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Some numbers from a moderately successful writer of literary fiction and poetry.¹ From when I started submitting work again after about seven years of not submi

by dhosek 4y ago

Some numbers from a moderately successful writer of literary fiction and poetry.¹ From when I started submitting work again after about seven years of not submitting, it took six years and about 200 rejections before I had my first acceptance in 2013. I’ve had at least one acceptance every year since then, with the most I’ve made from a story being $200 and the most for a poem $55.34.² My overall rejection rate for poetry is 99% and for fiction 98%.³ On a year-by-year basis, my highest acceptance rate for fiction was 4.2% and my lowest (after those early years of rejection) was 0.5%. For poetry, my acceptance rate has ranged from 0% to 3.3%. I’ve been pretty resilient with respect to rejection. I credit my love life (or lack thereof) in my teen and young adult years for that. ⸻ 1. I have an MFA and have published 20 short stories and 11 poems over the last nine years. (https://www.dahosek.com/publications/ https://www.dahosek.com/publications/). 2. The odd number being caused by the fact that it was an Australian publication and this was my net after bank fees and currency conversion. The nominal pay was AUD75. 3. My MFA was in fiction and I feel much more confident in prose than in poetry—I could teach a fiction workshop, but would be at a loss to try to lead a poetry workshop.

boznz 4y ago
So much of being an author these days is about marketing, I suspect publishers look at either your track record or your twitter followers before making decisions to sign you up or publish. Unfortunately, with so many people publishing books these days, the chance of your work standing out of the crowd becomes effectively zero, and one bad initial review will stop a book sale dead even if totally unjustified, (we are in a five-star review or nothing culture). I don't know what the solution to this is except persevere and if you don't succeed feel good in knowing you have a legacy.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  There’s a 50/50 there actually. Most editors aren’t going to look at a random persons social media to decide whether to accept a short story or a poem (except maybe to make sure they’re not posting offensive screeds or something before choosing to accept a piece that already made it through several rounds of selection). There simply isn’t much time in an editors day to be fretting about picking the writers with the biggest followings. However, some editors will ask certain writers to submit to their venues, and as you become more famous editors will (despite what they try to say) become positively biased towards you when they see your name in their queue. But that’s very different from looking you up on social media; more likely, you got talked about in the editors social circle and if you have 500 or 5000 followers didn’t matter then…
  - dhosek 4y ago
    How much is improving as a writer and how much the fact that I have a growing list of publications is hard to identify but it does seem that after that first publication, subsequent publications have come more regularly.

by dhosek 4y ago

boznz 4y ago

So much of being an author these days is about marketing, I suspect publishers look at either your track record or your twitter followers before making decisions to sign you up or publish. Unfortunately, with so many people publishing books these days, the chance of your work standing out of the crowd becomes effectively zero, and one bad initial review will stop a book sale dead even if totally unjustified, (we are in a five-star review or nothing culture). I don't know what the solution to this is except persevere and if you don't succeed feel good in knowing you have a legacy.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
There’s a 50/50 there actually. Most editors aren’t going to look at a random persons social media to decide whether to accept a short story or a poem (except maybe to make sure they’re not posting offensive screeds or something before choosing to accept a piece that already made it through several rounds of selection). There simply isn’t much time in an editors day to be fretting about picking the writers with the biggest followings. However, some editors will ask certain writers to submit to their venues, and as you become more famous editors will (despite what they try to say) become positively biased towards you when they see your name in their queue. But that’s very different from looking you up on social media; more likely, you got talked about in the editors social circle and if you have 500 or 5000 followers didn’t matter then…
- dhosek 4y ago
  How much is improving as a writer and how much the fact that I have a growing list of publications is hard to identify but it does seem that after that first publication, subsequent publications have come more regularly.