Wait time for Stories

I've sent a story out to a number of journals to be published about five months ago. I've heard back from most of the journals with rejections but there are still two who haven't responded. Should I assume that I will not hear from these places or continue to wait? Five months seems like a long time, but I have heard it could take up to a year to hear back. Do some places just simply don't respond instead of sending a rejection letter?

Do some places just simply don't respond instead of sending a rejection letter?

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Yup. But what you can do is send a follow-up by snail mail or email, to see the status of your ms. I usually wait two months longer than what is stated in their writer's guidelines, or if not mentioned, six months from submission. There have also been times when my follow-up wasn't answered.

Some of your markets may just be dead (no longer exisiting). Some continued to be listed for some time after closing.

You should send out a followup letter now, but five moinths is not a terribly long wait. There are many margazine that require at least six months to respond, and some few take nearly a year. In really extreme cases, I've waited almost three years.

I sold one story that had been out so long that when the acceptance letter came I couldn't even remember writing a story with the title listed in the letter. I had to look through my records to make sure there hadn't been a mistake.

There are also many magazines that only read and respond during certain months, so the wait at these can be very long.

It is time to send followup letters, but not time to write them off. There's nothing at all unusual about a magazine taking longer than five months to respond. Sometime smuch, much longer.

As a writer, it's best to spend all your time working on new stories, and pretty much none of your time thinking about stories you've already submitted.