>Have you got a story that you think might be a good fit for Gulf Stream, the literary magazine of Florida International University? I did. So I located its website, checked the submission guidelines and mailed off my submission to the address provided. (Cost: $0.75 for the copy, $1.14 for postage, $0.41 for the SASE.) And then a couple of weeks later, my SASE came back with a note that said “Gulf Stream now only accepts online submissions.” And it provided the url for the magazine’s new website. Indeed, at that location the submission guidelines are clear and there are instructions for submitting online. Now, I realize that old websites rarely disappear completely. But it seems to me that if you’re going to move to a new website and you know your old website is still out there in cyberspace, you ought to at least put up a warning on the old website that it has been superseded and maybe, for the sake of visitors, you might even provide a link to the new website. Don’t you think?
I originally found the old website on Duotrope.com. I’ve alerted them to the existence of the new website and presumably their digest will be updated soon.
So, armed with the new information, I proceeded to sub the same story to Gulf Stream using their online system. Except that after filling out their form and uploading my story, when I hit the “submit” button I was told that the upload capacity had been exceeded. Since my story was only 50kb, I knew that wasn’t my fault. I tried again and again and had the same problem. I finally emailed the magazine and got a reply that they were aware of the problem and were working to fix it. I waited a couple of days, tried again and . . . it worked.
