I agree. Once you’ve been on the platform for a while and you get a lay of the land you figure it out pretty quickly. There are pubs that want to take what feels like forever to publish or reject your work. There are those that are like assembly lines with the volume they crank out so your work gets buried in the process and never sees the light of day. There are the publications that want to hack your work to hell and back (I’ve had two of them so far only thank God) and so forth.

It just isn’t worth the time and effort of reading and memorizing all of the different submission guidelines. Or seeing work being published that if it were in print form wouldn’t be used to line a birdcage or wrap fish in like we used to say back in the day.

You’re better off self-publishing and publishing a lot to get Al’s attention so that your work gets seen more on its own merits and not some editor or publisher’s ego.