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I contacted Submittable. They said if lots of writers let them know it is defunct, they will do something about it. Otherwise, they won't, and Juxtapose can continue on their merry way. so go ahead and let them know. It just feels like theft, to me.
I've had a submission with Juxtaprose for fifteen months. No response to my several requests for status. It really bothers me that there is, as of yet, no recourse for submitters who paid a fee and are left in the queue indefinitely. Taking people's money and not publishing ANYTHING sounds like a scam to me...where's the consumer protection for writers?
I sent them a submission in January and just withdrew it. The $3 is no huge loss - but it infuriates me that they get to pile up one submission fee after another and make who knows how much money cheating all of us, over time.
There are several journals that actually accepted my submissions last year but still have not published them, and are still soliciting for submissions and won't return my emails. I wonder if they "accepted" everyone?
You know that saying about how life imitates art? Hmmm... in a previous Lit Mag News comment [here in that rare arena of Truth and Justice and the Literate Life] , I joked about how if I were going to be a conman, I'd set up a fake lit mag, charge reading fees, and then for the real money, have fake contests-- but doggone!!! I never thought somebody would actually do it-- I mean, cheating us poor writers who pour out our hearts and minds and yes, souls even, to a largely indifferent world...that's almost as bad as stealing from grandma!
When I was finishing my doctoral program in 1982, very much pre-Internet—pre-words processor, in fact, my classmates were desperate to protect precious hand-typed dissertation drafts. One guy kept a copy in his car, and another in the freezer, in case of fire.
Speaking of tardy, I sent $20 and my ms to The Midnight Oil back on October 3, 2022. The contest rules stated they were going to judge and make a decision in November of 2022.
Have sent a few polite inquiries since then - - but no reply. Site looks frozen.
(If a ms is withdrawn via Submittable, the writer will lose the fee.)
Oh, and guys, if you wanna stop the crooks, as well as those hoity-toity lit mags that have no qualms, no conscience certainly, about charging reading fees [which are for most writers most of the time--even the best ones--monies paid for the pain of rejection], then just DON'T PAY THEM. There are multitudes of 'free' mags out there that have the integrity to not charge their contributors--and every time I send 'em stuff, I make a point of thanking them for that. Power to the poets! Okay and fiction writers too....
Re Juxtaprose: thanks for the heads-up. Evidently I wasted $3 on them in January - could have been much worse, of course, but who knows how much money they’ve piled up, collecting submission fees.
I had to retrieve some pieces using the Wayback Machine because I didn't save them in enough places, and it! was my co-owned site! I managed to save those of the other contributors but forgot to save my own. Silly editor!
I've read some great work in Santa Monica Review over the years. Nice journal. (Postal submissions only, however, at least last I checked.)
Regarding Juxtaprose, we really truly need a lit mag police. There are no real consequences to these widespread misdeeds. I try to avoid as many of these as I can (in my submission service), but I can't catch them all, and they come and go. Unless submitters take the time to check Duotrope's stats (non-replies), these bad apples just keep raking in free cash. Totally sucks. Thanks, Becky, for doing your part.
This is helpful, although disappointing to hear. I submitted something in January but I guess I know now not to expect any response at all. Thanks for keeping us informed Becky!
For what it’s worth, I submitted a chapbook entry to Omnidawn’s contest. I paid the $18 fee, and they lost the file, had no record that I submitted it. And kept my $18.
Advice I was given way back forty years ago, when writers (even bestsellers) were just getting into word processing: if it doesn’t exist in three separate places it doesn’t exist.
I wish I’d paid more attention.
I found it to be horrifyingly true in the middle of the night, back when I was finishing my Masters dissertation, 36 years ago. With only a couple of hours to go before my husband had to take it to the printers for me on his way to work (I always run deadlines fine!) I discovered the next-to-final 1500+ words were readable but had somehow been looped back over and over and were not even copyable so I had to delete them.
And the last 1000 or so were just plain missing.
But surely, you might say, you kept backups on disks back then. Oh I did. Without emails or even a proper internet -- or even a hard disc -- it was the only way to keep copies. So I had no fewer than five different backup disks, all of them kept meticulous every half hour or so, in rotation, and all of them corrupted in the same way. (U.K. readers may recall with fondness or horror the first really affordable wordprocessing computer, the Amstrad, a machine so basic that when I wanted to add more RAM to speed it up I had to do it with a soldering iron. Yes, I am that old.)
So, having already had an extension to give birth to my daughter, there was nothing for it but to write the entire 2500+ words again, typing with my right hand only, as I was also breastfeeding my feeding a month old baby cradling her on my left, then switching over at half time, to type, inexpertly, with my left.
I finished with fifteen minutes to spare.
Okay, the quality wasn’t that great, not as good as I knew I had already written but couldn’t quite recall. When I read it now I can see it takes a decided dip towards the end. But it existed. And as soon as it did I copied it to new disks. Three times. Then checked in case the whole nightmare(!) had happened again.
Now whenever I write anything more than a brief, inconsequential, note I copy it into a different writing program from whichever I wrote it in, then into a clipboard app where I have set up a special folder, and also email it to myself -- under two different email addresses.
At the risk of sounding like someone’s dad, the idea behind a cloud-based repository is that a lot of the tedious copy-copy-copy is done for you automatically. A problem with the old approach is that each time you make an edit, you need to dig out all your storage media and copy the updated doc to them. With a cloud-based backup, as soon as you make a save (eg, Cmd+S), the updated doc gets uploaded to the cloud; in turn, it gets downloaded to any other device where you have that cloud service activated (iPad, phone, whatever).
A side benefit of cloud backups is that your word processor can show you or revert to any previous version of your doc. Eg, with Word and OneDrive, just select Browse Version History. With Pages and iCloud, just select Revert To | Browse All Versions. Etc.
At some point making a copy to some media outside this workflow might be prudent, or even just creating a free Substack or WordPress account and storing the doc there (you don’t have to “publish” it).
Finally, I find it useful to recall from time to time that very little of what I write has much long-term value, maybe not even short-term value. If through some weird sequence of mishaps everything I’ve written got corrupted, the world and I will both carry on.
For what it's worth, I did have a poem published in JuxtaProse way back in 2018, and I was in regular contact with the poetry editor at that time--good feedback, quick and kind responses, etc. So I'm very surprised to hear this now! This is in no way meant as a defense of their current actions, it just makes me wonder even more what the heck happened here...
I contacted Submittable. They said if lots of writers let them know it is defunct, they will do something about it. Otherwise, they won't, and Juxtapose can continue on their merry way. so go ahead and let them know. It just feels like theft, to me.
I've had a submission with Juxtaprose for fifteen months. No response to my several requests for status. It really bothers me that there is, as of yet, no recourse for submitters who paid a fee and are left in the queue indefinitely. Taking people's money and not publishing ANYTHING sounds like a scam to me...where's the consumer protection for writers?
Same here. I submitted to their 2021 fiction contest and still no response, even after an inquiry.
I sent them a submission in January and just withdrew it. The $3 is no huge loss - but it infuriates me that they get to pile up one submission fee after another and make who knows how much money cheating all of us, over time.
The grift is strong here. Hate to say it, but our hopes and dreams can make us easy targets.
Sad but true, which makes this kind of thing even more upsetting.
Becky, thank you for being a tireless champion fighting against rip-off lit mags. I submit in the UK and I wish someone was doing the same thing here.
There are several journals that actually accepted my submissions last year but still have not published them, and are still soliciting for submissions and won't return my emails. I wonder if they "accepted" everyone?
Julie, I’d appreciate hearing which journals these are, if you’re inclined to name them.
So frustrating. You have my sympathies.
You know that saying about how life imitates art? Hmmm... in a previous Lit Mag News comment [here in that rare arena of Truth and Justice and the Literate Life] , I joked about how if I were going to be a conman, I'd set up a fake lit mag, charge reading fees, and then for the real money, have fake contests-- but doggone!!! I never thought somebody would actually do it-- I mean, cheating us poor writers who pour out our hearts and minds and yes, souls even, to a largely indifferent world...that's almost as bad as stealing from grandma!
You are a treasure! Thank you.
When I was finishing my doctoral program in 1982, very much pre-Internet—pre-words processor, in fact, my classmates were desperate to protect precious hand-typed dissertation drafts. One guy kept a copy in his car, and another in the freezer, in case of fire.
Speaking of tardy, I sent $20 and my ms to The Midnight Oil back on October 3, 2022. The contest rules stated they were going to judge and make a decision in November of 2022.
Have sent a few polite inquiries since then - - but no reply. Site looks frozen.
(If a ms is withdrawn via Submittable, the writer will lose the fee.)
My advice: avoid this press.
Oh, and guys, if you wanna stop the crooks, as well as those hoity-toity lit mags that have no qualms, no conscience certainly, about charging reading fees [which are for most writers most of the time--even the best ones--monies paid for the pain of rejection], then just DON'T PAY THEM. There are multitudes of 'free' mags out there that have the integrity to not charge their contributors--and every time I send 'em stuff, I make a point of thanking them for that. Power to the poets! Okay and fiction writers too....
Re Juxtaprose: thanks for the heads-up. Evidently I wasted $3 on them in January - could have been much worse, of course, but who knows how much money they’ve piled up, collecting submission fees.
I had to retrieve some pieces using the Wayback Machine because I didn't save them in enough places, and it! was my co-owned site! I managed to save those of the other contributors but forgot to save my own. Silly editor!
I've read some great work in Santa Monica Review over the years. Nice journal. (Postal submissions only, however, at least last I checked.)
Regarding Juxtaprose, we really truly need a lit mag police. There are no real consequences to these widespread misdeeds. I try to avoid as many of these as I can (in my submission service), but I can't catch them all, and they come and go. Unless submitters take the time to check Duotrope's stats (non-replies), these bad apples just keep raking in free cash. Totally sucks. Thanks, Becky, for doing your part.
This is helpful, although disappointing to hear. I submitted something in January but I guess I know now not to expect any response at all. Thanks for keeping us informed Becky!
For what it’s worth, I submitted a chapbook entry to Omnidawn’s contest. I paid the $18 fee, and they lost the file, had no record that I submitted it. And kept my $18.
Advice I was given way back forty years ago, when writers (even bestsellers) were just getting into word processing: if it doesn’t exist in three separate places it doesn’t exist.
I wish I’d paid more attention.
I found it to be horrifyingly true in the middle of the night, back when I was finishing my Masters dissertation, 36 years ago. With only a couple of hours to go before my husband had to take it to the printers for me on his way to work (I always run deadlines fine!) I discovered the next-to-final 1500+ words were readable but had somehow been looped back over and over and were not even copyable so I had to delete them.
And the last 1000 or so were just plain missing.
But surely, you might say, you kept backups on disks back then. Oh I did. Without emails or even a proper internet -- or even a hard disc -- it was the only way to keep copies. So I had no fewer than five different backup disks, all of them kept meticulous every half hour or so, in rotation, and all of them corrupted in the same way. (U.K. readers may recall with fondness or horror the first really affordable wordprocessing computer, the Amstrad, a machine so basic that when I wanted to add more RAM to speed it up I had to do it with a soldering iron. Yes, I am that old.)
So, having already had an extension to give birth to my daughter, there was nothing for it but to write the entire 2500+ words again, typing with my right hand only, as I was also breastfeeding my feeding a month old baby cradling her on my left, then switching over at half time, to type, inexpertly, with my left.
I finished with fifteen minutes to spare.
Okay, the quality wasn’t that great, not as good as I knew I had already written but couldn’t quite recall. When I read it now I can see it takes a decided dip towards the end. But it existed. And as soon as it did I copied it to new disks. Three times. Then checked in case the whole nightmare(!) had happened again.
Now whenever I write anything more than a brief, inconsequential, note I copy it into a different writing program from whichever I wrote it in, then into a clipboard app where I have set up a special folder, and also email it to myself -- under two different email addresses.
What can possibly go wrong with that?
At the risk of sounding like someone’s dad, the idea behind a cloud-based repository is that a lot of the tedious copy-copy-copy is done for you automatically. A problem with the old approach is that each time you make an edit, you need to dig out all your storage media and copy the updated doc to them. With a cloud-based backup, as soon as you make a save (eg, Cmd+S), the updated doc gets uploaded to the cloud; in turn, it gets downloaded to any other device where you have that cloud service activated (iPad, phone, whatever).
A side benefit of cloud backups is that your word processor can show you or revert to any previous version of your doc. Eg, with Word and OneDrive, just select Browse Version History. With Pages and iCloud, just select Revert To | Browse All Versions. Etc.
At some point making a copy to some media outside this workflow might be prudent, or even just creating a free Substack or WordPress account and storing the doc there (you don’t have to “publish” it).
Finally, I find it useful to recall from time to time that very little of what I write has much long-term value, maybe not even short-term value. If through some weird sequence of mishaps everything I’ve written got corrupted, the world and I will both carry on.
For what it's worth, I did have a poem published in JuxtaProse way back in 2018, and I was in regular contact with the poetry editor at that time--good feedback, quick and kind responses, etc. So I'm very surprised to hear this now! This is in no way meant as a defense of their current actions, it just makes me wonder even more what the heck happened here...