Before I came to Substack, the most popular blog post I ever wrote was a decade ago, at age 26, during my MFA, when I explained that it is impossible to sell a story to the New Yorker using their online submission form.

I do not mean difficult. I mean impossible. At the time I wrote, they had not accepted a submission from over the transom slush in over 20 years. By now it's over 30 years.

To most mid-career writers, this is obvious, but my MFA classmates didn't know that. They thought there was a chance they could be “discovered” by some slush reader. And there's a reason for that: as I explain in my post, the editors of the New Yorker are very careful to obfuscate this fact by saying they have taken unsolicited submissions (without mentioning those subs usually come from agented writers).

On a broader level, think how insane it is to maintain a slush pile for thirty years, at fifty thousand submissions a year, from which you NEVER accept any submissions?

This was not historically true by the way. In the 20th century, the New Yorker did sometimes take mailed submissions! It did happen! But when Bill Buford took over as fiction editor, that practice stopped.

This is not a crime, but it is dishonest. And that kind of dishonesty is endemic in mainstream publications, and it's why they lack credibility when it comes to, say, their book reviews. If they will lie to their submitters, who won't they lie to? Why should we expect their book reviews to be honest when the way they run their business is not honest?

This is not about fairness. It's fine to not take unsolicited submissions. But in that case, just say so.