Submission Protocol: Failure to Launch

There are a lot of valid reasons to withdraw a submission, and I’ve covered most of them on this blog. Generally, a submission is withdrawn because the publisher fails to respond in a timely manner or at all or, more commonly, the submission is accepted elsewhere in the process of a sim-sub. You can have a look at my thoughts on those withdrawal situations like those here and here. But, is there ever a time an author might consider pulling a story after it’s been accepted? Unfortunately, there i...