How many short stories did you write until one was picked up?

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huu

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I've been trying my hand at getting a pub credit in a literary journal...and it's feeling kind of brutal. Formal letters abound. Personalized rejections here and there. Ultimately no acceptance.

How long did it take before you landed anything? I submitted 2 stories to maybe 30 places and no dice...so far...
 

Jamesaritchie

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Two stories? Most, about ninety percent, never sell a story. period. The average number written for those that do sell is fifty.

The only reason short story sales make good credits is because they're incredibly tough to get. The competition at magazines is many times tougher than the competition at book publishers.

The only reason to write short stories is because you love reading and writing short stories. Writing them just because you want a publication credit leads to nothing but disappointment for most.
 

Maryn

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James, can you cite a source for these figures, please?

Maryn, who's heard very different numbers
 

KTC

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I sold the first four I ever submitted. Then I hit a dry spell and collected rejection letters out the wazoo. Just keep swimming. Just keep submitting. Just keep writing. You need to find the right market for the right story.
 

Hoplite

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I've been trying my hand at getting a pub credit in a literary journal...and it's feeling kind of brutal. Formal letters abound. Personalized rejections here and there. Ultimately no acceptance.

How long did it take before you landed anything? I submitted 2 stories to maybe 30 places and no dice...so far...

Well my experience has been with sci-fi/horror/fantasy small press publishers, so take from it what you will.

I've written perhaps close to 20 or so complete short stories, all of various quality. I've written perhaps 50+ miscellaneous things that would be best described at exposition or scenes. This has all been over the course of 16 years or so (starting when I was about 10). This has all led up to selling two (2) short stories to different small presses' anthologies.

Now about those 2 stories I sold: they were both within the last 3 years, and both sold rather quickly. The first was an 11th hour submission to a themed anthology, and I wrote the story over a few days leading up to the closing. The second took a few weeks (mostly waiting to hear back from pro-mags), but was accepted in about 2 weeks after submitting it to the small publisher.

The list of rejections is far longer than my list of acceptances.
 

huu

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James, can you cite a source for these figures, please?

Maryn, who's heard very different numbers

What are yours?
 

Hoplite

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Two stories? Most, about ninety percent, never sell a story. period. The average number written for those that do sell is fifty.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean to say that 90% of writers/people never sell a story? And the ratio of stories written to stories sold is 50:1?

James, can you cite a source for these figures, please?

Maryn, who's heard very different numbers

What are yours?

Well, this may or may not help you, but you can go to The Grinder to see what the acceptance/rejection rate is for specific magazines.
 

CarbunkleFlux

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I still haven't gotten accepted either and I've made numerous submissions so far.

Best suggestion I can give you is just to keep submitting. Markets are very fickle and for good reason, since they get many submissions they have to sift through to decide which are best and can only accept so many.

It's also not a bad idea to stand back and go 'Wait, is the story the problem?' and run it by someone new to see what they say, either.
 

RightHoJeeves

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I've written maybe 10 short stories, and only 2 or 3 good (not great) ones. Never had any accepted. I was beating myself up about that for a while, but then I realised I don't even really read short stories, so how can I be expected to write good ones?

I'll stick with novels.
 

Fuchsia Groan

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Do I count the stories I wrote as a teen and in college? Not sure. I think I wrote four or five as an adult before I got one accepted by an obscure (though paying) literary journal. After that my luck ran out, but I haven't submitted anything for ages.

Literary journals might as well be a black hole; you won't get feedback, or extremely rarely. I found it more rewarding to submit to SFF mags, where I got actual encouragement and advice with my rejections. I should start up again, but I'm focused on novels now.
 

Jamesaritchie

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James, can you cite a source for these figures, please?

Maryn, who's heard very different numbers

The sources are numerous, but you'll have to look them up yourself. I read everything, but I don't keep track, though Publishers Weekly printed them at some point.

But read any slush pile. If anything, the numbers I gave are wildly conservative. Competition level and number of markets alone means that very, very, very few will ever actually sell a short story.

I've love to hear you numbers and sources, though. I'm always open to adding to my knowledge base.
 

Lady MacBeth

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Literary journals might as well be a black hole; you won't get feedback, or extremely rarely. I found it more rewarding to submit to SFF mags, where I got actual encouragement and advice with my rejections.

Not in my experience. I have received excellent feedback from both literary and speculative journals.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean to say that 90% of writers/people never sell a story? And the ratio of stories written to stories sold is 50:1?



.

No, I mean that the average selling writer had to write fifty short stories before writing one that was good enough, and that fit the markets well enough.

For most, learning how to write well enough to sell in an extremely tough area takes time. Learning how to give editors the kind of stories they really want can take even more time.

Now and then, a writer does sell a first short story, or a second or a third, but the simply fact is that every now and then someone comes along who learns how to do anything extremely fast.

The short story market is the second toughest on earth to crack, if you mean paying markets. Only magazine poetry is tougher. Paying markets receive a lot of submissions, and most of them constantly receive stories from the best writers on earth. Space is limited, so in order to publish a story by a new writer, an editor has to reject a story by a well-known writer. Probably a dozen or more stories by well-known writers.

This means your story must, in some way, be better than all the stories the editor sees not only from hundreds of other new writers, but also better than the stories the editor receives from well-known writers during that submission period. Not as good as, but better.

This is the difference between short story and novel publishing. When you write a horror novel, the publisher does not have to reject Stephen King in order to buy and publish your novel. With short stories, however, an editor can buy and publish only a few short stories per issues, Rarely fore than five, and often only one or two, depending on the mag. In his submitted stories stack there may well be a story by Stephen King, and often as many as three dozen othe rstories by writers with names and reader would recognize.

There will probably be another bunch of stories by writers who aren't famous, but who do have some good credits.

Even if the editor could buy ten stories, he's still going to have to reject some proven, well-known writers in order to buy yours.

This doesn't even count the hundreds of other new writers who also submitted stories during that submission period.

Fortunately, this is possible, of course, but rarely on a first, or second, or even a twentieth story. It happens only after a writer gains the skill to match his talent, and when he learns to not only write well, but to write stories that fit the markets. This is not always the same thing.

And, realistically, there are millions of short story writers out there. Numbers alone mean that only a very small percentage will ever sell a short story to a paying market, let alone to a large, credit worthy market. And only the top one or two or three percent, maximum, can do so reliably and at all often.

A lot of writers think selling a short story is easier than selling a novel. For a tiny few, it is, simply because some people write short stories well, but do not write novels well. For the great majority of writers, however, it's a heck of a lot "easier" to sell a novel to a mainstream publisher than it is to sell a short story to a credit worthy magazine.

The only reason good short story credits matter is because they're so incredibly difficult for most writers to get.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I'd also add that my numbers are probably far too conservative. There are far fewer markets now, and far more writers, than there were when I first came across those numbers.
 

williemeikle

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My first story won 2nd prize in a ghost story competition then sold to a magazine and radio station.

In the 23 years since I've written 309 short stories, and sold 301 of them - the other 8 are on submission.
 

Lady MacBeth

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My first story won 2nd prize in a ghost story competition then sold to a magazine and radio station.

In the 23 years since I've written 309 short stories, and sold 301 of them - the other 8 are on submission.


:Clap: That's impressive.
 

Lady Chipmunk

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I think the numbers are going to vary by genre, by author, by submission protocol (IE submit to only pro markets vs anywhere the story might fit even if for no pay), by phases of the moon, and goats sacrificed. (I'm kidding. Please do not sacrifice goats. They're cute, and it would in no way help your chances of getting published.)

But seriously, it's different for everyone. You just have to keep trying if you want to get there eventually. :)
 
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