Earlier today, I did something I’ve been putting off for awhile: I closed Kaleidotrope to submissions.
More importantly, I did the rough calculations that suggested I pretty much had to do this. Already, I’d been telling future contributors that I couldn’t guarantee when their work would appear, that I was pretty full-up on acceptances at the moment, and that it could be as late as late 2010 before their submissions saw print. That’s a long time to wait if you’re a writer, and it didn’t seem fair to expect it of anyone.
So, starting tomorrow, the zine is temporarily closed. I still have several submissions awaiting replies in my in-box, but after that I won’t be accepting submissions for several months, or longer. I’ll instead be busying myself with putting together the next two or three issues with what I’ve already accepted. I regret all the great writing I’ll need to pass up in the interim, but I think this will be good for both the zine and my sanity. (I won’t mind an in-box that doesn’t need near-constant pruning, for instance.)
And who knows? When I open back up, I think I’d like to start offering my contributors just a little more money…