Never Give Up, Just Keep On Trying

I have found from recent experience that if your philatelic research articles are somehow rejected or ignored by one stamp society, there is usually another stamp society that will appreciate and publish them. Even if there are some problems with the articles, they should at least bother to offer some advice, clarification and/or correction. I am not referring to any society that has published some, but not all of my articles submitted to them, since I can understand and accept this. I am talking here about none out of all of my articles submitted to them over several years. Also, it means that I will no longer continue to be a member of the stamp society that made the rejections. I am sorry about this ranting on here, but sometimes it is necessary in order to keep one philatelically sane.

Good advice however- I have to wonder how many big stamp societies are still out there? There's the APS, of course- then maybe ATA or AFDCS. After that it's a steep step down. Most specialist groups are lucky to have a thousand members now.

All philatelists are in a certain sense, trying to create reality. A stamp is a rare variety only if enough people agree that it is, and often it takes one or a small group of people who are passionate about their particular area of study to educate and promote their view of reality that a particular stamp is what they say it is (a good example of this would be Dr. Chase and his 1851 3 cent stamps. Of course there are always going to be different perspectives on what reality is, and sometimes one must strive and cooperate with other philatelists, societies, catalog publishers, etc, to establish a new reality.

Heck, every time you list the catalog number of a stamp you own you are creating the reality of that stamp as being the one indicated by the catalog number you use.

If you get the catalog number wrong you may find others who disagree with your version of reality.

Rejection is a way of life for anyone who conducts publishable research in any field of endeavor. However, there is no excuse for an organization that publishes such research, especially if it solicits articles, for ignoring or failing to acknowledge receipt of an article, or for failing to explain a decision not to publish.

jogil while you are right that your work should have been acknowledged in some way, in this day and age anyone can be their own publisher. It's not difficult to publish your research on the web (perhaps via a blog) and advertise the link in forums you post on (normally via signature). Everyone benefits because your research is published and even non-members of stamp societies can access it.

I would say it depends a lot on the subject matter, as if an article is submitted that just doesn't "fit" in that publication, I can understand the rejections. But I can not understand being ignored. No excuse for that. Personally, I've witten a fair amount of articles over the years, usually for specialist society publications, where the subject matter is more narrow than a general-subject one (such as the American Philatelist). So I've not experienced any rejections.

Why don't you tell us a bit more about the subject matter of these articles?

jogil..i have noticed that each individual (stamp) society is showing signs of being in that mode of being called a click..It is unfortunate that cant take what is presented to them and maybe return a call to say we ARE interested, maybe change this or that and keep the core information very much alive....i am not smart enough to write any papers (unless about flyspecking or course...for those who know me) on any stamps information, or would I ever embarrass myself trying to do so...i really think these societies should smell the coffee and look at what is offered to them...just my non professional stamp experience.
Robert

I'll give a shout-out to John Cross, editor of Portu-Info, the quarterly journal of the International Society of Portuguese Philately. I just submitted an article, and mailed some stamps to be scanned. John and I have traded several e-mails and his edits have been real helpful. And my stamps are already on their way back. ISPP is NOT a clique.

wert: You're 100% right. The response I have gotten is it's going into our queue and then they say that they are still looking for articles.
bill weiss: I find small study groups to be the best in publishing stuff sent to them while the big society that they are connected to may be the exact opposite.
Thus, it is good thing that one doesn't always have to remain a member of the larger society in order to remain a member of the smaller study group.

Seems like a reasonable request. I'd like to learn more about your experiences of article rejection, i.e time between submission and rejection, appropriateness of subject matter, length of articles, copy readiness for publication, adherence to preferred editorial style, etc. My sense is that editors are constantly looking for articles to fill their publications. There must be a consistent reason for repeated rejection and lack of editorial comment.

Many editors of smaller and medium-sized societies are volunteers and don't have the time or want to spend the time on excessive re-writing or manuscript prep work.

Are you, perhaps, putting pressure on editors to respond to your submissions?

Don

It's got to do with perforations and I have had positive responses from APS, RPSC, CCNY, ESG, etc. As far as I know, I am not putting any pressure on the editors to respond to me. They said that they would get back to me but they haven't done so before in some time. Then, I had sent them emails inquiring about them getting back to me that were not answered back. Thus, you feel ignored and getting the run around.

This is common for many publications that deal with freelancers and there are usually three possible reasons. One, the editors may have found significant issues with the quality of the writing and simply don't have time to enumerate everything. Don't take this personally - good writing is highly subjective and their style may simply be different. However, to address this possibility, you should consider hiring an independent editor to read your draft and offer feedback or a markup. You'd be surprised what another pair of experienced eyes would suggest. Two, the editors may be intentionally holding back material for future use, stringing you along until they find the right slot to fill. To address that, all you can do is resubmit elsewhere, and tell the publication that the article has been submitted elsewhere and is no longer available to them. Three, the editors may dislike the practice of multiple concurrent submissions and are punishing you on purpose. Multiple concurrent submission is very controversial. Editors hate it because they can't hold back as noted above. They have no assurance that an article is actually available when they want to use it. But writers need it to make a living. So, the usual compromise is to say in your cover letter at original submission, "I look forward to your reply no later than DATE, after which I will need to seek another market for this piece."




That's too bad. Perhaps you just need to learn more about what type of material they are looking for.

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I would imagine that holds true to no matter how small or large a society is..most have their own set agendas and that is a shame, because there are a lot of people on this forum that are fully capable (not me though) of writing outstanding papers in the field of stamp collecting.

Well stated and very reasonable! The voice of experience perhaps?