Do you pay for accepted works or have you become a paying market? It would be nice to tell readers this in your guides.  There is really no excuse for being evasive about your guidelines.  These are basic things that need to be in your guidelines.  Why do half you editors out there have to be admonished to put basic stuff in your guides like pay and rights issues?

And if I've asked before, well...i don't memorize guidelines, so it would help to just be communicative to writers and save extra emailing back and forth.  Though since so many editors choose not to let the writers know if they pay or not, I'm creating a NO PAY journals in my email account so I don't have to keep asking.

If you don't pay, please don't give me that tired cliche-ridden lecture that small presses don't pay like I've gotten from a number of small  press eds...I could give you list that's very long of presses that are small and pay something.

Some pubs. that do pay something don't state it in their guidelines, too.

Also, some eds. who don't state their full guides make me feel like I'm the only writer to ask these questions.  Yet any writer who submits work to you or another publication without knowing the pay, rights, and reprint & simultaneous sub. issues, is very naive, indeed, and is not looking out for their interests.

Speaking of Right Hand Pointing...I'm tempted to point my right finger at you for your willfully evasive guidelines.  Can you guess which one?  You put a 23 page slide show full of cutesy wee-zee stuff, but you don't have the professionalism to tell writers if they get paid for their works or not that I could find.  Shame! Shame! Shame!

Thanks,

Roy



We decided not to write Roy back and tell him we don't pay.   Sometimes the best thing to do is raise your hands in the air (like you just don't care) and back slowly away.


Here's one that's got me baffled.  Really baffled.

Dear Editor,

Thanks for nothing.  You rejected my poem because you have no boldness.  And, it is obvious from your site that you are a self-hating Jew.

**** you.

(Name withheld)

This one is fascinating on many levels.  Let me mention two.

1.  I have no record of ever receiving his poem.  Which is  a shame because, given the hate mail, I'd love to know what I rejected.  I'll bet I made the right call. We'll never know.

2.  Self-hating...well, I don't think so.  Jewish?  That's the part that's really interesting:
    
    a.  I'm Catholic.  
    b.  Putting that aside, how in the world would anyone form that self-hating Jew theory from the archives of Right Hand Pointing?  Theories anyone?



Ah, here's another one.  I did a call for submissions for a humor issue and didn't get much in.  Turned out I missed a step in that original call for submissions, which was the problem.  Anyway, I did a 2nd call for submissions for the humor issue, which prompted this.

Dear Dale,

Hey
You rejected mine and went so far as to say it wasn't even funny 

Hm.  There may have been a connection between me thinking it wasn't funny and rejecting it for the humor issue.