When I started my brief run as co-publisher of a small press magazine, my wife was handed the job of Submissions Editor. It was later passed to me when she discovered that she did not enjoy having to reject so many pieces of heartfelt work that we received. When the task of looking at submissions fell to me, I found that I usually didn’t have that particular problem. I was a great believer in form letters, and I would enthusiastically (if not gleefully) go through the submissions pile (sometimes known in the industry as the Slush Pile) looking for reasons to reject stories. I would then sign the rejection form letter and off it would go. Handwritten rejections? Not from me. I barely had time to deal with the paperwork for the acceptances. The rejections got the form letter, and I slept with a clean conscience. After all, it was up to the writers to sell their product to me, not the other way around. If I made a certain decision, there were people that I might owe an explanation to: My partner on the magazine, our readers, the owners of the stores who distributed us, the contributors whose work we did accept. But I never felt that I owed anything to the writers whose work I wasn’t interested in using.

Still, there were occasional moments when I would be tempted to break the pattern and make an effort to reach out to someone who had sent us something we couldn’t use. The reason was that not everything that we rejected was bad. Some of it was actually quite good. Unfortunately, there are times when good writing must be rejected along with bad writing. This can make things more difficult for the writer, who is likely to be looking at the same rejection form letter regardless of the reason the piece was rejected. The reasons for rejection come in many varieties because the editors have considerations beyond just the overall quality of the work.

The most frequent of these is length. A piece can be excellent, but if it is very long, the editor has to weigh it against the attention span of the readers, as well as the magazine’s ability to present a variety of different pieces. A very long horror story in a magazine that publishes fantasy, SF, and horror might be looked upon as tilting the balance too much in favor of one genre. Likewise, given the choice of fitting one good long piece or two or three equally good shorter pieces, the editor may choose the three over the one. A piece that is too short can cause problems as well. Sometimes there just isn’t a niche in the magazine for a vignette or short-short if the magazine does not have other works of comparable length to balance it out. As an editor I liked continuity, so I preferred not to present a format only once.

Some pieces are just not right for their market, no matter how good they are. My magazine, Kinships, published the standard array of genre fiction (fantasy/SF/horror), nonfiction articles on certain topics, and a small amount of poetry. The poetry was the area in which I had the most rejections of this type. People who clearly had no idea what our magazine was all about would send us poetry of just about any style or subject matter. I was not exceedingly picky. The poetry did not have to be directly related to the style of fiction we were publishing. But it had to at least, in some aspect, have the right flavor. Much of what was sent my way didn’t. And so, good or not, it was rejected.

Sometimes, the writer just gets unlucky. Stories can be rejected because they are too similar to another already accepted piece. Even if they just share a basic theme, any conflict can lead to a rejection. The editor’s job is not just to judge each piece on its own merit. Rather, the editor is working on a long-term game plan to put together a complete quality package. Or rather, a series of complete, quality packages. There’s no way to guarantee against this type of rejection, but if helps if you stay away from themes that seem overly popular in the fiction that is being released at the time. Don’t draw your inspiration from whatever story or movie has “buzz” at the moment (even if that “buzz” has not reached the mainstream). Keep your work original and you’re less likely to find it rejected because someone else did the same thing first.

Finally, every magazine is subject to a set of pressures from readers, distributors, and retailers. One store was hesitant to carry our magazine due to some foul language in one of the stories. How much of an issue was this? Well, when you consider that this was only the third or fourth store that we’d discussed distribution with, it certainly raised some legitimate concerns. Editors will almost never bother to ask an author to make changes in a piece. It’s just easier to reject the story and accept something else in its place. Submissions were always plentiful during my stint as editor. Good quality submissions made up a small percentage of the whole, but they were still plentiful enough that I had to reject plenty of decent material.

When that rejection letter arrives on your doorstep, you should be wondering two things. First, give the work’s quality some serious scrutiny. But then take another look at the market and see if you can find any reasons why your work might not have been a good fit for that particular magazine. By doing so, you can begin the process of locating a market that fits your piece better, hopefully a place where your story can finally find a home.