I’ve just recommended two more mss to the editors. That means the gender scales have shifted somewhat. I was fifty fifty before but the two latest are males. That’s 12 in total, which is rather a lot. I guess that reflects my earlier comments that there is a lot of good stuff in the submissions pile and some of that must be work that did not get picked up in previous years with the GFC and the continuing uncertainty in the publishing sector.
I am currently reading an SF ms and I have six more mss to go. I’m reading them as the mood takes me, leaving the longest one for last. The two that I recommended today I have been sitting on for a week or two.
I am feeling rather chipper as one day I might clean my house when all this is done and dusted. I am also in an MS reading mood, having written two reports and given two authors good news. On the downside, I also gave two authors not so good news. I so wish I could get this finished by next weekend.
Donna Maree Hanson, Author and PhD Candidate 
Hang in there, Donna – the end is in sight! It will be interesting to read about how many fulls they finally asked for, when the figures are in.
I was thinking this morning that there would be enough to start a new imprint. I think they will end up with more than 20.
And out of those they probably won’t choose more than a couple for publication, I guess. It’s interesting watching your take on the process. Did they engage other outside readers or did you do the lot?
There were other readers. I did less than half, which is still quite a lot. I didn’t read yours as I asked for someone else to do it. I did the same thing for most of the people I knew in the submission pile. I think in the first month there were at least five or six readers and then it was just two of us.
So you didn’t get to read blind – I’m interested because we’ve been reading and selecting for a little antho for The Specsphere, as you know. No one but Stephen, our EinC, knew who sent which story, and I was very pleased to find that several friends and acquaintances were in the final cut, even though I hadn’t, in most cases, picked that they’d written them. Only in one case did I know, and that was because I’d critted an earlier version of the story, but I agreed with the consensus that it wasn’t quite right for the antho.
Reading for AR must have been a bleedin’ marathon! You and your fellow readers deserve medals. I do hope the editors find at least a few things they can use, after all your hard work!
With nearly 1000 submissions it would have been very onerous to denude them of identifiers before reading. I dodged most that I knew but not all. It makes things awkward for those I did read. I was very happy to have a story in the antho. I think it is the best story I’ve done to date. Yes, reading for Angry Robot Books has been a marathon, nearly six months of my life.