what's taking them so long, but it seems to be stereotypical for them to promise one thing and then realise how wrong that promise was because they didn't had any idea about the quality or the number of submissions. It is also possible that there's either a fairly large team handling this, or then it's only a few fellows and they are absolutely swamped.

If it's the first case the chances are that they have some sort of voting system, where a number of people has to agree for the submission to go forward to a next pile. And if all of them have read everyone then it's going to take ages. But the end result should be that they should have already made piles on those that are going to be disregarded and the author notified with a standard rejection letter ("were are sorry but due to a high number of submissions, we cannot give you any personal feedback").

If it's latter case, God help us.

BUT ... whatever the case is, they should at least tell people it's going to take at least [X] months before they can expect back a notification. Publishers, in my experience, don't play by those rules. And it's like the thing with the winter, as it always comes as a surprise - even though everyone knows it's that time of the year.
 
Yes. All the subs has been logged into a database in the order they arrived and were logged in the competition. I don't want to speculate about what's taking them so long, but it seems to be stereotypical for them to promise one thing and then realise how wrong that promise was because they didn't had any idea about the quality or the number of submissions. It is also possible that there's either a fairly large team handling this, or then it's only a few fellows and they are absolutely swamped.

If it's the first case the chances are that they have some sort of voting system, where a number of people has to agree for the submission to go forward to a next pile. And if all of them have read everyone then it's going to take ages. But the end result should be that they should have already made piles on those that are going to be disregarded and the author notified with a standard rejection letter ("were are sorry but due to a high number of submissions, we cannot give you any personal feedback").

If it's latter case, God help us.

BUT ... whatever the case is, they should at least tell people it's going to take at least [X] months before they can expect back a notification. Publishers, in my experience, don't play by those rules. And it's like the thing with the winter, as it always comes as a surprise - even though everyone knows it's that time of the year.


Hmm. In that case, I should've heard about it today then, or tomorrow as they're in America. Hmm. I wonder if it is a case of them underestimating how many people would want to reply. They did say that we would hear back by the end of the month and that we'd get an update on how far they've gotten. I think we'll have an update either this week or the next.
 
On the science fiction front they are looking for Military Sci Fi, though they do say there will be calls for other sub-genres later on, which leaves me puzzle because of this - the graphic of the types of stories published by Daily Science Fiction.
Slide1.jpg


Military Sci Fi tends to be Space Travel, which is half way along the chart. So why Hodderscape taking at a less topical sub-genre?
 
PB books?
 

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