Aaron Shepard First printed in Once Upon A Time, Fall 1993. May be freely copied and shared for any educational, noncommercial purpose. This and other articles can be found on Aaron Shepard's Kidwriter Page . Over the past few years, I've discussed the issue of multiple submissions with numerous beginning children's writers, most of them female. I've come to the conclusion that this is not so much a marketing question as a gender issue.
Few men seem to have trouble with the idea of multiple submissions.
They know they cannot afford to tie up a manuscript for a half year or more with an inefficient, ponderous, or overworked editor. They also know that withdrawing a manuscript after a shorter period is often tantamount to not sending it at all, since the editor may not yet have even glanced at it. Most women know this too. They don't dare. They're afraid of offending an editor.