Tales from the Slush Mines

Today I read a submission which said that, if the author didn't get a reply by a certain date, he'd assume the story had been rejected and would start sending it to other markets. It's my understanding that some agents work on a "no reply unless we're interested" basis, but I'm not aware of any spec fic short story markets that do (please enlighten me in comments if you do!).

And I think it's a really bad idea to put a statement like that in your cover letter. Even aside from any nuances of tone, the bottom line practical reason is that e-mail goes astray all the time. I get several queries a week, and yeah, 90% of the time, it's a rejection letter that never reached the author -- but the other 10% of the time is what makes it worth querying. If the e-mail never reached us, we haven't even had a chance to read it.

Two incidents: I found one author's story in the spam folder when she queried. I read it, adored it, and you'll be reading it in our Summer 2008 issue. And another author wasn't receiving my acceptance letters -- I had to use one of my personal e-mail addresses to get in touch with him once it became clear that something wasn't working.

I'm very glad that both these authors didn't just give up and move on when they didn't hear anything.

So don't assume you've been rejected -- query. You might get good news.