Slushreading and Slushreading Systems
Wednesday's banning brings to mind a discussion I'd like to present to you, in order to clarify how things work with the Fantasy Magazine system:
I have access to over twenty highly-qualified slush-readers, who are all tasked with processing submissions as quickly as possible, because it piles up, and because we don't like authors to wait. Stories are subsequently labeled rejected or recommended, and then it's up to the fiction editors to read the recommendeds, at our leisure. However, anything that has been rejected is pretty much automatically handled by the submission system, which spits out a form rejection letter, of which several variants exist. There is absolutely nothing personal inherent in this process, and rejections can be received in a matter of minutes, hours, or days. This is not a reflection on the quality of the submission, necessarily, but only a reflection on how fast we go through the slush. (Of lately there has been some discussion about inserting an one-hour delay into the rejections. We're still talking about it.)
I should note that before we put this system into place, we did ask several dozen authors their opinions on the projected response times, and most indicated that they preferred a quick and painless response, and that's what we've attempted to do. We do apologise if any authors feel hurt about all this, as it's an unintended consequence of the system, but I hope this post explains why your particular submission might get rejected (or accepted!) at the blink of an eye.