Circlet Press

Circlet is small, but with a good reputation in their niche. Cecilia Tan is the founder and editor. She's great to work with. Be aware that the publisher can be very slow to respond.

Response times with Circlet get measured in years, sometimes.

It depends on the anthology. I submitted to a Circlet anthology in 2006. The projected response time was for late 2006/early 2007. The acceptance came this week. This is not unusual with them.

And yet, they are an excellent market, Cecilia Tan is an outstanding editor, and she knows how to market her books. So in spite of the delays, they are at the top of my list for SFF/erotica.

I have a tendency to buy anthologies Tan has edited. She knows her stuff.

veinglory said:

I have a tendency to buy anthologies Tan has edited. She knows her stuff.

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Agreed. There's just nothing else on the market quite like their anthologies. I've enjoyed them very much.

Unimportant said:

In my experience, a novel length ms will not get a response from Circlet (at least not within a year or more). Short stories subbed for a specific antho will get a response time pretty much as stated in the guidelines. I subbed one flash story to their Friday-Fic blog submission call and got a response within days.

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Circlet doesn't accept unsolicited novel-length submissions (so says the guidelines), so that may be your problem here.

Does this publisher still send out rejections and acceptance letters slowly, or has their speed picked up some?

Some numbers:
Short story submitted 9/10 (right before the anthology deadline)
Acceptance email 11/21

Here are some more numbers:
1/28/12 sent sub
8/19/12 acceptance
8/21/12 contract
10/28 request from editor to make changes
10/29 revised story sent back

Still no word since then, and no idea when it might be coming out. It was ghost-themed, so maybe Halloween?

As an aside, I had subbed another story elsewhere and didn't hear back for months and months, even no response to queries. I spotted a sub call on Circlet that the story would work for and pulled it from the first place, sent it to Circlet. A week later I heard the original antho was delayed, but back on (and here I will be waiting the long wait once more). Palm to forehead.

It really depends on the editor and his/her work load...

Yikes, that's a brutal wait! I still haven't heard anything since the acceptance email I got in November -- no contract and no edits. There aren't any other markets that I have in mind for the story (alien-gendered menage short fiction is a pretty specific niche) so I'm just letting it be for now, but it's been jarring in comparison with the short story turnaround time at Dreamspinner or Torquere.

Circlet is very slow. They always have been. I've been trying to get additional copies of a print anthology I had a story in and got a response from them in 3 months. I requested info on more books than the number of copies they replied about--they only gave an option for ordering 2 and I wanted 6--and haven't gotten a reply in the more than the 6 months since I emailed with the corrected number. I've tried three times now. I've given up on the order entirely.

For the record, I had a story accepted there in 1997 that didn't see publication until 2001. This is all too common with Circlet.

Sweet holy moley. Four years?? That's beyond unacceptable, and firmly in the realm of "no way in hell."

michael_b said:

For the record, I had a story accepted there in 1997 that didn't see publication until 2001. This is all too common with Circlet.

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That would have been before they rebooted as an epublisher, which appears to have sped things up at least somewhat -- comparing submission call dates with publication dates shows recent releases coming 1 to 1.5 years after the close of submissions (Like a Coming Wave, Like a Breath of Flame, and Like a Midsummer's Night were all released in the last half of 2012 and fit this pattern).

Still definitely on the slow end! But not quite as dire as they apparently were fifteen years ago.

LaylahHunter said:

Yikes, that's a brutal wait! I still haven't heard anything since the acceptance email I got in November -- no contract and no edits. There aren't any other markets that I have in mind for the story (alien-gendered menage short fiction is a pretty specific niche) so I'm just letting it be for now, but it's been jarring in comparison with the short story turnaround time at Dreamspinner or Torquere.

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That wasn't for "Wired Hard 5," was it? That's the one I subbed to in December. I guess you have to be willing to forget about whatever you send them and just move on with your writing life. Someday, you may have a surprise in your inbox.

hah, no, I doubt they've sent anything out for WH5 yet -- they extended the deadline to February 1st for subs there, so I doubt anyone will hear on that one for...quite a while. (The one I've heard back on was Like a Love Triangle, tho I have a sub in for WH5 now too.)

I got my rejection from WH5 with helpful commentary in mid-December.

The acceptances I've recieved, though often very kind (I mean, it's always nice to get an acceptance, but the acceptances I get from Circlet's microfiction & antho editors are always so passionate and excited sounding!), do take between 3-6 months to show up. Except I once had a flash fiction accepted within a day.

From my personal experience, a short story I sold back at the beginning of 2012 was paid in June, and I recieved the PDF copy for copy editing/rereading in December 2012. The short stories I've recieved acceptances for in the second half of 2012 are still, for the most part, awaiting contract.

I'm comforted to hear this is not unusual with them, and hey, at least this way I know I will be getting a steady stream of publishing credits for the next few years!

Got a lovely rejection for WH5 today, so only 9 weeks!

I think the editor must be making progress through the WH5 subs pretty quickly now! I got an acceptance for it this weekend