You polish up your story, follow the submission guidelines, and send out your manuscript. Then you wait … and wait … and wait to hear from the agent or the editor. It can be pretty frustrating at times. Some editors and agents clearly state in their guidelines that if you don’t hear from them in three or six months, they are not interested. How do you feel about this? Would you rather get at least a “no” rather than no reply at all?
“SCBWI’s Open Letter to the Kid Lit Industry About No-Response-Means-A-Rejection Policies,” addresses this topic. Editors and agents also comment about why or why not they favor or don’t favor replies. You’ll get both sides of the argument here.
Here’s a blog post by Adriana Dominguez, Book Reviews Editor for Mamiverse, on diversity in children’s literature. I found this post especially interesting since my books are bilingual.
Simultaneous submissions: Sending the same article, story or poem to several publishers at the same time. Some publishers refuse to consider such submissions; check individual writers’ guidelines. — Writer’s Digest Weekly Planner