We’re back! A little late today, but still here to answer more of your questions for the Editors of The Colored Lens.

Cory comments:
The Colored Lens is ranked within the top 25 markets on Duotrope for both “Fastest Fiction Market” as well as “Most Personable”. Both of these qualities are wonderful for new and established writers, especially those working toward that elusive first sale. Can you give any insight into what goes on behind the scenes to allow such speedy, and personal, responses to all (or most) of your submissions?
Dawn Lloyd – Our process is fairly simple and was designed for as fast a turnaround as possible. When an author submits a story, it is immediately visible to everyone in the editorial team. When one of us has time to read, we open the database and read the next story in line. Rejections go straight to the author as soon as the reader finishes it, so there aren’t any administrative delays.
If the first reader likes a story, he/she asks the other editors to read it. Whoever has time gives a second opinion and based on those opinions it’s either held for others on the team to read, or it’s rejected. The process continues until all of us have read it. Usually around the second or third “hold” vote, we move it over to “pending hold” which updates the author that we’re considering holding it. If all of us agree to hold it, we notify the author and hold it for final voting which takes place 2-3 weeks before publication.
If your story is held more than two days, it probably means your story is somewhere in the “consider holding” process, so even if it is rejected, be encouraged and send us more.
Daniel Scott – Initially, when we were smaller, we only had email for submissions. A submission would come in, we’d almost immediately read it, and then discuss the merits of the story among ourselves. It was more labor intensive, but it worked in the beginning. Of course as more and more stories came in a better solution was needed, and so I began to create our Submission Engine. Initially it was going to be a custom job specifically oriented towards our needs, but I soon realized that I was reinventing the wheel. Instead, I decided that customizing a content management system such as WordPress would be much more efficient use of my time. What we ended up with is just what you see: a heavily customized WordPress database that allows us to accept submissions from any author and move their story smoothly through our process from initial reading to, hopefully, publication.
All along the process the authors are notified via email alerts the status of their story, and we have a discussion area where authors and our staff can discuss aspects of the individual work. It’s those updates and communication I think which really help us to stand out above the crowd.

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Cory continues…
And, speaking of Duotrope, I’d be curious if the new subscription model for Duotrope has had any impact on the submissions to The Colored Lens. In an April blog post it was mentioned that the magazine was hovering around 60 submissions a month. Now six months into the change over at Duotrope, has there been a noticeable difference in quantity or quality of submissions?

Thank you very much!
Dawn Lloyd – Our submissions have dropped about 10 stories a month in the last couple months. I don’t know if this is related to duotrope charging fees or to some other unknown factors.
Although duotrope remains a good source, I’ve taken to recommending The Submission Grinder as a very comprehensive free searchable database.
Daniel Scott – I was disappointed to see Duotrope go to a subscription model. It’s understandable, but we did suffer a tiny bit. Still, the submissions continue to come and, as Dawn already mentioned, we quickly began to see a sharp uptick in traffic from other upstarts such as The Grinder.

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Holly asks:
Cross-genre is becoming more popular. What creative mash-ups would you most like to see in future submissions? What are some of your favorite subgenres in speculative fiction?
Henry Fields – I’m game for anything so long as it’s a good story. I’d like to be pleasantly surprised.
Eliza Hirsch – Yetis in space. With steam powered rockets. And Shoggoths. Pretty much the perfect story, right there. In all seriousness, though, the idea of weaving science fiction elements—space travel, high-tech—in with some of the earthier religions—voodoo, for example—would be really appealing.
Henry Fields – As far as my favorite subgenres go… Superheroes and supervillains, or the lack thereof. I think this format allows for a depth we don’t get from the other mediums. Elise R. Hopkins’ The Heroics of Interior Design (featured in Issue #1) is one of my favorite TCL stories. I’ve got a pile of unsold stories in this genre I’ve been adding to over the years, another reason I’m partial to it.
Dawn Lloyd – I don’t have any particular favorite mash-ups or genres. We don’t get much humor, and I’d love to get more, but that certainly doesn’t mean other genres are any less welcome.

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From Karl:
With evolving distribution technologies and business models, is this a glass-half-full, or glass-half-empty moment in readership?
Daniel Scott – It’s definitely a glass-half-full moment if you ask me. The possibilities for sales and distribution methods right now are truly endless, and it’s a very exciting time to work in publishing. I don’t think that dead-tree publishing is dead either. It will continue on as it has, but now the playing field has been leveled. In the past it would have been much more difficult, not to mention expensive, to publish niche works like ours and take chances on new authors.

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Fairchild wants to know:
How have you tried to make TCL stand out from all the other SF magazines online? What are you doing to make your magazine a top place for aspiring writers to sub their work, and a first stop for SF fans to find quality and unique short fiction?
Dawn Lloyd – There are many excellent speculative fiction magazines right now, and I can’t deny that competition is tough. One of our goals with the magazine was to make it a magazine for readers, and consequently a reasonable portion of our budget is dedicated to marketing to bring in more readers. This helps assure that stories are read by the general speculative fiction reading population, not just other authors submitting stories. Our fast turnaround on submissions and personal rejections also encourage authors to submit to us which gives us a range of high quality stories. We also advertise other stories/books published by our authors, which hopefully encourages them to submit to us.
Daniel Scott – The biggest thing that we’ve done is placed all of our stories that we publish on the web, for free, where anyone can read them. We still sell Kindle and E-pub versions of course, and they’re ad-free and easily portable across multiple devices. I’d say that this helps our authors give their work much wider exposure than simply publishing for e-readers or even dead-tree paperback format does, and the numbers we see on traffic and sales are bearing this out.

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And finally from Melinda, our gracious host:
Have you noticed an average number of times someone submits to you before they get accepted?
Henry Fields – That’s a great question, but I don’t immediately know the answer. I’ve never averaged the rejections an author is sent before we accepted a story from them.
Eliza Hirsch – Some people have submitted more than half a dozen times without being published. We’ve published the first story we receive, from others. It’s totally unquantifiable, since it’s up to the author to do market research, write a good story, and grow as a writer if that story gets rejected. Not everybody chooses to do those things.
Dawn Lloyd – There’s no specific average for author submissions before we publish them. It’s common for us to publish the first story we receive from an author, and it’s equally common for us to read a dozen stories from someone before one clicks with us. If we say we want to see more of your work, we mean it.

Got more questions for us? Leave a comment below and we’ll answer it in future editions of Ask The Editors.