Author: M. McNulty

Short story selections for the Bubble Off Plumb anthology have been completed! We will be notifying authors no later than 10/16/2018.

We selected 27 stories, of the 921 submitted. The response was hugely gratifying and we’re shifting gears to produce the final version for publication.

The stories submitted were at a very high level of quality, in our opinion. Below is an illustration of the ranking distribution. On this scale, a 5 means a workmanlike effort without the intangibles like a compelling concept or complete story. A 10 is something we would be able to publish with only token changes. Lower ratings could have any number of failings, but usually it meant a lack of coherence or facility with language. There weren’t many in that category.

In short, we chose 27 of a perfectly suitable 150 stories (9s and 10s). Not a terrible result!

We will be reaching out to every author over the next few days. We appreciate the response received and want to thank every author who resonated bubble off plumb.

Bubble Off Plumb story submissions were accepted through midnight September 30, 2018. Some initial metrics for the call are in hand, as follows.

Authors submitted 921 stories, comprising more than 2.5 million words, which is a great response by any standard. Authors from more than 15 countries participated. 13 stories, so far, have been withdrawn due to the authors successfully placing them elsewhere.

The editors are working to finish reading everything and will be making their selections no later than October 16, 2018. All submissions will receive a response.

Submissions for the Bubble Off Plumb anthology will be accepted through the end of today, September 30, 2018. The deciding qualification metric will be the email date-stamp our server assigns upon receipt, so please do not wait until the last minute.

The BoP editorial team will make their story selections by 10/15/2018. Notices will be coming out as soon as possible thereafter.

The response has been very gratifying and we’re looking forward to the homestretch to publication.

Submissions for the Bubble Off Plumb anthology have reached another milestone; two million words, distributed over more than 700 short stories. The quality has been overwhelmingly good, and we’re seeing many talented authors out there.

The editorial team is reading as fast as we can, and the end-zone keeps moving. We’re gratified but too tired to reflect much upon it.

Only twelve more days to submit the strange story rattling about in your cupboards. You know the one we’re talking about!

It has come to our attention BT Internet rejects emails from the mail server we use (shared with many other hosting clients of 1and1 Internet), without error code. This affects authors who have submitted stories using a contact email address from BT Internet.

While sympathetic, we do not plan on spending the time chasing down whether the emails are being accepted, if there is no response within a reasonable time, we’ll simply move to the next story on the list.

It is the author’s responsibility to ensure we have an email which works. We send an acknowledgment-of-receipt email for each submission. If that email from us wasn’t received, you should check whether or not your provider unilaterally filters email traffic.

Please feel free to contact me with any changes to email addresses, should it be necessary.

M. McNulty

We’ve received multiple questions on the topics of simultaneous submissions and stories which exceed the word count limit, so we’ve updated the rules on details page.

Regarding simultaneous submissions, we consider it only fair authors be able to do so. The inconvenience we experience with such a withdrawal, is more than offset by the knowledge the author has found paid work, which is a good thing in and of itself.

Word count winds up being a bit more complicated in practice. It is a judgment call as to whether the story absolutely needs the extra words. A great story will trump the rules. We’ve limited the advance to $150, which corresponds to the 5K word count limit, however the downstream royalty calculation would take into account the actual word count for larger stories.

As an example, a selected story of 6,000 words would generate a $150 advance plus a pro rata authors’ share of downstream royalties. Assuming a total word count of 75,000; the story would be accorded an 8% share of the Contributor’s Pool (6000/75000). Details contained within the model contract.

If there are additional questions, please feel free to contact us.

 

Today we passed a milestone for the call; submission of stories to date cumulatively totals more than one million words. The review team has their work cut out for them, but reading so many great stories is a pleasure in and of itself.

Feel free to stress-test our prescription eyewear with more submissions, we’re committed to finding the stories which perfectly fit the concept.

The target word count for this first volume is 75,000.

Back to my reading!