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.

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.

Year three of Rejectomancy was a bit of a wake-up call. After three straight years of increasing submissions and acceptances, I kind of fell off a cliff in 2017. It was one of those years that tests you, makes you ask the question: am I good enough to do this? As usual, the answer is not a simple yes or no, it’s always a frustrating maybe? So, let’s look at year three and see what happened.

Total stats for 2017. 

I went into 2017 determined to send more submissions than I ever had, and I succeeded. Seventy-five was twenty-one more than I sent in 2016. Of course, I received nine acceptances in 2016, so if my math is right, I should have received twelve or thirteen submissions in 2017. Uh, no. That’s, unfortunately, not how publishing works, and I netted a measly SIX acceptances in 2016. That earned me a miniscule acceptance percentage of 7.4%, nowhere near the rarified 20% I had achieved the year before. I did manage to make a couple of bucks, though, so it wasn’t all bad news.

Okay, let’s look at the acceptances, then we can discuss what the hell happened.

Even though I only sold six stories in 2017, there were some very good sales in here, and three of the six would be considered pro sales. My favorite sales this year are the stories I sold to The Arcanist, a market that would continue to be a safe-haven for my dark and goofy stories for the next five years. The story “Cowtown” was, in fact, the first story The Arcanist ever published, and they would go on to publishing another fifteen of my stories before they sadly went on indefinite hiatus.

So, what happened here? Why did my submission numbers go up, but my acceptance numbers plummet? Looking back on this year through the lens of another eight years of submission experience, it’s pretty easy to see what happened. The simple answer is I started regularly submitting to pro markets, and forty-one of my seventy-five submissions went to top-tier publishers, with Apex, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Clarkesworld, The Dark, and Pseudopod claiming the lion’s share of those subs. As you may have heard, those markets are kinda hard to crack, and truth be told, I send them some stories that weren’t ready for pro-publishing. So, yeah, it’s not exactly surprising that my acceptance percentage fell off a cliff. It wasn’t all bad news, of course. I did manage a couple of holds and final-round rejections from some of these big markets, and those stories I did go on to sell in the years to come.

And that’s Rejectomancy Year Three. Although my submission efforts were less successful than I’d hoped, it was a pretty good writing year overall. I wrote and published my second novel, Aftershock, as well as a slew of articles and short fiction pieces, for Privateer Press. I also started writing a novel based on my own IP that I am still shopping to this day. Not sure if that’s a good thing, though. 🙂

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

My second year as a blogger and serious story submitter gave me legitimate hope that there might actually be a future to this whole writing thing. In addition to short story sales, I also published my first novel with Privateer Press and was doing a lot of freelance writing to boot. Still, this post will focus on the short story stuff, and, well, 2016 was a pretty good year. Let’s take a closer look. 

Here are my total stats (pulled once again straight from Duotrope) for 2016. 

Fifty-four submissions was my new high, and of those fifty-four, I managed to sell nine, which netted me a very respectable acceptance percentage of 20.8. It goes without saying that 20% is rarified air, and I’ve only managed it three times in the decade-plus I’ve been doing this. I also made over 400 bucks in story sales for the year, though much of that was from a couple of contest cashes with The Molotov Cocktail. Again, all proceeds from story sales very likely went to directly into the coffers of Door Dash or Uber Eats. 🙂

Okay, let’s look at the acceptances.

Despite selling more stories than I’d ever sold before, I didn’t manage a pro sale in 2016. There was some very nice semi-pro sales, though, including two with the now sadly defunct Red Sun Magazine, both stories I’d been shopping for quite some time. I also managed to snag second place in The Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Icon contest and third place in their Flash Fear contest, netting cash prizes for both that essentially amounted to pro-payment or very good semi-pro. The rest of my acceptances were a mix of one-offs, in that I never submitted to those particular markets again, or in the case of Havok, the first of what would be multiple sales. (Havok has completely changed, by the way, and is no longer a semi-pro market).

In addition to the nine acceptances, I had a bunch of close-but-no-cigar rejection in 2016 with various markets, a few of which were pro zines. Those definitely boosted my confidence, and netted me some solid feedback that helped me strengthen my writing for future submissions.

And there you have it, Rejectomancy Year Two. As I stated in the opening, this year also saw me publish my novel Flashpoint with Privateer Press, the first in an eventual trilogy. I also started writing a novel based on my own IP that I shopped pretty heavily a few years ago with limited success (some full manuscript requests but not offers of representation). I’m still shopping that novel to small publishers, but it might be destined for the trunk.

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

I started Rejectomancy in July of 2015, a period of time that coincided with me getting serious about short story submissions. So, in many ways, Rejectomancy is kind of detailed record of my writing journey as I transitioned from game designer/writer to a fiction writer. The first year of Rejectomancy was a pretty eventful one. I sent out more submissions than I ever had, and I started getting some good acceptances, too. The real theme of this year was trying to figure out where my work belonged. Was I good enough for the pro markets? Or should I spend more time sharpening my game with token and semi-pro publishers. Let’s take a look. 

Here are my total stats (pulled from Duotrope) for the year of our lord 2015. 

I sent forty-six submissions in 2015 and seven of them were accepted. That gave me a respectable acceptance percentage of just over 11%. Not bad. In addition, I scored my first and second pro sale. Below, are the details of all seven of my acceptances for the year. I also pulled in the princely sum of 185 bucks, which I’m pretty sure when directly to Door-Dashed burritos.

Just one bit of clarification on the acceptances. Duotrope counts an acceptance for the year the submission was sent not the year it was actually accepted, which is how I tend to calculate things. Since I’m pulling screen shots from Duotrope directly, we’ll go with their method for consistency.

Anyway, my first pro sale was to the now-defunct DarkFuse Magazine, a zombie-apocalypse story told from the perspective of a seven-year-old boy called “Where they Belong.” My second pro sale was to Pseudpod, and it was actually a reprint. I’d sold “Night Games” first to Devilfish Review in 2014. The rest of my acceptances were semi-pro or token, but it should be noted that the second story I sold to Devilfish Review, “Scare Tactics”, I went on to sell twice more as a reprint, and to pro markets. Obvs, this year I began to submit a lot of stories to The Molotov Cocktail, a practice that would continue for the next decade.

In all, a pretty good year, especially since I was really just getting warmed up. Looking back, I wish I’d had the confidence to send my work to pro markets right away. The fact of the matter is I didn’t think I was good enough yet, but two sales to two pro markets would seem to indicate otherwise. This is not to say that the markets I did sell to weren’t quality or that I’m not grateful, more that I wish I’d been able to see the quality of my own work and realize that I could sell it anywhere. Oh well, live, learn, and resubmit. 🙂

So that’s Rejectomancy Year One. In addition to ramping up my submission efforts, I also left my job at Privateer Press in June of that year with an agent and a book deal. To say I was optimistic about my literary future would be an understatement. Of course, things have a tendency to change in unexpected ways, but all you can do is keep writing and keep going.

Thoughts or opinions about my first year as a baby blogger? Tell me about it in the comments.