Yes! Yes! One Hundred Times Yes!

Yesterday, I celebrated a significant short story milestone. I received my 100th acceptance since I started tracking them through Duotrope. To further celebrate this momentous occasion,  I thought I might take a deep dive into the numbers on those one hundred acceptances and see what we can see. Let’s go!

Years Gone By

I recorded my first acceptance on May 1st, 2014. Acceptance number one hundred was recorded yesterday, June 27th, 2023. So, a little over nine years to hit triple digits, but let’s take a look at the number of acceptances each year.

• 2012 – 0
• 2013 – 0
• 2014 – 5
• 2015 – 7
• 2016 – 9
• 2017 – 5
• 2018 – 18
• 2019 – 13
• 2020 – 17
• 2021 – 12
• 2022 – 11
• 2023 – 3

It took me a bit to get my first acceptance, though, to be fair, I only sent 22 total submission in 2012 and 2013. After that, I saw a pretty steady increase in both subs and acceptances until the anomalous year of 2017, where I sent the most subs I’d ever sent to that point but couldn’t BUY an acceptance. After that, it’s been double digit yeses every year, though I’m in danger of losing the streak in 2023 to a woeful lack of submissions. I’ve still got time, though. I can get seven acceptances in five months, right? Right?

Lengthwise 

I write and submit just about every length of story, but what length am I most likely to sell? Let’s take a look.

• Microfiction – 4
• Flash Fiction – 74
• Short Story – 21
• Novella – 1

Well, it’s flash fiction by a mile. I’d say I write five flash pieces for every short story, and I generally find flash much, much easier to sell than longer works. I write a ton of microfiction through the #vss365 tag on Twitter, but I rarely submit it (though I’ve had good luck when I do). I have written exactly one novella, and sold it, so I’m batting .1000 right there. 😉

Top Tier

If you’ve been submitting sort stories for long, then you know there are essentially three levels or tiers of paying publishers. Pro publishers pay between 5 and 8 cents a word depending on genre, semi-pro publisher pay at least 1 cent per word, and token/for the love of it publishers pay less than 1 cent per word or pay nothing at all. So, what tiers do my acceptances fit into?

• Pro – 33
• Semi-Pro – 36
• Token – 31

A fairly even distribution here, though the majority of token acceptances came before 2019. Now, I generally focus on pro and semi-pro. It should be said that five of 31 token submissions are paying contest wins that would be more than 8 cents per word, so you could look at this as 38 pro acceptances. I’m not, but you could. 🙂

The Next 100?

My submissions have waned considerably this year as I turn my attention to other writing endeavors, i.e., novels. I still love writing short stories and flash fiction, but it might be time for a break. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop submitting, just that I might not submit as much. I have a feeling this is a temporary state of affairs, and I’ll get the short story submission bug in the near future. Until then, I’m gonna focus on agent queries, novel revisions, novel/novella writing, and a fair amount of freelance work. Don’t worry, though; I’ll be blogging about the trials and tribulations of all those things (especially the queries), so there’ll be plenty of rejectomancy in the future.

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Hit any major acceptance milestones of your own? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.