Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Eight – Solid and Serviceable

Although 2021 wasn’t a terrible year for submissions, I definitely went into 2022 hoping to improve, and in some ways I did. Mostly, though, I kind of held course with a solid but not exceptional year. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it was definitely one of those years where I felt like I was just treading water in a lot of ways. (Spoiler alert: 2023 will show me the error of this thinking.)

Okay, let’s have a look at Rejectomancy Year Eight.

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Total stats for 2022. 

Although I didn’t hit the vaunted 100 submissions mark in 2022, I still sent out a respectable number of stories. Also, my acceptance percentage improved quite a bit over the year before, jumping from 9.6 to 15.2. That ain’t bad. I was also paid more than double for the stories I sold in 2022 over those I sold in 2021. The money I make from shorts is not anything I rely on, but it’s always good to get paid. Looking at it now, three years later, I likely misjudged this year. It’s better than I gave it credit for.

Here are my acceptances for 2022.

I sold 11 stories in 2022, though one of the stories was actually a novella, Effectively Wild, that I sold to Grinning Skull Press. Most of my other sales were to pro or semi-pro-paying markets, though there’s a bittersweet sale in here. The story “Where the Bodies are Buried” is the last story The Arcanist published before going on indefinite hiatus. Fun fact, my story “Cowtown” was the first story they published back in 2017, so I bookended the publishing run of that market. God, I miss those folks.

The other positive here is that four of the stories I sold where new-to-me markets, which is always great, and one of them, Radon Journal, has become one of my absolute favorite publishers on the planet. I’ve since sold them three more stories, and I’m quite active on the Discord server. I also managed two sales to Factor Four Magazine, another market that has become one of my go-to’s for flash fiction.

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And that’s Rejectomancy Year Eight. Not bad, not great, but serviceable. Again, spoiler alert, in 2023, I will definitely look back on this “mediocre” year and realize how good I actually had it. 🙂

If you’ve missed any of my Ten Years of Rejectomancy posts and want to catch up, here are the links to the others in the series.

1. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: The Pre-Blog Years
2. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year One – To Pro or Not to Pro
3. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Two- Maybe I’m Good at This?
4. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Three – Maybe I’m NOT Good at This?
5. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Four – Back On Track!
6. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Five – Consistency is Key
7. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Six – Best Year EVAR!
8. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Seven – The Whiplash Effect

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