[Submission tracker] Submittable (formerly Submishmash)

I've had a short story accepted with this method, and have received rejections from it, too. It seems to work, but still doesn't prevent journals from taking ridiculously long in getting back to you. Some charge for the service, some don't. Here's a list:

http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/journals-accepting-electronic-submissions.html

Actually, it looks like it isn't for writers, but for publishers and agencies to keep track of submissions received.

I've only ever used it when directed to by a journal or a publisher. It's worked fine for me, and I've had acceptances and rejections both (only one magazine never responded). As far as I can tell, it's just a way of keeping submissions together and giving a (vague) sense of where your submission is in the slush pile.

JanetO said:

I've had a short story accepted with this method, and have received rejections from it, too. It seems to work, but still doesn't prevent journals from taking ridiculously long in getting back to you. Some charge for the service, some don't.

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I agree. I've never had any problems, but responses do seem to take longer with certain journals.

I have submitted a couple of things through this.
I'd never thought to actually check on anything until now.

I used it yesterday to submit to a magazine that will probably take a couple of months to get back to me.
I doubt that they have even noticed my submission has arrived yet.

But on Submishmash it already says 'in progress'.
(my others all say 'declined' )

So, my guess is 'in progress' just means that you have sent it and it hasn't been accepted or rejected yet.

For your submission, the recent responses at Duotrope are probably a better way of judging how long you will have to wait.

A writer in my writer's group mentioned submishmash and I wanted to find out what people's thoughts were on the service especially in regards to how your submission looks on the formatting end of things.

A number of the above posters mentioned response times don't appear any faster through the service but I'm wondering for those who use it do you A) find it makes the submission process easier or about the same as submitting by e-mail/snailmail? and B) do you find an number of places prefer to use submishmash for submissions?

In-Progress Status

Seems like an increasing number of short story markets are using submishmash. The amount of time it takes to respond still varies widely by publication.

As far as status meanings, on their forums they say: "In-progress is just a generic term that means an editor has begun looking at the piece or it's been assigned.. something has happened to it. In snail mail terms, it means they've taken it out of the envelope."

Lillie said:

For your submission, the recent responses at Duotrope are probably a better way of judging how long you will have to wait.

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Yeah. I've had rather quick responses from some, and others (say The Literary Review) took ten months. Some will have you "in progress" forever. Others will only have you in that stage for a week or a couple of days. For response times, it really depends on the journal, and Duotrope is a very good estimation tool, especially if they (the journals) don't give you a rough time when you should expect to hear back from them. About 1/4 of the submissions I've sent out have been through Submishmash. I've had no problems with the engine, but all of the acceptances I've gotten have been through email submissions. I tend not to do snail mail.