And Now, a Word From the Pre-Readers

Good evening, fillies and gentlecolts. How’s your day going so far? Good? Glad to hear it.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why some guy you’ve never heard of is asking you about your day on the internet’s most popular My Little Pony fansite. Is there a new blogpony? Is this some type of incredibly polite hacking attempt? Has Seth given control of the site to Nigerian princes to use as collateral during a multi-million dollar cash transaction?

Temporarily, no, and not yet.

I’m here on behalf of the EqD fanfiction pre-readers. For the past few weeks we’ve been dealing with a huge influx of fanfic that doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon. A good chunk of these are stories that have been resubmitted after being sent back for revisions. Unfortunately, many of these resubmissions have had very few changes made from their original drafts, which requires us to read them (again), make a list of problems (which is often strikingly similar to the previous list), and send these back to the author, after which the process will likely repeat itself.

This really jams up our queue and makes things take much longer than they normally should. After bouncing some ideas around, we have come up with a system that will hopefully solve the problem: a three-strike policy.

Here’s the short version: Stories can be sent back for revision three times before we stop looking at that story, barring special circumstances (for example, if a story is very close to being accepted but needs just one more round of editing, we’ll give it a free pass).

Now, I know that sounds rough. “But Daff,” you may be thinking, “isn’t it the pre-reader’s job to help me fix my work so I can get it on EqD?” Alas, dear reader, it isn’t. I wish we had enough time to sit down with every author and help edit their work to perfection, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Our job is to vet stories for quality and content, nothing more. But don’t give up just yet. There is still hope. The editors over on Ponychan’s /fic/ board do some incredible work, and would be more than willing to help any would-be author bring their story as close to perfect as possible (assuming said author reads the sticky at the top of the page before posting). Additionally, we pre-readers have our own thread where we’re happy to answer any questions related to submissions, content, or writing in general.

Between these two resources, I think any author is capable of getting their story up to snuff in under three submissions. We don’t like rejecting stories, but this is a necessary step to make life easier for all involved.

Keep on being awesome, EqD.