WHAT TO EXPECT

First Reading

One of us will read your piece, write brief comments for the rest of the team, and rate the submission on a scale of 1 (“fails to meet our guidelines in some way”) to 5 (“if we don’t publish this, I’ll cry”).

Second Reading

All submissions are read by at least two editors, so after one reader has read and rated each submission, another member of our team will do the same.

From here, we either decline a submission if both readers feel it isn’t the right fit, ask for a third reader if the first two disagree, or hold it for further consideration if both readers think the piece could be right for OTHERSIDE. Taste is subjective, and “not the right fit” doesn’t mean we didn’t like your submission. It could mean we’ve already held a similar piece, or we’re looking for pieces of a certain length or genre to round out an issue, etc.

If we decline your piece at this stage, you’ll receive one of three responses:

• Standard form rejection. As many as 90% of submissions will receive this response. Please know that our standard form is not a reflection on the merits of your work; space in each issue is limited, as is our budget, and we expect to decline many stories and poems we adore. Don’t let a rejection discourage you from submitting in the future. Sending form responses is what allows us to respond quickly to your submissions.
• Higher-tier form rejection. A small percentage of submissions will receive our standard form with an added line letting you know that our team particularly enjoyed your piece. We send very few of these, so if you don’t receive one, that doesn’t mean we didn’t like your submission. We use this tier to let you know if a piece came particularly close, which we hope might be useful intel when you’re deciding what to send us next!
• An invitation to resubmit a revised version of the same piece in a future window. Each of these invitations (commonly known as a revise and resubmit) will include some personal feedback and suggestions for revising your piece specifically for OTHERSIDE. As above, we send very few of these, so don’t feel discouraged if you don’t receive one.

If we decide to hold your submission for further consideration, you’ll receive an email letting you know when you can expect to hear more from us.

If you have not received any updates on your submission (either a rejection or a hold notice) 30 days after the submission window closes, please check your status in Moksha, then feel free to query at submissions@othersidespec.com.

Final Decisions

Once we’ve responded to every submission with either a rejection or a hold notice, all the editors will meet to discuss our hold pile as a group. If we’ve held your submission, we truly love it. But we can’t publish every piece, so at this stage, we’re making incredibly difficult decisions and working hard to assemble a cohesive issue. (And we’re trying desperately to convince one another that we absolutely have to publish this one, pleasepleaseplease).

We will try to make final decisions one month after the submission window closes. Around that time, you will receive either a rejection or an acceptance. While we can’t provide personal feedback on every submission, please know that even submissions rejected at this stage were among our absolute favorites, and we desperately want you to submit more work in the future.

After Acceptance

We’re so excited to work with you! We’ll email accepted authors checking to make sure that each piece is still available. Once you’ve confirmed that the piece is still available and that you’d like to have it published in OTHERSIDE, we’ll send you a contract and a timeline for next steps; once you return the signed contract, we will pay you right away.

The editing process takes place via Google Docs. Our goal is to ensure that your story or poem shines, but we wouldn’t have accepted your submission if we weren’t excited to publish it. Any editorial suggestions are just that: suggestions. We hope you’ll find this process simple, fun, and collaborative.

Once we’ve finalized the story or poem, we’ll send you a proof just to be sure everything looks right. And then… you’re all done! When the release date of the issue gets closer, we’ll share some graphics you can use to promote your work, if you’d like—and we’ll also start yelling excitedly online about your wonderful story or poem. We can’t wait to share your work with the world!