Unsolicited Rewrites?

[a_r_williams]

Hi,

I have questions about BCS's policy regarding stories that have previously been rejected by BCS.

1. Does BCS accept stories that have been rejected before if they have undergone significant revisions?

2. If resubmissions are allowed, how long of a wait would you recommend before resubmission--A year? Six months? More/Less?

Thanks for any help you can provide in this area.

~~Aaron

[Scott H. Andrews]

I have questions about BCS's policy regarding stories that have previously been rejected by BCS.

1. Does BCS accept stories that have been rejected before if they have undergone significant revisions?

2. If resubmissions are allowed, ....
Good question--thanks for asking. (Thread split out and renamed so other people will see it too.)

No, we do not accept unsolicited rewrites of stories that we've already rejected. (That is a pretty much universal policy among short fiction markets--I don't know of any magazine that does accept them.)

What we do do is that if we think a submitted story is not quite right for us but might could be made to work for us with revisions, we offer the author a rewrite request.


We do get asked often about unsolicited rewrites, and I think it's because we make specific personalized comments in all our rejection letters.

We intend those comments as explanation of why that particular story didn't work for us. Hopefully they give the author some insight into what we are looking for as relates to their own work.

Our hope is that that insight will help them to make their next submission better fit what we're looking for. And we have seen that happen repeatedly--writers who've had stories rejected by us sending in another one that fits BCS perfectly.

[a_r_williams]

Thanks for responding and also thanks for the comments offered. I appreciate it and I'm sure a lot of other writers do to :).

[Scott H. Andrews]

We've had more queries lately about whether we're interested in revised versions of stories we've rejected (a.k.a. unsolicited rewrites), so I have added our policy on unsolicited rewrites to our Submission Guidelines (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/page.php?p=submissions).

To restate: we are not interested in unsolicited rewrites. This is a near-universal a policy among short fiction markets of all genres; I don't know of any magazine that does.

Please don't ask us if we're interested in an unsolicited rewrite of your story that we've rejected. It takes up time we could be using to give the personalized comments in our rejections, and it makes you look uninformed about the field.

Use our comments to make your next submission to us hopefully a better fit, and send us that one instead.