Heads Up: Harper Voyager calls for unagented submissions

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Paul

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Ok, it's that time of the night.

If HV are reading submission by submission, then the charts below make sense. Aint no rocket science. Or am I missing something....lol.

eta. the only apparent anomaly is Urban Fantasy....

eta2. The genre seems to be the relevant element, which makes sense. Of course, the sample size is pretty small.

eta3. Now if Omnigon was to update his genre/rejection chart....
genres-rejected_zpsfddcfac3.png

 
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Sochitelya

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I have to admit I'm a little bit bummed that they still have so many yet to even read. Nothing against them (I know they're working as hard as they can, and that's a whole lot of words to go through) but I was feeling hopeful and now I'm just kinda... meh on it? I guess we'll just have to continue to wait and see. No rejection yet; I can relax for the weekend.
 

BillBlume

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I have to admit I'm a little bit bummed that they still have so many yet to even read. Nothing against them (I know they're working as hard as they can, and that's a whole lot of words to go through) but I was feeling hopeful and now I'm just kinda... meh on it? I guess we'll just have to continue to wait and see. No rejection yet; I can relax for the weekend.

I don't know. I wouldn't take this as discouraging news. They are more than halfway there, after all. The first half also had the holidays to contend with. Lot of vacation time in that time frame.

I'm also starting to suspect the type of fantasy/sci-fi is a factor in the order of replies. Wouldn't it stand to reason they'd filter this to the appropriate editor? My point being is that the submissions then fall prey to all sorts of variables within each genre, because the editor for urban fantasy might handle things differently than the one for traditional fantasy. The urban fantasy editor might decide to start at the end of the submission period while the traditional fantasy editor might start with those submitted at the beginning of the process. Then editors in the other sub-genres might sort it by author or throw darts at a board. Just a thought.
 

CatherineS

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Maybe, Bill, but I bet no editors do any work whatsoever until after the subs are first vetted by interns/readers. The only point editors see them is once the subs hit the "maybe" pool, i.e. those already among the 543. Therefore, the filtering by genre is occurring after that point. Until now they may have been sorted slightly according to the interests of the readers, and one can imagine that some readers are faster and more selective than others.

I agree totally about your first point--it will go somewhat faster now that they're back from holidays.
 

Paul

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Ok, here's the submission date/rejection date details for you Omnigon....;)




SUB: 05 05 01 04 02 05 06 02 03 00 02 05 09 14 03

REJ : 01 01 01 02 01 00 03 00 00 00 01 02 02 05 01

DAT: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15



none were submitted on the 10th. The two rejections on the 12th as guesses, as poster dont know which work was rejected. (Also true for a couple here and there, ie authors unsure of rejection date) Generally ok though. (Yes, 14 submissions were made on the 14th. lol) No rejections for the 6th, 8th or 9th, but the genres are very mixed, so no patterns other than acceptance or rejection on receipt/ reading.

ETAS. Hmmm. Those numbers aren't adding up to Nick's totals. Still, they look kinda nice.
 
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Amadan

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I hope they are reading this thread and adjusting their notifications to screw with people. :D
 

CatherineS

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I'm pretty sure they are! Did you notice the sly reference in their update to not obsessing about the numbers?
 

Paul

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{As promised, an update on our digital submission status. (Please note, numbers are close but not perfectly exact, between repeated entries, etc. Please don’t freak out or obsess over the arithmetic…)
We received slightly over 4500 entries.
We have now responded to approximately 2220 entries that unfortunately were not for our list. This leaves us with roughly entries. Of those, about 543 are to be considered further, and just under 1800 still need to be read. So we are almost halfway through.
We will continue to read the remaining 2300+ entries as quickly as we can without sacrificing due consideration, and will update you again in a few weeks.} from the HV site.

Obsession? Who day talkin bout? LOL!

Funny thing is the numbers they give dont really make sense! lol.

Still ,main thing is they are more than/ less than (both are valid interpretations) half way through!
 

CatherineS

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Yes I had a giggle over that, because it sure did sound like they knew exactly what we were doing.
However you view the numbers, they've finished vetting 60% of them and have set aside a little under 20% of the ones that they've seen. If they keep to that rate, another 350 or so will move to the next stage. 900 is a lot to think seriously about. That's why I believe they haven't yet delved too deeply into most of the writing samples. The writing samples are what will likely break this 900 down even further. Meanwhile, I would guess that the 500+ have already been moved along down the pipeline, in other words to the editors themselves, time permitting.
 

Omnigon

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Now if Omnigon was to update his genre/rejection chart....

Omnigon has updated her genre rejection chart ;) as well as rejections by submission date. Nothing too different here, a couple of additions, clarifications. I also added a rejection by adult/YA genre, just for shiggles.

Remember these are just here for fun people, don't take them too seriously. :) The pool is far too small to have any real meaning to the overall submission numbers.

Now, for your viewing pleasure:

reject-by-genre_zps0147b164.png

By Genre^^

By Date

By Adult/ Ya Genre

Edit: For the sake of completeness, Total Responses by Date (rejections + review + whatever)
 
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CatherineS

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Cool, Omnigon! Thanks for all the hard work.

I was going back and looking over Michael's No Response tabulations (which need to be updated because several of those folks have checked in over these past two weeks.) I did a tally, trying to recall offhand the names that I recognized from recent posts. When accounting for those, roughly 12-13 adult subs are still unaccounted for (hard to be sure when they don't specify). If you generalize that at least 50% of those missing have likely already been rejected, then one can visualize the chart you made showing rejections by YA versus Adult, with at least 6 more rejections, if not nearly all 12. That would cause the graph to more closely reflect the percentages that HV released.

Oh, did you mean for the dates to be like that on your last chart (Total Responses by Date)?
 

Doctor J

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Just to enlarge your dataset a little, I submitted YA SF on the 10th and have heard nothing at all yet.

Isn't this just so much fun? :D
 

Eliza C

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No word yet. Must be one of the 1800 so, as I suspected, no news is no news.
 

SKDaley

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And then there were 1800...

Hey, the odds are improving! Good luck to all of you still in the running; I have picked myself up, dusted myself off, and gone back to query hell.
 

Paul

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Very quiet day...
Almost - almost, too quite....


lol. nah, I'd say it'd be another week before there's new rejections. but when they come it'll be close to a thousand.
Then another batch.

Then an update mid-feb on the remaining 628.

and so forth.


(Paul; Soothsayer: Shaman: Foreteller of Futures: Poet.
 

G. Applejack

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Almost - almost, too quite....


lol. nah, I'd say it'd be another week before there's new rejections. but when they come it'll be close to a thousand.
Then another batch.

Then an update mid-feb on the remaining 628.

and so forth.


(Paul; Soothsayer: Shaman: Foreteller of Futures: Poet.



I'd love to think that, but it took them just over 3 months to whittle it down to 1800. I think we're going to be in for a much longer wait.
 

CatherineS

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Hmmmm, Michael. Careful......thou art dancing close to a pretty thin line. Anonimity in this case might have been advised. Not that you don't represent all of our general frustrations, but look at it this way: it takes months, nay years to attract the attention of agents, and more months if not years to possibly snag a good publisher, after which (from what I've seen just today) another year and a half to see yourself in print. Miss Harbour received a trip through the wormhole by comparison; perhaps some of us here still may. I'm settling back in the proverbial barcalounger and hoping for the same ride, and I'll wait here all year if I have to.

The exclusion rule expired. Keep querying and keep writing. :) And be careful because, at the risk of sounding paranoid, I'm guessing they ARE casting their eyes here once in a while. Our collective hand-wringing does get pretty amusing, and as far as I know we're the only group posting specifically about this contest.
 

Specialfae

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I have flipped the 'hour' glass over and tried not to obsess over it (failing miserably, but still...). I have assumed that I am still in the slush pile based on the fact that I haven't had an "R"and also assuming that the 500+ still being considered would have gotten an email advising them of that status.

Then, last night, I had a dream that everyone on our list had their replies and I was still waiting. More time passed and I finally got brave enough to email HV and politely ask 'what about me?'. They answered back advising me that I was actually one of the first Rs sent out.

Paranoia is an interesting state of mind, ha ha
 
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