I don't want to query because I also have those stories on submission at other places. And my guess is that all it would do is result in another form rejection anyway. Do you guys always query if a submission seems to be taking longer than expected? I don't know if I could do it.
Yes, but not immediately. If the guidelines say something to the effect of, "please wait 60 days before querying," I'll wait 90-120. I keep an eye on Gr1nder and the market's social media to see how fast/slow reports seem to be coming in and if they announce any delays. Writing is so competitive that markets always get swamped no matter how much they try to overestimate the submissions they'll get. I try to keep that in mind and give them time on top of their minimum. Unless you have a particularly open market where their guidelines specifically say to query after a certain point (and I check their guidelines periodically while I'm waiting because sometimes they update them - I had a market once that extended their minimum query time halfway through the original time period, so I went with the new guidelines), rather than just saying querying becomes an option, I give some leeway.
Str@nge H0r1zons, for example, has this guideline:
We usually respond within a few weeks, but if you haven't heard from us within 40 days, please query immediately. You won't be rushing us along—most likely, we have responded, but the email's gone astray.
It's too bad more markets aren't like that, but alas. I almost never submit to markets that don't allow queries or may deny you by never responding to you because I don't feel it's fair or worth it to me. I cannot tie a story up indefinitely. I might as well query and get a rejection if that's what they're going to do so I can send it back out with no strings attached to someone else. More than likely (IMO), if a story has gone ages beyond the minimum time that it's okay to query and you haven't heard peep from the market (either to contact you directly or a general announcement on their social media to say they're behind), it's already been rejected or there was an error in it being received in the first place. I've run into that more than once and thank goodness I queried because I'd still have stories out today thanks to digital or human errors.
