Good Stories Get Rejected Too
Rejections are tough, and getting bummed out is a perfectly reasonable reaction to being told your story isn’t going to be published, but it’s important to have a little perspective on rejections. This is the very core of rejectomancy, understanding that a rejection probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. It probably doesn’t mean you wrote a bad story or that your writing is terrible or any of the other catastrophic scenarios we writers like to read into a simple “not for us” form rejection.
But, hey, I’ve said this a dozen times on the blog, and since writers are supposed to show and not tell, let me show you something.
Last month two very cool pro markets opened their doors to submissions for a short time: Cemetery Dance magazine and Diabolical Plots. In addition to opening their submission doors to thousands of hopeful writers, these two markets did something awesome. They gave us a look at the actual submission stats. So let’s take a look at those numbers and see what we can see.
Cemetery Dance
- Stories submitted: 1,750
- Number of slots: 20 or 25
Diabolical Plots
- Stories submitted: 1,288
- Number of slots: 24
Now it might be easy to take a look at these numbers and despair. I mean, we’re looking at a sub two percent chance of acceptance for each market, but I would urge you to come at this from a different angle. With so many submissions and so few publication slots, the editors are going to turn away a lot of quality work. They have to because they can only publish two dozen or so stories out of the hundreds submitted. A rejection from one of these markets probably means you wrote a story that isn’t quite to the editor’s taste or is similar to one they’ve already accepted or half a dozen other reasons that have nothing to do with your writing ability. Want further proof and from the horse’s mouth? Check out this recent blog post from Brian James Freeman, one of the editors of Cemetery Dance magazine.
All I’m trying to say here is don’t let the numbers or a rejection get you down. I firmly believe good stories eventually get published, especially when they’re written by diligent authors who follow the guidelines and continually work on their craft. Personally, I think a lot of it comes down to putting the right story in front of the right editor at the right time.
So keep writing, keep submitting, and keep going.
Oh, and a big thank you to the editors of Cemetery Dance magazine and Diabolical Plots for making their submissions stats public. I think that information is immensely helpful to writers, and this writer really appreciates the peek behind the curtain.
5 Comments on “Good Stories Get Rejected Too”
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Aeryn Rudel's Rejectomancy 
Excellent dive into the submission/rejection data. Can you say yet whether either of your two submissions to Diabolical Plots made the cut, or should we wait until next week’s update?
I submitted one story to Diabolical Plots and it was held for further consideration. No rejection yet.
I wish all literary publications could do this. Indeed, it would help writers in one way or another.
Reblogged this on James' Ramblings.
Such a great take on rejection. Thank you.