Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Four – Back On Track!

After what seemed an unmitigated submission disaster in 2017, I really turned a corner in 2018 and had one of my best years to date. In fact, 2018 was so good, I’ve yet to equal it in either number of submissions or number of acceptances. That’s quite a rebound, and 2018 gave me a lot of confidence to up my game in terms of where I was sending my work in years to come. Anyway, let’s dive into Rejectomancy year four and see what we can see.

---

Total stats for 2018. 

When 2018 started, I thought it was gonna be just like 2017, maybe worse, but then the acceptances started trickling in starting in February and then hit a fever pitch that summer, where I netted eight total yeses in June, July, and August. The fall and winter were almost as good, and I closed out the year with a shipping 18 acceptances. Which is still my current record. I also set a record for total number of submissions, and 120 remains far and away my best effort to date. My acceptance percentage is the only part of 2018 that wasn’t record-setting (that would come in 2020), but hey, 15.4% is still pretty damn good.

Let’s look at the acceptances for 2018, and see if we can figure out why it was such an improvement over 2017.

So the story of my success here should be fairly obvious. Find a market that likes your work and keep sending them stories. I have multiple acceptances from The Arcanist, The Molotov Cocktail, and Ellipsis Zine. I went on to publish double digit stories with those first two, and a good half a dozen with the last one. In addition, there are some first publication with markets that I would go on to have repeated success with, like Factor Four Magazine and Flame Tree. In all, there’s a nice mix of pro, semi-pro, and even token acceptances here, and I have no doubt that sending well over a hundred submissions to a wide variety of markets contributed to my success.

Of course, sadly, a number of these markets, including my beloved Arcanist, have since closed or gone on indefinite hiatus. That’s definitely a reoccurring theme and one we’ll continue to see in the years to come. It’s a tough old market out there, folks.

---

That’s Rejectomancy Year Four in the books. This is definitely one of the years I look back on fondly, as it was definitely a year full of validation, not just in terms of short story sales, but also in other freelance writing, primarily media tie-in. In all, 2018 was just a damn good year. Five out of five stars. No notes. 🙂

Thoughts or opinions about Rejectomancy Year Four? Tell me about it in the comments.