Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Five – Consistency is Key

I set a lot of personal submission records in 2018 (year four), and though year five wasn’t nearly as good, I maintained both a solid number of submissions and a respectable number of acceptances. In other words, I was consistent, and that’s not a bad way to be in the grueling and often cruel world of publishing. This is not to say there wasn’t some regression, but it’s the kind I can live with. Anyway, let’s take a look at Rejectomancy year five.

---

Total stats for 2019. 

After the banner year of 2018, I was expecting more of the same in 2019. Unfortunately, it was not to be. This is not to say that 2019 was an awful year–far from it–but it was definitely a step back in terms of number of submissions and the number of pro sales. The number of submissions I made was solid, and I did manage an acceptance percentage of a tad over 14%, which is respectable. So, in all, a decent but not exemplarily year of submissions.

Let’s take a look at the acceptances for 2019 and see what they tell us.

I managed 13 acceptances in 2019, and while that’s not too bad, there’s only two pro sales in the bunch. The rest are semi-pro and even token/non-paying. Looking at my overall submissions for the year, the thing that jumps out at me is that, well, I was submitting a number of stories that I’ve since retired because they weren’t good enough. In addition, two of the acceptances, “The Back-Off” and “Paint-Eater” took me a LONG time to sell, despite them both being pretty good stories. Each racked up over 15 rejections. Of course, there are some bright spots here. I sold my first story to On Spec, which is a fantastic semi-pro Canadian market. I’d go on to sell them another of my hard-to-place stories a few years later.

You may notice once anomaly in my acceptance list, and that’s the sale to The Bronzeville Bee, a market that’s marked REMOVED and closed down shorty after I received an acceptance from them. I left it as an acceptance (because it was), though I maybe should change it to lost/returned now. I’d go on to sell that story for reals to MetaStellar, a much better market that actually still exists. 🙂

---

And that’s Rejectomancy Year Five. Not bad, but definitely a step back when compared to the prior year. I did write two novels in 2019, so I was pretty productive, and as it turned out, 2019 was simply the lull before the storm. The following year I would have my best submissions year EVER. Stay tuned for that. 🙂

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