Submission Statement: April 2025

April was a slightly better month than March, but though I made decent headway on a number of writing goals, it was still largely a disappointing month.

April 2025 Short Story Stats

• Submissions Sent: 12
• Rejections: 11
• No Response: 0
• Acceptances: 1
• Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0
• Withdrawals: 0
• Pending: 20
• New Stories: 2

I sent twelve submissions in April, which gave me a total of fifty-two for the year. That works out to an average of thirteen submissions a month, and puts me on pace for 156 by year’s end. That’s right on target, and even leaves me a little wiggle room if I have a slow submission month.

Eleven rejections is about average for the amount of submission I’m sending. In my experience, rejections tend come in waves, so I figure there’ll be double-digit months and months where I see as few as five or six. April, like March, saw a number the rejections of the 100-plus-day, final-round variety, i.e., heartbreakers. Despite some success, these rejections that cast a pall of disappointment over the entire month, but, you know, that’s the gig.

I did manage to sell a story in April and to a pro market to boot, so it’s not all bad news. I’m still behind when it comes to my acceptance goals, but there’s still time to make up ground in the coming months.

At some point, I knew my story-a-week goal was going to get tough, and I reached that point in April. I only wrote two new stories last month, which gives me fifteen (out of eighteen weeks). So I’m three off my pace. I might be able to catch up in the coming months by writing multiple stories in a week (especially if they’re flash), but I’m not going to worry too much about it. If I end up writing only 45-plus new stories by the end of the year, that’s still pretty damn good.

Rejections

Eleven rejections in March.

• Form Rejections: 8
• Personal Rejections: 3
• Close-But-No-Cigar Rejections: 3

Like March, April featured too many final-round, close-but-no-cigar rejections. Two were from pro markets and had 145-plus-day wait times. The last one was from a good semi-pro and came quite a bit quicker, after only 75 days. I don’t want to read too much into these rejections, but it does feel like I’m getting a lot more of them than I used to. Now, some of that could be just luck of the draw, but after talking to some writer pals who are also in the submission trenches, there’s a general sense that it’s gotten a bit tougher to break through than in years past. That’s anecdotal, of course, and I might get three acceptances in May that completely change my tune, but right now it does feel pretty damn challenging out there.

Like I did last month, I’ll share a couple of the heartbreaker rejections with ya.

Heartbreaker Rejection 1

Thank you for submitting [story] to [publisher]. We very much appreciate the chance to read your work, but we are regretfully saying no to this submission. We wish you luck with placing it elsewhere and hope you will continue to consider us in the future.

This was a tough one. It came from a professional market after a further consideration letter and a 154-day wait. The rejection is a simple form rejection, which isn’t that unusual even after a further consideration and a long wait. Like always, I’m not upset at the publisher or editor or anything silly like that. This kind of outcome is just a reality of submitting short stories, but like I said in my intro, there have been a lot of these lately, and I’m not to proud to admit they can take a mental toll on even a veteran rejectomancer. 😉

Heartbreaker Rejection 2

Many thanks for your interest in this anthology, and your patience while final selections were made. This is the sixth book in a collaborative series of annual horror anthologies with [editor], and we have enjoyed reading through the stories that were sent in for consideration. We received over 900 submissions in response to this call, which made the final decisions especially tough as [editor] was again only able to choose 4 stories for publication from this route. 

I’m afraid we won’t be going ahead with your work this time, though we look forward to seeing more stories from you in future. If you’d be interested in submitting to us again please watch out for opportunities via our newsletter, website and social media pages.

Although this was certainly a heartbreaker rejection because it came after 149 days and was, as the rejections stated, part of final selections, the reason I’m posting it is not to elicit sympathy (that’s what the first one’s for), but to showcase the kind of odds you’re often up against when submitting stories to magazines and anthologies. In this case, only four stories were chosen out of 900 submissions. For the math nerds, that’s a miniscule 0.44%. Tough to break through with that kind of odds, but still worth trying.

2025 Writing Goals Bingo

Once more, here’s my writing goals bingo card after another full month of submissions.

I really would have liked to have filled in one of the acceptance goals, but I fell just short of both the first overall acceptance and pro acceptance marks. Hopefully, May will allow me to add a bit more green to my bingo card.

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And that was April. May goals are the same: write more, submit more, and hopefully, get accepted more.

That was my month. How was yours?