When submitting your work, don't be an idiot. As a proof, two examples from my in-box:
- One author submitted a story to storySouth by way of me back in March. I responded immediately, stating that yes, I am still listed on the masthead in that vague "founding editor" role, but I have nothing to do with the day-to-day running of the magazine. To submit a story, check out their guidelines. The idiot's response: Wait seven months then ask me for an update on his submission. When I repeated above info and also sent my earlier email, the submitter explodes in anger because I "wasted his time."
- Another person is making the rounds in my in-box after submitting a story using the cc function. That is, he copied the emails of fifty magazines and sent the submission to all of us at once. This means not only does he look like an idiot, every time a rejection is sent back, every other editor also sees the message and is reminded of said idiocy.
I would not suggest either method as a path toward publication.
Update: Once the snail mail oozed its way into my mailbox today, lo and behold the snail had deposited a submission. For the record, storySouth never accepted mailed submissions, only electronic ones. So this person not only ignored the current storySouth guidelines, he ignored the old guidelines too and tracked down the physical address of the person who is no longer the storySouth editor. End result is I opened the sub, wrote note on sub, placed sub in SASE. A waste of one minute of my life and $3 postage on the submitter's part.