Crossed Genres' declared response times

vintager

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Hi folks,

So here's the deal: on the Cr0ssed Genre$' guidelines page, it's stated that "turnaround time for responses is one month following the end of your submission month (e.g. if you submit during September, we’ll respond no later than October 31.). Turnaround is usually faster than this (!)." Which means 60 days tops, which is also what The Grinder lists as 'Est'.

However, according to the very same Grinder, their mean average is 67 days, and last time a group of folks got their batch of rejections at 80+.

The question is: to query or not to query? I've submitted something to them, I haven't even got a confirmation email, the query regarding the submission status is somewhere in the limbo. What's the deal with those guys, anybody has solid intel?

Sincerely,
Yare
 

vintager

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Well I'm an idiot. I've protected the post itself against the all-seeing Google, but not the topic name.
 

Fruitbat

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@Vintager, I don't think you said anything you'd have to worry about. According to Duotrope:

Accuracy
We have received 388 reports within the past 12 months, not including pending responses (see below). The more responses reported, the more accurate the info.
Days Reported
8 min | 67.1 mean avg | 67.0 median | 121 max days (16.6 std dev)
Responses
93.30 %
Acceptances
1.55 % (53.5 avg. days per acceptance) !
Rejections
91.75 % (65.7 avg. days per rejection) | 3.09 % personal, 86.52 % form, 10.39 % unspecified
Rewrite Requests
-
Non-Responses
6.70 %
Lost/Returned
3.09 % (84.5 avg. days before reporting submissions as lost or returned)
Never Responded
3.61 % (94.4 avg. days before reporting submissions as never responded)
Author Withdrawals
-
Pending
66 responses are pending (4 min | 74.0 mean avg | 49.5 median | 836 max days waiting | 115.0 std dev) !
Other Information

Do not query before 60 days have passed. (65.98 % of the responses reported to us for this market have taken longer than 60 days.)
Submissions are acknowledged within 1 day(s) on average.
Most recent response reported was received on 01 Jun 2015.
Responses have been received for submissions sent as recently as 16 May 2015
 
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vintager

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Thank you a great deal for the information! So they do acknowledge submissions. Damn.
 

ACFantasy

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Vintager:

Their web submission form is unreliable. I got a form response which acknowledged receiving several stories of mine but I never heard back in terms of acceptance/rejection, and when I queried them I learned they never got the stories after all (even though I had gotten acknowledgements). I got permission from Bart Leib, one of the editors, to just email my stories to them.

If you're planning on submitting anything else to them (and thus need to know now if they are getting the stories you send through the submission form), I'd query as soon as the month after the month in which you submitted is over. Otherwise, I'd wait.
 

JJ Litke

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Hmm, I've got a story that might be a good fit for their upcoming Anticipation theme. It's not very encouraging to hear that their submission form has problems, though.
 

vintager

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Not to worry. After reading ACFantasy's post I've sent an email to all of the three editors, asking what had become of my story :) In about four hours (!) I received an incredibly polite and friendly reply from K3lly J3nnings, stating that the story was indeed in their queue, and they were looking forward to reading it (a lie of course, but a nice touch nevertheless :)).
Conclusion: nice guys, shitty form, but there are workarounds. Should you receive no confirmation however, don't just wait 80 days, query them and, if no response comes, the editors.
 

WendyN

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Just throwing my experiences out there... the past few months, I definitely have NOT received confirmations acknowledging my submissions, BUT I have received responses (usually around the 80-90 day range). It seems that they've been behind their "60 days or less" response for the past five or six issues.