Why do some poetry magazines prohibit simultaneous submissions?
A. Common Ground Review is now allowing simultaneous submissions. However, simultaneous submissions can cause editors serious problems. For example, the editors have accepted a poem for publication (after lengthy evaluation and some negotiation) and the poet notifies them the poem has been accepted elsewhere and wishes to have it withdrawn. By this time, the editors have spent a great deal of time planning layout , i.e. which poems should face each other on opposing pages or where the best place is for each illustration. Poems that occupy more than one page add another layout dimension. In addition, layout involves four pages not one. Subtract one poem and either add a poem or subtract three other pages. Whichever editors choose to do will cause the whole journal layout to be re-evaluated and then laid out again. The content page and the biographical pages of the journal will also have to be edited. Therefore, simultaneous submissions, although anathema to editors, are a compromise to
