Thursday, April 26, 2007

Stamped on

In a few weeks the price of postage will go from $.39 to $.41. I still have a stack of $.02 stamps from when they changed it from $.37 not so long ago so I'm excited I will get the chance to use those up. And I'm not really mad about having to pay an extra $.02. What I wish is that they would announce this much further in advance. Remember back in January when I sent out all those submissions. The self-addressed stamped envelopes that I sent with all those submissions, in hopes of a reply, all had $.39 stamps on them and I've only gotten responses from about a quarter of those. Sometimes responses take six months to a year. I'm pretty sure that small literary magazines are not going to go buy a bunch of $.02 to fix this problem, if they even pay attention to the postage on the stacks of self-addressed stamped envelopes that they deal with daily. The reason I'm fairly certain that one of those theories is true is because I did not get one submission response after they changed postage rates last time.
It would seem like it's no big deal because they are all rejection notices anyway and if on the off chance someone did accept my story they might spring for $.02 or not even use the self-addressed stamped envelope but rather a nice big envelope with lots of cool published writer stuff in it. But the truth is I like my rejection letters. Sometimes they give me good advice, they always make me feel like I'm at least trying and if I completely fail as a writer, at least I can have the world record for most rejection ever endured by one person. And that is a goal all in itself.
Anyway, at least this time they are fixing that problem by creating the "forever stamp" that will always be good even if the rate increases again.

Just watched: The Office, 30 Rock, Scrubs

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am really glad that you posted about this because at the rate that things are going for me, it is likely that the rate change woud have gone into effect without me even realizing it. I feel compelled to suddenly mail off a lot of letters and bills before the increase! LoL ;)

Ashley said...

Jenni- I'm so glad that I was able to help you out with this exciting news. Aside from the submission part, I'm actually excited for the chance to use my $.02 stamps, especially because this will be the last time I can thanks to the new "forever stamp", unless of course I put 22 of them on one envelope.

Ashley said...

P.S. Do you like I how put your name in front of that reply? As if some other commenter might be confused about who I was addressing.
BTW should that have been "whom"? I would hate to upset you with my improper use of the English language but every time I try to use 'whom' I feel like I'm being a smarty pants! :)