For transparency, we’ve decided to keep this post up on our website. For further information on our 2024 Open Submissions period, please read this post instead.

Our open subs are different this year!

Angry Robot had to take a break from hosting an open submissions period last year for a few reasons:

1.   An overstretched team whose focus needed to be on the list we have already
2.   An uptick in open submissions periods by other magazines and publishers being flooded with submissions created by AI, which is something we are not willing to publish.

This year, we are happy to announce that we’ve set our open submissions period for the 22nd to the 28th of April!

To help us manage the workflow, we will be using a new submissions portal called Storywise, which uses a grading system to sort through submissions and send them to the right editor. It is therefore easier (and speedier) for our team to go through submissions through Storywise. Though it uses artificial intelligence to sort through submissions, it is important to note that Storywise is not a generative AI program. This means that it does not learn from author’s works to inform an AI model, and therefore the AI model is not trained by your work.

We understand that many writers will have reservations about this new system, but we can assure you that we will not keep your submissions on, or use it in any nefarious ways. Our company’s policy is that we do not feed anything into any generative AI engines, and we do not use AI generated art in any part of our processes. We are determined to protect our authors and send take-down notices when we find that any of their works have been uploaded to generative AI systems without consent.

As we know that people still may be sceptical about the software, we’re still opening our regular inbox for TWO DAYS during the open submissions period. You can submit here on the 27th and 28th of April:openthedoors@angryrobotbooks.com. If you’ve submitted through Storywise, you do not need to email again through this inbox, and vice versa. We are a small team and our time is often preoccupied by our existing work, but we will endeavour to get through all submissions in the inbox within six months.

We’ve included a few FAQs down below, from both the Angry Robot team and the company, Storywise, to help answer any lingering questions you may have. The team is also on hand to answer any queries.

 FAQs

1.   Will this portal use my MS to train an A.I engine?

No, it absolutely will not. Once read and a decision has been made, your submission will be deleted from our system and also from Storywise. Nothing will be kept.

2.   Will the grading system it uses mean my submission is dismissed out of hand before a human can look at it?

No. What it will do is help us work out how to filter submissions to different people on the Angry Robot team. For example, one editor might be looking for a first person narrative with genre modifiers as it’s what they feel the most positive working with. Storywise will just help us look at metrics such as genre, writing style and word length, but since computers can just as easily get things wrong as humans can, we guarantee that all submissions will be opened and read by a human before deletion.

3.   Why are you doing it this way? Can’t we do the old system?

We are a small team reaching a very high limit! Our previous system is not sustainable: things get lost, we don’t answer authors in time, it takes too much time, etc. We are trialling this system in an attempt to be much more efficient and communicative with authors trusting their submissions with us.  

4.   How does this actually benefit authors?

You’ll get an actual answer from us rather than just silence being a no, and you’ll hear that answer faster as the team will be able to sort to the right person to read in a much more efficient way

5.   How long do you think it’ll take you to get through submissions?

This depends on how many submissions we get! At the end of the period, we will advertise how many we’ve got and give you a time estimate of how long the team thinks it’ll take.

6.   Will other editors get to see my submission?

It depends! We are a small team, and we know each other’s tastes well. So sometimes a submission will be passed on to another editor if it doesn’t feel right for the first person who saw it, but sometimes it’ll just be seen once. We can’t feasibly have every editor look at every project otherwise we’d be actively bad at our jobs of being editors for our authors!

7.   Will my personal data be protected from being used by Storywise?

Yes. We will make sure all submissions are deleted from the program once a decision has been made on them, and we will delete your data too. Nothing will be used by Storywise as it does not train AI models, and your book is safe from plagiarism with us.

8.   How much am I supposed to send?

Please send a cover letter, synopsis and your first fifty pages to angryrobot@storywise.ai. If we want more, we will email a request.

Please feel free to send us any more questions!