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1. Why Ecostamps rather than snail mail submissions?
Productivity: Ecostamps eliminates the tedious, administrative aspects of the submission process.
No more mail bags, envelopes, SASEs, paper clips, paper cuts, lost submissions, and rejection slips.
Revenues: Through Enhanced submissions
and Ecostamps Assessments, our hyper-efficient
review and evaluation toolbox, editors are able to provide substantive
feedback while generating dollars to defray operating costs and pay
writers for their work.
The Environment: Obvious, right? No need for further explanation.
Tangible Intangibles: What's the value of processing contest fees online rather than forcing
people to write a check, find an envelope, buy a stamp, and drop the submission in the mail? What's the
value of giving authors the option to purchase a subscription or back issues with each submission?
What's the value of having a permanent record of every submission?
Or flagging promising authors for closer review of future submissions? Reviewing an entire submission history
for an author including evaluations and notes? Never spilling coffee on another submission, losing it
on the subway, or simply misplacing it? Ecostamps offers a number of tangible benefits and perhaps as many intangibles.
2. We have limited resources; won't we be inundated with submissions if we use Ecostamps?
The editors of GlimmerTrain, Susan and Linda, whom we have never met but admire greatly, answered this question best:
Since 1990, we have read thousands and thousands of stories. For years, with paper submissions, we had to have thoughtful, well-read, mostly-volunteer help come to the office and pick up buckets of stories and lug them home. We sometimes got as much as 8 buckets a day—that’s about 250 POUNDS of mail and I cannot begin to guess how many paper cuts waiting to happen. Not to mention the occasional page that flies out the bus window.
Highly skilled and amazingly generous family and friends saved us from paper chaos by designing the online submission procedure we have now. The system allows the two of us to read every single submission ourselves, which we love!
Snail mail imposes significant costs on editors.
Email eliminates the incentive authors have to be self-selective with
their submissions.
Ecostamps enables editors to realize productivity gains
and provides tools and incentives for editors to capture
dollars wasted on paper, toner, envelopes, and postage.
In exchange, editors use Ecostamps Assessments to provide tangible, substantive feedback
to authors on their submissions.
3. Our editors can't read thousands of submissions online, can they? Won't it cost too much to print the submissions we receive?
Very few editors have to read the last word
of a submission before giving it a thumbs-down.
Some stories need to be read, digested, reread, passed around, and read again.
Others contain a dozen typos, a few sentence fragments, and a dangling participle or two
in the first paragraph.
Our recommendation: print the former on paper
from the recycling bin.
Printing the latter is a waste of time, energy, and resources.
Ideal? No. Pragmatic? Yes.
There is no perfect answer to the first question. Most people spend at least a few hours
every day on the computer, whether working, reading the news, or writing email. Others don't own
a computer. They have the newspaper delivered, write letters,
and type poems on a Smith-Corona Galaxie.
If you're one of the latter,
you may experience a short period of transition,
but in no time flat you'll be zipping through submissions. From there it's a short step to surfing the Internets
and using the Google to find a recipe for wild mushroom lasagna, and your life will likely be richer for the experience.
4. Why Ecostamps rather than email submissions?
No viruses. No spam. No corrupted hard drives. No system crashes.
No accidentally deleted submissions. Automated nightly back-ups.
Permanent and automatically updated submission histories with advanced
search capabilities. No more pesky status inquiries.
Contest fees, subscriptions, renewals, and back-issue orders processed with submissions
rather than separately.
Blind-submission review for contests. Automated reading periods and submission limits.
Enhanced submission tracking
facilitating efficient remote collaboration and multi-person, multi-stage review processes.
Basic Ecostamps submissions are also FREE for authors.
Ecostamps offers these and a number of other advantages over email; however, the most
important advantage is that Ecostamps underscores the mutual commitment
essential to the editor-author relationship.
Through Enhanced submissions writers support the markets
they hope to publish in, and editors are able to efficiently provide
substantive feedback and pay authors selected for publication.
5. Why Ecostamps rather than an online submission form?
Why pay for a service that can be had for free?
Why select a service that puts dollars in another market's pocket rather than yours?
Why use a service that offers no tangible benefits to you or authors relative to email submissions?
Ecostamps is the only online submission management tool that is FREE
for editors and writers,
generates revenues for literary markets to help
defray publication costs and pay authors for their work, provides
the tools and incentive for editors
to offer substantive feedback on submissions, and
creates an incentive
for authors to learn about the markets they
are submitting to and to be self-selective with their submissions.
To paraphrase Dennis Hope in Almost Famous: We didn't invent the rainy day, man. We just own the best umbrella.
6. We accept submissions online; will it be difficult to transfer our data to Ecostamps?
No.
At the risk of being annoyingly redundant to underscore a point: NO.
You provide your data to us, we'll take care of the rest.
7. How difficult is it to begin using Ecostamps? Is there anything to download or install?
Getting started for editors requires three simple steps.
First, you must register for Ecostamps.
At registration, you will provide your contact information and select a password and security question.
Within 24 hours of registering, you will receive an email from Ecostamps
with instructions for accessing the Editors Console and the submission
form for your organization.
When you have logged into the Console and activated your
submission form, you may add the Ecostamps "Submit Now!" button to your site.
You will use the Editors Console to
review and evaluate submissions, communicate with authors, workshop submissions
prior to publication,
add (or remove) categories, contests, and subscription offers
to (from) the submission form,
modify reading periods,
and much more.
Nothing needs to be downloaded or installed.
Getting started as a writer is equally as simple.
What could be easier?
8. Can we continue to accept submissions by email and/or USPS if we use Ecostamps?
Absolutely!
Our objective is to create value for editors, authors, and readers.
Literary journals need financial support because subscriptions, ads,
and grants often barely cover operating costs.
Authors need feedback to continue to hone their craft; however,
time constraints often make it difficult for editors to offer anything more
than a form letter.
Ecostamps Enhanced submissions closes the circle to benefit editors and authors.
Is Ecostamps prohibitive?
Absolutely not. We believe options are GOOD!
Let writers submit through email, USPS, FedEx, carrier pigeon, telepathy, or any other
method you like.
9. What if we try Ecostamps and decide we prefer to receive submissions by snail mail, email, or some other method?
Click the "Activate/Deactivate" button in the Editors Console,
check the box beside the account you want to close, and click the "Submit" button.
Only the account administrator has access to the "Activate/Deactivate"
component. Prior to deactivating your account, we recommend you evaluate all unreviewed submissions.
Removing the "Submit Now!" button from your web site
will not prevent authors from submitting their work to you
through the Writers Console. You must USE THE "ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE" COMPONENT.
When an account is closed, all data is permanently deleted
including unreviewed submissions. We cannot
restore the data even if you bribe us with apple streusel
and say, "Pretty please."
10. Is it really free?
Yes.
The cost to editors is zero. Editors also earn $1 for their organization for each Assessment
they complete.
We believe authors should be paid for their work and should receive substantive feedback
on their submissions. We also recognize that editors
do not have access to a bottomless bucket of dollars nor can they stop time to
provide detailed comments on the hundreds of submissions they receive.
Ecostamps reflects our belief in market solutions and incentives and sustainability
through shared accountability.
Authors who believe in their work, want feedback, and would like to be compensated
when their work is published will love Enhanced submissions.
Authors who have an expectation that editors will donate their time to read their
work but prefer not to support the magazines they hope will publish their work may prefer Ecostamps
Basic submission option.
Basic submissions are free.
Similar to email, once they have been submitted they cannot be edited.
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