2019 Acceptance Rate Check-In
With 2019 three quarters of the way through, let’s see how I’m doing with regards to submissions and rate of acceptance. In this post I’m gonna run the numbers for the year to date and compare it with the numbers for all the years I’ve tracked my submissions through Duotrope. Before I get to the numbers, let me first tell you about my methodology. The acceptance rate is calculated with the following formula: total acceptances/(total submissions – pending subs and withdrawals). Obviously, the pending subs only applies to the current year. Additionally, these numbers only count short stories I’ve sent to various genre markets and contests. It does not count any of my contract work for Privateer Press or when I’m invited to submit a story to a market or basically anything that more or less guarantees publication.
Note, 2019 looks a little weird, mostly because of how Dutrope tracks certain things (and because a few of my submission went to publishers not in their database). In other words, the 2019 numbers are very close, but not perfect (though we’re talking fractions of a percentage when it comes to acceptance rates). When I do my end-of-year calculations, I’ll sit down and figure out where the discrepancies are and publish a final, correct 2019 accounting.
Okay, with all that out of the way, here’s eight years of submissions:
| Year | Subs | Reject | L/N/W | Accept | Acc % |
| 2012 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| 2013 | 16 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| 2014 | 38 | 29 | 4 | 5 | 15% |
| 2015 | 46 | 37 | 2 | 7 | 16% |
| 2016 | 53 | 43 | 2 | 8 | 16% |
| 2017 | 73 | 64 | 4 | 5 | 7% |
| 2018 | 120 | 100 | 4 | 19 | 16% |
| 2019* | 55 | 42 | 0 | 11 | 22% |
| Total | 407 | 334 | 19 | 55 | 14% |
*year to date
I always aim for a 10% acceptance rate. If I get above that, awesome. If I dip below it, as I did in 2017, then I am a sad writer. Luckily, it looks like 2017 was more anomaly than trend and things got back on track in 2018 and look pretty solid for 2019. Full disclosure here. Three of the acceptances for 2019 were part of a #vss365 Twitter anthology, and they were not submitted in the usual sense. They were chosen from microfiction I’d posted on Twitter during the “submission window.” If you remove those three acceptances, then my acceptance percentage for 2019 is 16% (which seems to be about my average).
That 15 to 20 percent mark seems to be where I live for the most part, and I’m okay with that. Of course, I’d like to crack more professional markets, as more than half of my publications in the last three years or so have been at least semi-pro (though a bit more token this year). Not that I’m complaining, mind you, just that I’d love to see my name in certain publications. I’m sure most of you can guess which ones. 😉
In short, 2019 is going okay. I’d like to have submitted more, and though I’m still hoping to hit 100 submissions, at this rate I’ll be closer to 80. That’s not terrible, of course, and if I can keep up the submission rate, maybe I’ll get close to 2018’s acceptance numbers.
How’s your 2019 submissions going so far? Tell me about it in the comments.
2 Comments on “2019 Acceptance Rate Check-In”
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Aeryn Rudel's Rejectomancy 
Wow! That’s great, Aeryn! Even 16% is damn good! And the fact that you’re getting paid for most (if not all) of your published work is pretty impressive, even if you’re only getting semi-pro rates.
Nice work!
My 2019 so far: 33 rejections, 2 acceptances, $25.