What Happens to Your Augur Magazine Submission?

So you log on to Moksha. You (hopefully) do all the things that fulfill the guidelines we’ve laid out. You hit that little button, and receive your Augur Magazine submission confirmation email (check for it!).

But what happens next?

Those of us on staff who submit work know how frustrating a mysterious submissions cycle can be. Who’s read it? Did they like it? Are you still in the first round, or are you suddenly in the final round? How many rounds are there, anyway?

It’s enough work to have all your pieces out on submission. You shouldn’t also have the anxiety that comes with constantly wondering about your status. Writing professionally is a business—and, despite being a volunteer-run organization, so is publishing a magazine. Business goes best when we’re up front with one another.

So we’re de-mystifying the Augur Magazine submissions process! Here are all the steps involved in getting a submission from submitted to accepted:

Step 1 — First Reading (About 1500-2500 pieces)

This is where your Augur Magazine submission sits immediately after you’ve submitted. At this point, our team of excellent first readers starts going through the slush pile and rating pieces on a scale from one to ten.

For anyone unfamiliar: slush is the term used to refer to unread and unsolicited pieces—because you have to wade through the slush to find the gems!

A few things go into how our first readers rate a story 1-10:

• How much they enjoyed it
• How much our audience might enjoy it
• If it’s a fit for Augur in tone and genre
• If it meets an issue’s theme (if there is one!)

Now, how much a reader likes the piece is not actually the most important thing. We encourage our first readers to consider what’s Augurian, rather than what simply jumps out at them. That said, we’ve selected our first readers because their tastes match up pretty well with what we’re looking for.

Also—if a piece is rated 10 by one of our first readers, it automatically goes on the longlist!

Once a piece has been rated, it’s time for…

Step 2 — Second Reading

During second reading, your piece will be reviewed by our core editorial team. We break the rated pieces up into five ranks and give them a second read.

Here’s how that ends up looking:

Rated 1-2: We almost always reject these, as we don’t rank things a one unless they contain problematic material or aren’t a match for our magazine (eg. something with no dreamy realism or spec element).

Rated 3-4: These pieces are often rejected because they don’t quite feel publication-ready. However, they all get skimmed by our Submissions Managers, Omi and Louise to make sure we aren’t getting rid of anything golden!

Rated 5-6: These are second read by the submissions managers—the rest of the team if we’re falling behind or they need help. These team members often refer pieces into the top bracket for longlist review. We recommend first readers rate stories they didn’t personally like, but think someone else might, as a 6. These are the ones that are often rescued!

Rated 7: The fiction here is second read by our Managing Editor, Victoria, and the poetry is second read by our Poetry Editors LJ and Escher. Everything rated a 7 is something we’ve been excited to read, but it only gets referred to our Co-EiCs if it’s truly a fit for Augur.

Rated 8-10: The cream of the crop! Each and every one of these stories are read by our Co-Editors-in-Chief, Avi and Terese. As they read the pieces rated and referred to them, they assemble the longlist for the pitch meeting.

We often respond to submissions as we go, sending out batch responses on our reading days.

Step 3 — Creating the Longlist (About 80-100 pieces, or 0.05% of total Augur Magazine submissions)

If your Augur Magazine submission has been ranked high by a first reader, or has gotten scooped up by an editor from the 2-7 range, then it’s up to the Co-Editors-Chief to decide if it’s a good fit to be considered for our next issue. If it is, that’s when it gets put on the longlist.

While putting together the longlist, the Co-EiCs consider everything:

• How much did readers enjoy the piece at every stage?
• Are we making space for any identities or lived experiences the writers have disclosed? (Only editors have access to this information.)
• Does the heart of the piece align with our mission, vision, and values?
• Does it have that Augur vibe?

If the Co-EiCs are ever unsure, or feel they’re not accessing something, they’ll ask for a final perspective check from someone else on the team.

Then, once all those questions have been answered, we send writers a longlist response through Moksha, and add the pieces to our mighty spreadsheet.

Step 4 — Longlist Reading Period

Once the longlist is put together, our leadership team (Kerry, Terese, Avi, & Victoria) gets to work! They give all of the pieces on the longlist a read, leaving comments about what they enjoyed, and what makes the pieces a good fit for Augur.

The goal here is to cut the longlist down about halfway! Once our most promising pieces have been identified, they become…

Step 5 — The Shortlist (About 40-60 pieces, or .025% of total Augur Magazine submissions)

The shortlist is shared with each and every person on our core editorial team. They have about a week to read through these pieces and leave comments about what they loved.

Instead of rating by number, they highlight them based on three categories:

• Do I like it?
• Do I want to pitch it?
• Do I want to edit it?

This gives us a clear visual on which pieces are standing out to the most people. If anything isn’t highlighted, we give it a friendly farewell! 

Once everyone has responded to the shortlist, it’s only a matter of finding a date where everyone’s free for…

Step 6 — The Pitch Meetings!

Pitch is by far the best part of the submissions process. Our editorial team gets together for two meetings (one for fiction and one for poetry) and, piece by piece, we delight over everything we’ve read. Usually with bubble tea.

Anyone who wants to pitch a piece for the magazine has their moment to take the stage! Instead of framing our pitches as “what does and doesn’t work,” we lean into what we loved and why it fits the issue. If there are any concerns about a piece, editors do have the opportunity to share, but we focus on positive pitching. This is one way we choose to show care for the writers who have trusted us with their work—and it often transforms the perspectives of editors who might not have enjoyed a piece as much!

During this process, we’ll often read poems aloud to get a better sense of them. We find this helps poems come alive in a way that they don’t always on the page!

After both fiction and poetry have been defended and discussed, we go to our Issue Purchase Sheet and start putting pieces next to one another. After all the discussion, it’s usually pretty clear what our united top picks are for the first few slots—and then it’s a matter of picking the stories and poems that go best with those top picks to create a cohesive issue.

The saddest part of pitch is when we can’t fit in a beloved piece. This happens pretty much every meeting! Whether it doesn’t fit with the rest of the issue or is just too similar to past pieces we’ve taken, sometimes we have to let our favorites go.

This said, when we ask you to resubmit in your rejection emails, we MEAN it! We love it when writers give us a second chance to read their work.

Step 7 — The Final Notice (About 20-25 accepted pieces, or 0.01% of total Augur Magazine submissions)

After our final line up has been decided, it’s time to send out responses. Anyone who’s been accepted into an issue will receive an acceptance email and contract from our Co-Editors-in-Chief shortly after the meeting. Woohoo!

A few days later, Victoria sends out rejection emails to our longlist and shortlist members who will not be published. Maybe the worst part of the whole process!

We try to send out personalized feedback to those on our longlist, but it is not always possible with our time restraints and staff capacity. The notes we do send are exclusively positive—our perspective on what needs to change is likely different from another editor’s, and would ultimately be useless in the grand scheme of things.

After that…all that’s left is editing the issue, putting it together, laying it out, marketing it, and generally celebrating the work that’s inside of it. All in a day’s work!

—

We hope that this post helps to lift some of the fog when it comes to the Augur Magazine submissions process! Frankly, we love the reading process, and it’s such a thrill to go through the slush and find those pieces that really shine.

For us, the submissions window is an opportunity to listen, learn, and find new ways to delight in literature. With so many people touching each piece, we try to optimize the number of ways it could be read—giving it as many chances as possible along the publication process.

And if you’re thinking of submitting…please don’t let the stats dissuade you! We want your stories. Even if we can’t publish all of them, we’re so happy to be able to read them.

We hope you’ll give us the chance.