lessons in course correction

Over the last few months, we’ve established something of a rhythm here at Toad Hall Editions headquarters in terms of who does what, and because we’re a small team, we are enjoying a certain efficiency at checking things off our to-do list. Our functions and roles are fairly clearly defined, and so when a task comes up, we generally know, based on these functions and roles, who is going to tackle the task. We have meetings at least once a week, and frequent check-ins to see if anyone needs any support in completing anything. Despite being a new business venture, because of our longstanding work with each other we have found ourselves to be a decently well-oiled machine when it comes to doing what we’ve said we’re doing.

But our literary journals, kerning and Buttered Toast, are something of a different animal than our usual publishing projects. They depend on contributors, writers and artists who want to submit their work for consideration. And finding those contributors means casting a wide net through our social media platforms, newsletters, community boards, and word-of-mouth to get the news out that we are looking for them.

We try to establish spacious enough deadlines to give these efforts time to get some traction, but we also recognize that we have to stay flexible and nimble to make adjustments when necessary. Our initial deadline for submissions to Buttered Toast was August 20. When only one short story and one piece of art for our cover contest trickled in, we decided to extend it to September 30. A few more poems and short stories have arrived, but not enough to round out a full roster in the magazine. What to do?

In hindsight, of course, we see that a summer deadline for a magazine devoted to the work of writers under 18 was kind of magical thinking on our part. A better tactic would have been to wait until the first few months have school had passed so that we were better able to connect with teachers, who could pass on our call for entries to their students.

We also heard from a few educators that they wouldn’t be able to share our call because we were charging a submission fee. This presented a (small) problem as we rely on those fees to partially cover our printing and administrative costs, but we decided to pivot and work harder to attract folks to our Patreon to cover these costs instead; hoping those people who believe as strongly as we do in bucking the capitalist systems, sharing equity, and inviting everyone to the table would gladly give their support to our endeavors. Now, submissions for Buttered Toast are free and those submission fees are generously supported by our knot (our patrons over on Patreon).

As a new small press and a new business venture, we get to make the rules up as we go. So along with free submissions, we are extending the deadline for art and writing once again…to November 30. It feels good to give ourselves and our potential young contributors a little time and breathing room to find each other.

Will you help us share the call for submissions with this new updated deadline?