Ann gets about 250 to 300 a week for Weird Tales and has no problem with electronic submissions.

Jeff

I’m not offended at all, and there was no offense intended by my post. In fact, looking back at it, my post addresses what happens at F&SF, Asimov’s and Analog much, much more directly than I’d intended.

It was my intention to address electronic vs. paper submissions outside the context of those three publications. As you quite correctly say, I’ve not worked for any of the Big Three and no-one in the field deals with the volume of submissions that you do. That makes an enormous difference.

I’d also happily concede that the effect of an x% increase in submissions due to shifting to electronic submissions would be far more difficult to cope with when you handle the volume that you, Sheila and Stan do. I would say that for most everyone else – who deal with far, far fewer subs – the case is harder to maintain.

I do think there is a case to be made that electronic submissions can lead to an improvement in management, rather than a deterioration. I also think you can deal with reading onscreen. So, while I most likely would revise what I’ve said if I had that experience, I would say that there are benefits to be had, though they very well may not be sufficient to justify a change at the offices of the Big Three (something I’ve not advocated).

– Jonathan

No offense intended, but your experience does not include running a magazine the size of F&SF or ASIMOV’S. Your generalizations are, in my opinion, incomplete and inaccurate. I’m glad e-subs work for you and I’ll be happy to listen to you tell me sometime about all their virtues, but I think that if you spent a month working in my office or in the Dell magazines offices, you’d go back and revise the fifth and sixth paragraphs of your post.

—Gordon V.G.

By the way, somebody mentioned the Scalzi piece on the F&SF forums, and Gordon responded that he sticks with paper, largely because of the sheer volume of submissions he gets:

“…there are several reasons and the biggest one is that there are *many* people submitting manuscripts and few of us here reading them. I remain unconvinced that we could install an electronic system that would let us handle our volume of submissions effectively.

“At least once a year I speak with an editor who does take e-subs and ask them about their system, what they like about it, what they don’t. Most of them don’t accept submissions that are longer than 5,000 words. None of them say the volume of submissions they receive matches ours. None of them have convinced me that we could make e-subs work for us.”

http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=330&replies=24#post-3923

I’m not trying to stir the pot or anything, but it’s an interesting discussion.