Today the words aren’t coming very quickly, so I decided to take a short break and do a little career upkeep. WritersMarket.com has a feature called Submission Tracker which allows you to follow the progress of your work, tracking where you have submitted it, where you plan to submit it next, and things like that. With a click you can see a list of all the places you are waiting to hear back from, or all the manuscripts that are sitting around gathering dust rather than out there working.
Make that “could”. It’s been a while since I logged on over at WritersMarket.com, and there have been changes. I had a few beefs with the Submission Tracker, but I wasn’t looking forward to having to figure out a new system. As I poked around, my stomach began to twist up into a little knot. There was a section called My Manuscripts. So far, so good. I clicked and got a list of the works I’ve entered into the system to track. Only — the list seemed shorter than I thought it ought to be. Nevertheless, each entry had a link to “view submissions”. Not as versatile as the old system, but — what the #@$%$!!!. All the submissions have the status “active”! I can’t tell which places have rejected the manuscript, and which were the ones I planned to submit to next! I can’t tell which manuscripts have been published, and where. I can’t tell which agents have see The Monster Within, which are still considering it, and which have rejected it.
It appears that all submissions that were not linked directly to current WritersMarket.com listings are gone. That means, for example, that all my submissions to Piker Press are missing. If that was the only submission for the piece, then the manuscript itself is also gone from the list.
Still there are twenty-four submission entries for Monster. Some of those should show as rejected, but several were there for my next round of submissions. Now I don’t know which is which. And agencies not listed on WritersMarket.com? Information on agents and agencies I’d gathered from all over and consolidated there is now gone, along with any hint that an agent may or may not have seen my work already.
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe the information is there and I just didn’t know how to find it. Maybe the transition to the new system isn’t complete yet. Maybe. The help system just says “coming soon.” I sent a message to customer support, so maybe in a couple of work days they’ll clear things up.
Right now, I feel ill.
Follow-up:
I just got a nice note from the WritersMarket.com support team saying that my data had been carefully preserved, but would not be available online for two more weeks. They attached a spreadsheet with my info as well. That is a massive relief, as well as an excuse to slack for two weeks. They also asked me if they could contact me for feedback about the new system. I replied that I have opinions on everything, and am happy to share. So, at this time I’m guardedly optimistic that everything will turn out all right.
Sheesh, and folks wonder why I don’t submit much?
I did query letters to agents for a few months but kept track via paper and check list (silly accountant side of brain). Then said, “F@#% it” and went back to just writing.
I hope all is better!
Do you really want to keep track of all your failures? One sale will keep you off writersmarket.com for the rest of your life.
Buck up dude, you are a pretty good writer!
I have to keep track of the failures so I don’t sent the same people the manuscript again. WritersMarket had a decent tool for tracking that stuff, and it cross-referenced the agent an publisher listings seamlessly.
You’re right about one (novel) sale, in fact, once I find an agent she’ll be in charge of keeping track of that stuff, though I’ll probably still be in charge of short stories if I continue to write them.
By the way, great to hear from you. It’s been a while.