Editor At University Literary Magazine Left

AW Admin said:

I suggest you contact the University ASAP. There are very few lit mags run out of universities that are not student run periodicals. Is this a magazine/publication that you've actually seen?

Does it have it's own Website?

The more you post, the more odd it sounds. Please contact Victoria Strauss and Writer Beware; they are absolutely trustworthy and understand the necessity of keeping things confidential.

Click to expand...

Yes. I've already contacted the university and Victoria Strauss. The university immediately sent an automated message, saying that their offices were closed for Thanksgiving.

Yes. Before I submitted my work last year, I saw that the editor had published around 13 anthologies on Amazon, digitally, going back over a decade, published with the university's journal name. (And some people who bought the online editions did review them and said that they enjoyed reading the authors' work, getting to read work from a variety of international writers.) On the journal's Facebook page, previous authors who'd been published by the literary journal left comments thanking the editor for their contributor's copies and for being selected, again, that year.

I also found an old page on the university's site that explained that they also printed out physical copies where students and locals could pick up the journal, once it was printed, and that it was published by its students and the editor. So, I thought it was going to be legitimate and punctual because I didn't come across any negative problems or complaints from others who had been published, only positive praise.

Apparently, the publication used to have its own website, but for over a year, it has only had just one main page that has claimed they're "temporarily down while in the process of upgrading our site" and to "Please check back at a later date." But they haven't updated anything for over a year. There's also a Facebook page for the journal that hasn't been updated since January 2018, when the editor last updated it. But the editor already told me the journal has closed down.

I was correct that the university wouldn't be able to help. The editor's former university told me that they can't help, that it's between me and him because he's no longer an employee, there (and that they don't believe he has the right to publish my work if I want to withdraw it, as the university's literary magazine no longer exists.)

Still, I imagine it might've been helpful if they contacted him to let him know that he doesn't have the rights to the work from when he was employed, there.

Well, I'll see how this goes: the editor finally agreed to withdraw my work, but will list it as "withdrawn after acceptance" (because, according to him, since he'd publicly announced it'd be published in 2017, that counts as having been published.)

I'm kind of worried about that, though, whether it might make other professionals in the industry (i.e., literary magazine publishers, editors, agents, etc.) think I'd done something unprofessional and wrong by withdrawing my work (because I've read magazine editors say that they don't like it when writers do that and blacklist them), when, because the editor hadn't written to me or anyone else in months and moved, I'd thought the journal had been abandoned and cancelled. Wouldn't that also mean that other literary magazines wouldn't want to publish my piece if it's listed as "withdrawn after acceptance"? I thought, since the editor had only listed the title (as going to be published), that that wouldn't count as it being published.

veinglory said:

I really don't think you need to worry about that...

Click to expand...

I hope so.

Honestly, I've read and listened to interviews where agents and literary magazine editors complained about young writers being unprofessional in their dealings with them (including withdrawing their work after acceptance), so I'm worried about being placed in that category, too, since some say that they talk to each other about writers who are unprofessional, to warn each other. So, to me, it seemed as though an older editor's word would be more likely to be believed as being the more truthful, professional one, rather than a younger writer.

I'm kind of bothered by the fact that the editor still seems to feel that I was wrong to submit my work elsewhere and not continue to wait to hear from him for almost an entire year. He said he was just trying to do the defunct university journal a favor by publishing the work, elsewhere.

Oh, wow. Two years?

Thanks for mentioning what happened to you and that your career wasn't ruined due to that incident. I feel a bit better.

A couple of weeks ago, I was so shaken by this, that I was worrying about whether editors at traditional publishing houses might be similar, too (and that that's why having a literary agent is important: for incidences like this), especially after listening to a podcast by a literary agent who said that they've had to repeatedly send emails reminding publishers that they should've sent their clients' royalty earnings when they were contractually supposed to.