Excellent tool for use in literary editing and publishing!
July 26, 2023

Excellent tool for use in literary editing and publishing!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Submittable

I use Submittable to read through submissions of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction our literary journal housed at a university. Submittable helps our team of editors to keep track of how many submissions we have, who the authors are, as well as assign these submissions to the various readers. I read through the unsolicited submissions pile and decide which one are worth passing forward as well as which submissions to reject outright. I've found Submittable to be a very valuable tool and reasonably intuitive to use for my purposes as a reader for a literary journal. In addition to being intuitive, I've found Submittable to be excellent in its precision as well. I can use the various filters to see what other readers at the journal are reading and what comments they've made. Submittable is great for efficient collaboration and is a strong tool that I would recommend to any organization, especially in the literary editing world.
  • Intuitive interface
  • Extensive search filters
  • Great for collaboration with my team
  • The interface be a little confusing at first
  • Potentially too easy to accidentally accept submissions without meaning to
  • More responsive process
  • Helps to keep organization on track for deadlines
  • Keep large numbers of journal submissions organized
I would say it's fairly usable, however, it definitely took a bit of getting used to on the front end. It's fairly precise and complex, so it took a little training to learn how to use at first. For what it is, I think it's quite intuitive though. Submittable is a really strong product!
As far as I know, Submittable has certainly helped simplify the ability to keep equity in the applicant and awardee experience. It definitely helps us to maintain a more fair screening process for author submissions.
Honestly, I haven't used other comparable products to Submittable. That said, the interface is far better than the submission managers for so many other literary magazines. It feels far cleaner and far more professional.

Do you think Submittable delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Submittable's feature set?

Yes

Did Submittable live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Submittable go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Submittable again?

Yes

Submittable is well-suited for our organization's purposes. As a literary journal, I've found that Submittable works well for receiving submissions for literary contests, as well as just for our regular publication purposes. It works extremely smoothly and fluidly if you need to receive and vet thousands of submissions. In terms of scenarios where not so appropriate, I would guess that if you aren't having to go through as many submissions as we do, it might not be as cost-effective, although I don't handle the financial side of our organization, so I cannot speak to this point with certainty.