Strange Horizons: Behind the Curtain

[Part of an e-mail conversation with a submitter about a lost submission. Submitter's e-mail italicized; mine plain text]

Also, a lot of magazines are using 'submittable.com' which lets the artist track the status of the submission without needing to query. I like seeing that when I submit poems or other work, as I know the submission won't be lost.

Regards,
[name removed]

Dear [name removed],

I like Submittable too. However, given the size of our editorial staff across all departments and the high volume of submissions we receive monthly, Submittable would charge Strange Horizons $1100 per year to use their system. As a donation-funded magazine with an all-volunteer staff, that's a tenth of our annual budget, and the same as the cost of publishing 9 months of poems. (At present, we do not accept any advertising, and aside from the cost of web hosting, 100% of our budget goes to paying our contributors.)

Unfortunately, I'm afraid we're stuck with our current cobbled together but mercifully free system, and the occasional lost e-mails that result.

Regards,
Romie

[/end conversation]

Always interesting to me to see how a given individual imagines (or doesn't imagine) how infrastructure gets paid for, maintained, etc. And I do mean always interesting; I'm not using "interesting" to mean "stupid." There's something nice about the way there are invisible people taking care of us, working very hard so we don't notice them. Our society has so many parents.