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posted Tuesday May 04, 2010 02:32pm EDT

Our fictional offerings: Expanded staff! New procedures! Same old quirky fiction!

Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Tor.com has been a venue for original SF and fantasy since 2008, but we’ve never formalized our process for submissions. Indeed, for a long time, we were totally winging it. I was buying and editing the overwhelming majority of stories, but I resisted giving excessively specific information to various “market reports,” because I was reluctant to deal with the explosion of submissions that would generate.

But that barn door has sailed. (As we professional “wordsmiths” say.) Tor.com gets more submissions all the time, and I’ve gotten farther and farther behind at dealing with them. Some people have been awaiting responses for over six months—a few, for embarrassingly more than six months. Clearly something must be done. If only…if only I had an editorial colleague at Tor.com so smart, energetic, and discerning that just this year she’s become the youngest editor ever honored with a Hugo nomination. Oh, wait.

Going forward, then, Tor.com’s original fiction will henceforth be co-edited by me and Liz Gorinsky. Submissions should henceforth be sent via email, not to my personal or work email address, but to the newly-created This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . (If you already sent a submission to one of my addresses, please don’t resubmit. We can cope.) Tor.com welcomes original short SF and fantasy, broadly defined. We’re particularly interested in stories under 12,000 words, although we’ve made exceptions in the past and will do so again. We pay 25 cents a word for the first 5,000 words, 15 cents a word for the next 5,000, and 10 cents a word after that. Although we try to employ common sense in dealing with edge cases, “original” means original—not previously published. Contrary to some previous reports, we do not want you to query first; to submit to Tor.com, just send us your story. Stories should use standard manuscript format and be emailed as Word, RTF, or plain-text attachments. Stories sent inline in the body of an email will be ignored. Questions? Send them to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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32 comments
N. Mamatas
1.  N. Mamatas
Tuesday May 04, 2010 02:55pm EDT
We should start a charity drive for the gmail servers immediately!
Elizabeth Coleman
2.  elizabethcoleman
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday May 04, 2010 04:34pm EDT
I'd like to humbly request that you guys start publishing the occasional poem. There's a dearth of good sf poetry out there.
Mitch Wagner
3.  MitchWagner
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday May 04, 2010 08:05pm EDT
"There once was a Martian named Dave... "
Christine Evelyn Squires
4.  ces
VIEW ALL BY · Wednesday May 05, 2010 08:51am EDT
"Who loved to write but didn't know how to save..."
Wesley Parish
5.  Aladdin_Sane
VIEW ALL BY · Wednesday May 05, 2010 09:07am EDT · amended on Wednesday May 05, 2010 09:08am EDT
Still comes back to the same ol' same ol question - what constitutes a "new" piece of work?

What I'm talking about is a phenomenon whereby Ursula Le Guin, say, or Phillip K. Dick, or Michael Moorcock, creates a short piece for a magazine, and later expands and develops it, into a novel. Rocannon's World is a fine example of this, likewise the Eternal Champion ... is the new novel a truly "new" piece of work, or is it "previously published"?

I mean, I develop a lot of ideas in the flash fiction form, published on the InterWeb - even, heaven forfend, short flash fiction - 50 words or less; some of which I later decide to develop as short stories, or novellas ... even novels, if the fit takes me so.

Just how keen is that knife? I have a 50 worder up on Gabriel's Trumpet - I know I could develop that into a 500 000 word novel, because I almost did.

Angels are so careless, even the archangels ...

so where does this "original" versus "previously published" knife cut?
N. Mamatas
6.  ThrowawayContact
Wednesday May 05, 2010 04:28pm EDT
Must submissions go through gmail? I prefer to avoid gmail as a matter of privacy.
N. Mamatas
7.  Myst44
Thursday May 06, 2010 04:49am EDT
@3,4

So he went out of his cave,

and came back with AutoSave!
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
8.  pnh
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday May 06, 2010 06:31pm EDT
Aladdin_Sane: A 5,000-word story expanded from a 50-word piece of "flash" fiction is obviously a new piece of work, as far as we're concerned. But we're not going to venture to draw exact lines.

Throwaway Contact: Not only do we require that all submissions be scanned by Gmail's servers, we also copy everything we receive to the orbiting Google surveillance satellites, via the uplink facility on the roof of the Flatiron Building. (It's where the dirigible mooring mast used to be.) For this, Eric Schmidt pays us in gold bars that he's personally removed from Fort Knox. On the level and on the square!
Nicole LeBoeuf-Little
9.  NicoleJLeBoeuf
VIEW ALL BY · Friday May 07, 2010 03:41pm EDT
@3,4, pace 7,

He could write and delete
hundred-thou words a week...
Clifton Royston
10.  CliftonR
VIEW ALL BY · Saturday May 08, 2010 02:47am EDT
ThrowawayContact:
Avoiding Gmail might indeed make sense for personal mail you're concerned about keeping private - but does it make sense to worry about the privacy of mail that you are sending there specifically in the hope of getting it published on the Internet?
N. Mamatas
11.  fly46
Monday May 10, 2010 12:15pm EDT
Clifton - it's still our writing, whether we want it published online or at Random House. And the privacy issues stretch farther than your characters.

Your comment sounds a little... um... degrading towards publishing online. Like it's not good enough if its not in print.
Mitch Wagner
12.  MitchWagner
VIEW ALL BY · Monday May 10, 2010 01:27pm EDT
Does the submissions email account send out any kind of auto-receipt? I sent in a submission the day this post went live, but never heard anything back, and these days I worry in that situation that an e-mail might have gotten lost in spam filters.
N. Mamatas
13.  Dannygirl
Tuesday May 11, 2010 01:06pm EDT
How long is the estimated response time to a submission?

And do you respond to all submissions, or should we expect no reply=not interested?

Thank you.
Ashton Jones
14.  Ashton_Jones
VIEW ALL BY · Saturday May 15, 2010 04:33pm EDT
@ Dannygirl

This is a professional publication, so I'm sure they send out notifications if a submission is rejected.

Tor has historically had a fairly long response time, though hopefully this new system will improve that. I wouldn't really worry about your submission until you haven't heard anything for a couple of months. Don't bug the editors before then because their hands are full with sorting through piles and piles of awful manuscripts. Just be patient, it's the nature of this business.
N. Mamatas
15.  Dannygirl
Monday May 31, 2010 05:21pm EDT
piles and piles of awful manuscripts

Please, let's not be rude to each other by calling slush pile submissions "awful". Some may be. Some may not be. But it's no favor to new authors to make that assumption.

I asked, because I never received any reply to a regular submission I made to Tor more than a year ago... and neither did a fellow author. So I didn't know what the procedure here would be.
Josh Roseman
16.  doorock42
VIEW ALL BY · Monday May 31, 2010 07:54pm EDT
Is there a "queries" address where we can e-mail once we've submitted? Or should we query the main address noted above?
Gabriele Campbell
17.  G-Campbell
VIEW ALL BY · Monday May 31, 2010 09:34pm EDT
Now, if only the Idea Fairy would send me a short story for a change, instead of trilogies. ;)
Liz Gorinsky
18.  TooMuchExposition
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday June 01, 2010 05:57pm EDT
Oh, my, we seem to have gotten some questions here. Let me catch up:

MitchWagner: No, there's no autoresponse right now. We could set one up, but it would probably trigger even if something went into the spam filter, so I think we've got to stick with the standard wait-and-query method.

Dannygirl: We will definitely reply as soon as we know we won't be taking a particular submission. The response time is a moving target--especially so at the moment--but I can tell you that we're a week or two shy of being done with 2009 and that the only things left are the twenty or so submissions in our second-look piles. Once we clear that hurdle, we'll make an announcement in twitterland. I do fear that we may have lost track of some submissions we got before the move to gmail, but at least once we can let people know that we've cleared 2009, they can let us know if they think we're wrong.

Ashton_Jones / Dannygirl: Just to fend off further confusion, we want to be clear that the submission process for Tor bears no relation to the process for Tor.com. The Tor Books submission guidelines are at http://us.macmillan.com/Content.aspx?publisher=torforge&id=255#ctl00_cphContent_ctl30_lblQuestion, and they explicitly say, "If you have not heard back from us after six months, please resubmit."

Doorock42: You can query at the same address. Right now we're about six months behind, so if you query any sooner than four months out, it will most likely just be a "haven't gotten to it yet."
N. Mamatas
19.  dannygirl
Tuesday June 01, 2010 06:17pm EDT
Thanks for the clarification.

A nice editor at ACE/ROC agreed to look at the novel length submission I suspect got mislaid at "regular" Tor um...a year and 4 months ago. I'll give her a decent chance before I re-submit the work again elsewhere. But thanks.
Alison Wells
20.  abwells
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 06, 2010 02:27am EDT
Does uploaded on your own blog for peer review constitute published? Thanks
N. Mamatas
21.  kakapo
Wednesday July 14, 2010 10:01pm EDT
Could you please put a link to the submissions guidelines somewhere on the main page? Not having one kind of gives the impression that you don't actually WANT submissions, which is a shame.
Irene Gallo
22.  Irene
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday July 15, 2010 07:53pm EDT
Kakapo: Submission guidelines are now permanently on the footer.
N. Mamatas
24.  Mina Bo
Thursday July 22, 2010 08:33pm EDT
Hello, do you accept fantasy novels more than 100,000 words?
Sebastian Eklund
25.  sabbersolo
VIEW ALL BY · Friday July 23, 2010 04:38pm EDT
Hi there! I'm wondering if Tor.com allows for multiple submissions?
N. Mamatas
26.  Jeff Allan Brown
Saturday July 24, 2010 07:38pm EDT
Hi, I'm an author that has written a pretty far out sci-fi fantasy adventure and would love to be featured on your site. If interested, please contact me. You may google my book, it is Floom Shroom the Battling Mushroom. Thank you
N. Mamatas
27.  Lisa von Biela
Saturday July 31, 2010 03:56pm EDT
Hi,

I submitted a piece ("Hooked") in late October 2009. Haven't heard anything one way or the other. Queried in June, queried in July--no response to either query, either. Beginning to wonder if you're even getting my emails, hence my posting here. Any way to check, or should I just resubmit?

Thanks,

Lisa von Biela
N. Mamatas
30.  BigDave
Thursday August 19, 2010 08:50pm EDT
I'm just curious, really: Your rates seem much, much higher than other online publishers I've seen. For instance, if I submitted a 3,000 word story to you and Strangehorizons, you're paying five times their rate per word.

I'm not complaining, mind, and I'm sure your standards are VERY high, but I'd argue a lot of the professional magazines have equally high standards. This is more than /print/ magazines, by far.

So like I say, just curious. How come?
N. Mamatas
31.  StartEric
Sunday August 22, 2010 04:05pm EDT
I doubt you'll get an answer. Who knows if they're even reading what is being sent. I sent something last year and nothing.
Kyle Aisteach
32.  kyleaisteach
VIEW ALL BY · Wednesday August 25, 2010 12:24pm EDT
As of today (August 25), Duotrope's Digest has had responses reported from Tor.com as recently as 10 June 2010. They also report the most recently submitted item to have received a response as submitted 24 March 2010. Clearly, at least some stories have been getting read. However, since (according to the comments here) they were a week or two shy of being done with 2009 on June 1, if you submitted in 2009 and haven't heard anything, you may want to query. (I recommend using the subject line "QUERY: Missing Response" so whoever is reading the e-mail knows instantly it's not spam and isn't a submission, though I'd love to see the editors post specific guidelines for queries [HINT HINT]. Also -- though those of you commenting here probably don't need to hear this -- be polite in your query and acknowledge that the problem may be on your end if you want to get a response to it.)

Just for guidance, Duotrope's Digest also reports only 12 responses (and no acceptances) in the past 12 months, but 102 pending submissions. The oldest pending submission has been waiting 270 days. Duotrope's statistics are only comprised of writers who choose to report, of course. My experience with publications that share their own statistics is that the actual number of pending submissions tends to be 5-10x what is reported to Duotrope.

I think it's safe to say that there's still a serious backlog.
Liz Gorinsky
33.  TooMuchExposition
VIEW ALL BY · Wednesday August 25, 2010 11:41pm EDT
Irene just let me know that we've had a few comments piling up here. Thanks for your patience.

abwells: I'm afraid if it's available somewhere in full, it counts as published.

John Vincent Vale: We're asking for electronic exclusive for a year, non-exclusive after that, and the right (with additional royalties) to include in a Best of Tor.com antho if we ever do one.

Mina Bo / Jeff Alan Brown: Sorry, Tor.com is exclusively a short story publisher at this point.

sabbersolo: A few people have been doing this, but we'd really prefer people submitted one at a time--it slows down the entire pile and seems unfair to others.

I just responded to Lisa Von Biela privately, but I'll mention that her query prompted us to realize that we didn't really have an adequate system for dealing with queries--I respond to all the ones I notice, usually within a week or so, but there were clearly some that were slipping through the cracks. I've added some new filters that I hope will deal with this, and we'll also address it in our submissions guidelines mark 2.

BigDave: I don't think this is the place to get into our finances, but one thing that is certainly true is that Tor.com is an experimental wing of a large publishing corporation (though, we hope, with a great big soul) and the excellent Strange Horizons is entirely driven by donations.

StartEric: We are certainly reading--admittedly slowly, but we're two full-time editors doing this in whatever spare moments we can grab. Given that we have about a dozen submissions left in '09, it seems likely that yours was overlooked somehow. Please feel free to resubmit.

kyleaisteach: As you can tell from my response to Lisa above, we hadn't really thought about the need for query filters--I've been trying to catch them by eye, but clearly a few have gotten through (usually the ones that aren't clearly labeled). We'll definitely address this in the next version of the subguidelines.
Dennis Egan
34.  degan
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday August 31, 2010 11:25am EDT
Here’s a simple but not necessarily easy question. If a story has been podcast as an audio but never published in print do you considered it published?
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