racking up rejections

[gettingby]

For those of you who sell stories, how many rejections does a single story get before you get an acceptance for it? I know this number will be different for everyone, but I am wondering how many times people try to get a given story published and if it pays off.

[MJNL]

Er, I don't think you can just look at number of rejections for specific stories to see if you're on the right track. For instance, my first I wrote my first published story specifically for the venue it got bought by, so 0. My second got 2 rejections before it was bought. But I got 94 rejections in all before selling that first story, and then about 10 more before my second. There's an old saying about writers, that it takes on average 100 rejections before you sell a story. This has more to do with the practice of constantly writing and submitting than it does with any one story. I clearly fit into that average quite neatly. Others get well over 100, some sell their first time out. Though we writers are always looking for yardsticks, there really aren't any. Everyone's experience with publishing is going to be different.

Both of the sales I made were quick because I had a fairly intimate understanding of the venues I was submitting to and their suitability to my stories. If I was just shooting in the dark, like I am with many of my submissions because I can't read everything that's out there, then it might have taken plenty more rejections before either was bought.

All that being said, I submit until I've exhausted all possible pro and semi pro venues. Which means one story can rack up 25 rejections plus.

ETA: Uh, and I just received another acceptance--just now. This one got 1 rejection. But it was also a venue-targeted submission.

[lorna_w]

Depends where you send it. When I wrote lit fic, I started with The New Yorker, Atlantic, Esquire, Harpers (the big paying markets back then). I thought the chances of me beating out Vonnegut or Updike for a spot there were one in a million, and I even doubted seriously that two of those four read slush (I never saw evidence that they did, from me or my extensive group of writer friends), but I did it anyway. Then Paris Review, etc., straight down the list of higher paying and higher prestige. On average, 20 rejections.

In the genre work I did, 0-2 rejections.

Some people have a lot of tolerance for rejection (I did back then) and others don't. for the latter group, I'd suggest targeting markets you think you can crack.

Why do you ask?

[drachin8]

It varies. It varies wildly.

I have two short stories which sold to the second market they were submitted to, and I have a short story which sold to the eighteenth market it was submitted to. And then I have allllllll sorts of numbers inbetween for other short stories.

It definitely gets depressing when a story you love takes a long time selling, but if you love it, you just have to keep submitting it until you find the editor who loves it just as much.




-Michelle

[ravenmuse]

I must confess to not being one of the most hardened of submitters. I submit mainly to genre markets. I try to do my homework on what type of submissions a particular market wants, and do my best to then match that. If I've had 2-3 rejections on a story, I usually assume that something needs restructuring. I've been quite lucky on getting 2nd market acceptances on a few of my most recent stories. And then, a couple of times, I've just decided drat that and put a flash story on my blog as a #fridayflash fiction.

Like I said before, I'm not the most hardened of submitters...

[punahougirl84]

I think Jamesaritchie makes good sense, and I love that happily-ever-after story. I have a story that I was having trouble placing, and was going to set it to the side, when I rechecked the markets and realized there was a good one I'd not considered that might be a perfect fit. So I've sent it and hope it finally finds a home.

We are lucky to be able to submit online to so many markets, but that means many others can do the same thing. E-slush is worse because it doesn't weed out those who would avoid the run to the post office and pay postage. People might be sending things out faster or with less consideration. I'd say don't worry about the number of rejections - if you have a good, well-written story and are doing your homework about where to send it, then there is nothing else you can do but work on other things while you wait to hear if it has sold.

[WildScribe]

I write exclusively genre stuff, so that probably skews my numbers--it's much harder to sell literary stuff, or so I've heard. I tend to sell things on the first or second go-out, but I also tend to write to calls/market specific . My worst was three rejections before I sold a very hard-to-place story, although I do have a handful of shorts that are sitting in the chute waiting for their second shot, which technically have still not sold at all.

[Darkwing]

My first sale was after six rejections, but it turns out that I sold the story to a not-very-reputable market that, in hindsight, probably took a lot of crap. Oh well. At least I got mine in before they stopped paying writers (and started *charging* them to "feature" their story!!).

The most rejections I have for one story so far is thirteen. It turns out that after leaving it alone for six months and finishing a master's degree, I realized it was pure crap. It is currently being re-written, and I'm receiving positive feedback about it from my crit group so far.

Not including the three stories I have out on sub, I've made thirty-five submissions over my lifetime so far, and all but one of them have been rejections. I'll admit you're ahead of me (congrats, by the way, for writing so many stories and making so many submissions!) but here's my secret so far for not getting down:

I celebrate my rejections. (No, literally. I get very happy and excited about where I'm sending the story next). Every rejection means that I'm putting my work out there, I'm doing the writing thing, and that I'm learning. Eventually I'll find someone who wants those stories. Meanwhile, I write more stories. When I finally start getting acceptances, I'll be able to gauge where my writing skill lies at the moment. Until then, I just have to have faith that I'm going to get a little better every time I write something new or fix something old.

And yes, I do get impatient. I've just learned to focus on writing new stuff instead of worrying about my ones on sub.

[Summonere]

So far my highest number of rejections before sale has been 13. Other stories have sold the first time out. Most seem to find a market somewhere in the neighborhood of six or less tries, though.

[FOTSGreg]

Forty or fifty. My spreadsheet tracking system got so large and complicated I stopped using it altogether. Of course, I had an awful lot of stories out all at the same time and that was before Amazon, Smashwords, and PubIt came to be.

[W.L. Marks]

I think so much of it depends on the markets you're subbing to. I usually go through every single (open) pro-paying speculative fiction market I can before I hit the semi-pros and tokens. (Exception being Tor, b/c I'm just not that patient.)

As of now, I've only just gotten to the point where my first submittable-quality piece (as determined by yours truly) of short fiction has made its rounds and entered the semi-pro arena.

It's gotten some nice personals from pro markets, so I do expect it to sell. It's been with a market that requested a rewrite for a couple of months now. But the thing is, I could have started semi-pro, and then I would have skipped out on about ten subs before I got to this point.

So, I guess the number of places it went through doesn't really mean anything, unless we're discussing it in terms of both specific genres and specific pay scales.

[jaksen]

My stories have only been submitted once each to one market, and accepted, once each.

This is not the norm, I am sure of that. And now that I am trying to get published outside of short mysteries I'm sure to start submitting to more than one market. (At a time, that is.)

Wow, talk about an unhelpful answer.

[CL_Hilbert]

Many of the stories I sell, I sell on the first shot.

On the other hand, I just sold a story that had been rejected at ten other markets.

And then, on the other-other hand, I have a few stories that have seen upward of fifteen rejections so far.

The weird thing is, the smaller the story is, the longer it takes (for me) to sell it. But when I've got a whopper of a thing at 10k+, it seems like it goes to the first taker. Weird.

[CL_Hilbert]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

Most of my fast sales are mid-length or longer, as well. I've wondered if this is because fewer writers manage to finish and submit longer stories, or whether I simply write better at length?

I've wondered the same thing. Though I hear a lot of editors talking about how they get a lot of submissions at a longer length and don't very much like such stories, so maybe we're writing a particular kind of longer story that stands out?

It is a mystery.