Sent An Article And Got No Reply

I sent an article in to a philatelic society many months ago and I never got an acknowledgement from them. Is it too much to get a "Thank you for your submission and we will get back to you if it is accepted for publication" instead of the silent treatment? I even emailed them a few months later and got no response back. While they may not have liked the article that I sent them, they may like another article that I may write but they have discouraged me from sending them anything else by doing this.

Some questions........ Is it a society that accepts articles? Do they publish any sort of guideline for submissions? Did you send to a specific person, like the editor? Or to a generic "contact us" address? Did you try calling a key person as a followup?

Note that I'm not asking for the specific society name. Other than APS and APRL, I belong to 5 other societies and two other libraries. I've submitted two articles to one society in the past 5 years. Both got published, with editing that I was happy to have. Before sending either article, I contacted the editor by e-mail to advise what I wanted to submit and if said article was wanted.

Hi jogil. I don't know much about philatelic journals, but in my own field of art history, long turnaround times and non-responsiveness are unfortunately common. It's typical to wait 6-12 months for a decision, and there have been several instances I've encountered when my submission was unacknowledged, or even lost after the initial receipt. I've also been put in the unfortunate position of having to ask about the submission, only to find that it was rejected.

You might try politely writing the editor again to see whether your submission was received, and whether a decision has been reached. If you don't get a response the second time, try sending it to another journal. I had an experience recently where a journal was giving me the silent treatment, only to find that they were going through a period of transition.

Most published authors I know have all experienced frustrating things, but they persist!

Climber Steve and profgreeley: I did do everything that you asked me if I did. Thanks for letting me know your experiences with your article submissions. I did finally send my article to another journal and it will get published.

In my experience, the vast majority of philatelic societies are staffed by septua- or octogenarians who either (1) don't believe in the Internet because it's just a passing fad that won't last, or (2) only log into their AOL email once every 2-3 months.

Said only partially tongue-in-cheek.

For whatever reason, the response times when dealing with people on philatelic issues tends to be abysmally slow even when compared with other groups that also have older demographics... the only thing I can fathom is that being stamp collectors, they expect communication to come in the form of postal mail, and as such eschew electronic communications.

I know several major stamp dealers that do no, and will not, use email; it's like a badge of honor. I would imagine that many collectors in positions of authority are similar.

For example, I offered to help out a prominent philatelic society with their show program. I asked for an export of the bourse dealer information to be able to do some mockups. We ran into a roadblock when it was revealed that the membership chairman who maintains the database uses a computer that (1) isn't connected to the Internet, (2) doesn't have USB ports to plug in a thumb drive, (3) boots from floppy disks. That would make the computer a good 25-30 years old, let alone what version of any database software he might be using.

Compounding this problem that this person is someone who dislikes me intensely as "one of them newfangled collector kids" so likely is actively refusing to consider any proposed solution to the data transmission issue... so we just discarded the plans completely. They'll just have to continue on without my assistance. The club president apologized and is fully aware of the problems, but there's nothing the club can (or more accurately are willing to) do, given the personality involved.

I told the society president that he and the club need to be VERY concerned moving forward, as all of this data is held hostage by one person who, as is so often the case in philatelic organizations, adamantly refuses to modernize and at the same time will not give up their responsibilities. If he dies unexpectedly, the club has lost a wealth of historical data as well as procedural knowledge.

This is how stamp shows and other philatelic organizations die.

Late last year, I went to the website of a well-known society, and used the contact-us tab, to enter and send a message to the society.

I was asking for permission to use some of their images. It was only a courtesy, as due to their age, they were way past copyright protection.

Its been 9 months now - no response.

After about a month, I went forward without them. No big deal. Yet another example. Of course, if it had been really important, I would have worked harder to contact them. I probably would have used one of those telephone things....

One wonders how many times people 'knock on the door' and no-one answers the internet.

If the journal that you originally sent the article to actively solicits submissions, then there is no excuse for not responding to acknowledge receipt.

No one likes to beat their head against the wall, I have given up on offering technical assistance to both large and small philatelic organizations. My offers of assistance always included not only doing the grunt work but also offers to teach and train others; I found it did not matter.

I won't speculate on the reason(s) there seems to be a strong resistance to technical volunteering, but in my opinion it has led to tremendous missed opportunities. After a while I think that many volunteers react like I have done and stop offering; a genuine lose-lose situation.

Don

Edit: I will always respond to requests to publish articles on Stamp Smarter, typically in less than a few hours. If the objective is to reach hobbyists, Stamp Smarter traffic is approaching 3 million page views so there is no question that authors can get the work they do seen by a large number of like-minded people.

Yes, Stamp Smarter is the bomb!

Long Live Stamp Smarter!

Just used stamp smarter the other day on some early US stamps-make's it so easy--

Note: IPDASTAMPS.COM, always interested in any size article for the newsletters, ISWSC.COM also accepts articles for news letters-

good luck

Lee
IPDA#251
ISWSC.ORG # 2966

Jogil, sorry you had a bad experience. Not all philatelic societies are the same. I recently contacted the editor of a philatelic organization's monthly newsletter to propose an article. They responded immediately that they would like to publish the article. I submitted it with images a few days later and it was published in the next monthly issue. I attribute the success to the editor and her staff for being extremely responsive and encouraging. Don't let it discourage you. Try to establish contact with the editorial staff first to make sure you aren't wasting your time.

Scott

Thank you for your responses. What is discouraging is that it was sent to the editor of the journal of one of the oldest and most important stamp societies. They do encourage submissions. However, they might be behind the times in their response.

1) It might be prudent to check first and see what the Society's temperature is for the subject matter if the article is written to that groups specific audience?

2) I am not saying that this was the case here but perhaps the article did not meet the Society's standards whether that opinion is deemed justified or not by other parties?

But even if the article doesn't meet their standards or is outside their field of specialization, they owe the submittor the professional courtesy of a timely response in that regard. Just not replying is not an acceptable method in the least. I don't care how off the mark the submitted article is.

Of course this is all predicated upon the assumption that they actually did receive the article in question.