Writing Blog Number 2

20241020 Margin Of Success

Margin Of Success

So, you’ve decided to go the traditional publishing route. You’ve sent off your work to an agent or a magazine and now you wait.

What are your odds of success?

Not high, to be brutally honest.

Let’s look at some of the odds.
         One scifi magazine I have submitted to (and who have published me twice) gets around 1000 submissions that are read (more on that later) per edition. 6-8 stories (depending on length) are published. That’s 0.8% acceptance rate.
         Another magazine that I have submitted to without luck also gets around 1000 stories and they publish 10. That is 1% acceptance.
         Isaac Asimov’s Magazine was getting over 10,000 submissions per quarter (before the recent takeover) for 8 open spots (there were also 8 spots for invited authors). 0.08% acceptance rate!
         Okay, some short story anthology stats. One company gets around 500 stories that are read per anthology, with up to 20 stories accepted. That’s 4% acceptance.
         Another company claims they received 650 stories for a recent open call but only accepted 9 of them as being at the standard they expect, and so have extended their open call (I have been accepted, FWIW). 1.4% acceptance rate.
         One more company who have accepted me reckons they get in excess of 1000 submissions per anthology for up to 25 slots. 2.5% acceptance rate.
         Yes, anthologies are higher than magazines for acceptances.

On the other side of the coin.
          Since 2018 (when my records begin, as the old records have been lost to the vagaries of digital data), I have submitted 480 short stories for 79 acceptances (not all have been published yet, and some won’t be published because companies have gone bust… thanks, COVID!). So I am sitting on around a 16% acceptance rate.
         A fellow writer recently cracked his 1000th submission for 27 acceptances. 2.7% acceptance.
         Another writer on Discord I have come to know has submitted over 500 times for 6 acceptances. 1.2% acceptance.
         And another friend has had one acceptance from at least 150 submissions, for 0.7%.
         So, looking at it person to person, luck is all over the place.

When it comes to novels, the odds are worse. I have had 5 books accepted from 303 submissions. That’s 1.6% acceptance. Many are even worse off. AM Ink, who published one of my books, received in excess of 200 submissions when they chose my book, the only one. Less than 0.5%. And that was just those that were read.

Okay, I’ve said that often. What do I mean by “submissions that are read”? These are the submissions that follow the formatting requested by the publisher, normally a variation on Shunn. These are the submissions that follow what the publisher wants. Black Hare Press, a fantasy, scifi and horror publisher in Australia (they took one of my books and three of my short stories) sent out an email thanking those of us who had been accepted for not sending:

…romance stories, war stories, paranormal romance stories, fan fiction and all the other things we have listed as ‘we do not want.’ Thank you for formatting as we ask and not using fancy red fonts. Thank you for using UK English. Thank you for considering us. You are all talented writers but you are also all writers we know we can work with.

And this is apparently getting worse and worse as more and more people think their book is good enough for everyone.

So what is the margin for success? Very, very small. But it does feel like it is worth it to put in the effort.