This year, I submitted poems 27 times for 18 form rejections and 1 personalized rejection.
(That represents 17 unique poems)
I submitted a poetry chapbook 5 times for 2 form rejections.
I submitted short stories 83 times for 54 form rejections, 9 personalized rejections.
(That represents 28 unique stories, of which 8 were reprint submissions and 3 were flash fiction and 1 was a novelette. I made a point of submitting stories for reprinting this year, though the only reprint I sold was solicited — they asked me to reprint it, I didn’t submit. Starting to wonder if submitting reprints is worth the time.)
I submitted a short story collection 3 times for 1 form rejection. Also twice to a place that maybe asked for it but didn’t respond to the emails, so I don’t know if I can even count it as submitted, and once accidentally to a poetry-only market. Confused? Sorry, that’s a total of six submissions of the short story collection for one response. For clarity, the first of those submissions was in January, and the last was in July, so I am not exactly holding out hope I’ll hear back on any of the others.
I queried 4 agents for 0 responses.
A grand total of 32 submissions without response. There’s a lot of not hearing back in the world of publishing, and most of those will be eventual rejections, or marked “never responded.” — this is particularly common in agent queries. My personal policy is to mark a submission as never responded and move on after 18 months have passed.
I went to 10 in-person events to promote The Gods Awoke, and sold 8 copies total at events, averaging less than one per event. So yes, I got to be rejected in person, too.
I also got turned down for a grant and two residencies.
Just writing this blog post is demoralizing, I’m sorry if it is demoralizing to read! I have to remember that I had 8 short fiction acceptances and 1 poetry acceptance, too. That’s a 9.6% acceptance rate on fiction and a 3.7% acceptance rate on poetry. Both of those rates are phenomenal for the industry. I have to remember that I’ve been a published poet and short story author a lot longer than I’ve been a published novelist, of course I’m going to be better at what I have more experience doing.
My acceptance rate crept up from its sharp drop last year, which was still higher than 2019, despite my number of submissions being lower. It still seems that the more I submit, the luckier I am?
And great things happened this year! I broke into Clarkesworld for the first time, and with my first novelette! I had only this year challenged myself to write one. That novelette, “We Built This City” fulfilled my long-held dream of writing something about labor unions in space.
More astonishing, I got a wikipedia page this year! External validation! If I do nothing else in my life, I can say I was, for a time, as famous as Funyuns.
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