Today marks the end of the reading period for our fall issue, which means the next two weeks will consume us with producing the next edition of Gyroscope Review. Thank you to everyone who has sent us work to consider.
Now your editors have to kick it into high gear. As of the moment this post was written, we received 418 submissions. We don’t have our final numbers on acceptances just yet, but 21 pieces have been accepted so far. We have already said no to 300 pieces and 20 pieces have been withdrawn for various reasons including publication elsewhere. All remaining poems will be accepted or rejected this weekend. Every single piece we accept is Google-checked to make sure it is not already available for people to read or there is uncredited material from someone else’s work.
Then what happens? Then we do the time-consuming detailed work of downloading all the accepted files, formatting them to fit Gyroscope Review‘s standard look, putting them into an order that we think makes sense. We format the contributor’s bios. We make a big document of poems, bios, and table of contents, send it off to contributor’s as the authors’ proof copy. We create the cover layout. We write editorials. We hope that contributors take note of the deadline for any final corrections.
Several days before a new issue goes live, we upload the final version into CreateSpace. We go through a review process there to make sure the format will work in print. We also upload a PDF version of the new issue to this site under the tab, “Issues”. We send links for the new issue to contributors when everything is ready to go. We plaster our social media with links to the digital version, which has been free from the beginning, and the print version for which we currently charge $8.
We have a quarterly publishing schedule, which means we get to do this four time per year: January, April, July, and October. We have been releasing new issues on the first day of the month kicking off each quarter. However, we are making a slight modification with our upcoming winter issue. Instead of publishing the Winter 2018 issue on January 1, we are moving it to January 15. We would like to give ourselves a break over the holidays and we want authors to be able to look at authors’ proofs after the New Year instead of in the midst of holiday revelry.
Running a poetry journal is often rewarding. But it is also hard work, detailed work, and requires dedication. What we are clear about is that this is important work. Poets who put in the sweat to get their words just right deserve editors whose diligence honors that effort.
We sincerely hope we’ve risen to the occasion.
Stay tuned for our fall issue, scheduled for release on October 1. Happy autumn.
featured image courtesy of pixabay.com