Hey. So, I struggled getting to sleep last night as one question really started to bug me. What’s the point/value of simultaneous submissions? I keep finding myself in this quandary where, even if I submit with a “top down” approach, one submission will always be better than another. I couldn’t figure out an answer to this. Let me explain. I’ll try to be as clear as possible as this is something that’s really confusing me. Doing a “top down” approach to submissions with a no sim sub policy would take ages and people rightly get annoyed by this. That’s why they like a sim subs allowed policy. However, I’m always finding myself anxious with submissions as I want to speed things up and no matter how many times I try to just get the big pubs out of the way first, there’s always the question of, “What if X gets back sooner than Y?” Most of the time I find myself thinking that I like Y better than X. The whole point about sim subs is that you’re allowed to submit to multiple places and that makes the process quicker, but I’m always anxious about this, even when it’s allowed. An example is that I’ve sent a story to paying Neon Magazine and non-paying The Dark Sire, both of which are sim sub allowed. If TDS gets back to me quicker, I’ll be in the unfortunate position of not knowing what to do. There’s always a “what if” scenario involved, even with sim subs. In fact, especially with sim subs. I doubt that TDS would like me to just stay silent until I get a response from Neon. I’d constantly feel like I need to accept the TDS offer and withdraw from Neon. So, what is the benefit of sim subs if it’s basically the same as submitting one at a time? In my mind, it really is effectively the same as the no sim sub policy since the publication that gets back first won’t just hang around and there’d be a serious pressure to accept. I still haven’t figured this out. I must be missing something… As I’m eager to get my work out there, I do have a few sim subs send out, but this just means I’m worrying about who’s going to message me first. Every time I submit to multiple places, I always forget this issue and end up thinking, “Damn, I’m going to have to worry about this now.” Like, even if publications are ranked relatively equally in my mind, such as the Field Notes from a Nightmare anthology and The Deadlands, and I’m not too bothered if I get accepted by either one, there is technically still a “what if”? The only way I can see the value of sim subs is if the publisher X is somehow entirely fine with waiting for me to wait for publisher Y… If sim subs are, by their very nature, used to allow you to submit one story to different places, why would you only be effectively and practically still only be "right" to submit to just one place the moment you get an acceptance from that one place? I can't be the only one who has thought this. I've just never set my thoughts on this down before.
