Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Nine – A Question of Querying

Peaks and valleys. That’s the best way to describe the submission experience and my own meandering path as a writer. I’ve had some exceptional years where it felt like every story I submitted had a legit shot at publication, and then I’ve had years like 2023, where I thought, why the hell am I doing this again? Still, appearances can be deceiving, and what looks like one of my worst submission years ever is maybe a little more nuanced than that.

Let’s have a look at Rejectomancy Year Nine.

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Total stats for 2023. 

Oof, right? A paltry 4.2% acceptance rate is, well, not good. Now, I don’t shy away from owning my failures and terrible numbers, but this one time, I want to offer up an explanation for this massive drop in acceptance percentage. You see, in 2023, I started querying a novel, and I track my queries on another website called QueryTracker. Then I learned that Duotrope also lists agents, and I thought, hey, I should track my queries there, too. Obviously, I didn’t think that through, and well, this is the result.

So, of the 79 submissions I sent in 2023, 41 of them were actually queries for my novel Second Dawn. That means I only sent 38 short story submissions. So, with that number and the 5 acceptances I managed, my actual short story acceptance rate is 13%, which is more in line with my usual numbers. Still, it was my dumb ass that decided to track queries in the same place I track short stories, so I have to wear that 4.2% to some extent. 🙂

Here are my acceptances for 2023.

Just five acceptances in 2023, but they were all good sales. I sold my second story to Radon Journal, my third to Factor Four, and I had acceptances from new-to-me markets, Black Cat Weekly and Thirteen. Not too bad, especially when view through the prism of 38 submissions rather than 79.

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And that’s Rejectomancy Year Nine. We’re getting close to the end of this series, so keep an eye out for Rejectomancy Year Ten – A Decade of Dejection. 😉

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
9. Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Eight – Solid and Serviceable

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