27 Submissions: My Most-Rejected Story SOLD!
No, this is not a new rom-com starring Katherine Heigl; it is a tale of literary woe and eventual triumph. You see, last weekend, I set a new rejectomancer record. I sold my most rejected story. That’s right; “Time Has No Memory” finally sold after twenty-seven submissions and twenty-five rejections. I thought I’d celebrate this momentous occasion by looking back on the five-year journey of this poor, beleaguered story as a reminder to myself (and hopefully to you) not to give up, and that acceptance is, as always, putting the right story in front of the right editor at the right time.
Okay, first, let take a look at the arduous submission journey of “Time Has No Memory.” Below is a screenshot of the Duotrope record for the piece. I should note that this is in now way whatsoever a call-out of the publishers that rejected the story. They all had perfectly valid reasons for passing, and sometimes it just takes a long time to find the right market for a piece. I’m showing you the complete record just to give you an idea of the types of markets I was submitting to and nothing more.
If you don’t want to stare at a blurry screenshot, here are the basic submission stats for the story.
- Submission: 27*
- Personal Rejections: 6
- Final-Round Rejections: 6
- Form Rejections: 18
- No Response: 1
- Acceptances: 1
*One of the subs was to Diabolical Plots, which is not listed on Duotrope.
I’m thrilled I ended up placing the story with Abyss & Apex, but you might be wondering why did it take so long for me to sell this piece? Excellent question, and the real answer is I don’t know, but let’s go ahead and speculate anyway. Here are three things that may (and in some cases did) contribute to the story getting a rejection 🙂
- Overused Trope: The story is a time travel story, and, well, time travel is kinda like vampires and zombies in horror. It’s been done a lot, and many publishers are tired of seeing it. In addition, I don’t go into a lot of depth about the science behind the time travel, and that can be a deal breaker for some sci-fi markets. It’s even in the guidelines of some of the big ones.
- Narrative Style: The story is an epistolary, told through journal entries, and I know for a fact that some markets don’t like those. How do I know? They told me. 🙂 Of course, I bear none of these publishers any ill will, and now that I know some are not fans of epistolary, I won’t send them any. It’s excellent info to have.
- Kinda bleak. Like a lot of my work, “Time Has No Memory” is a bit of a downer, and while there’s definitely still a market for that, I do find that a lot of publishers are gravitating toward more hopeful fare (I can’t imagine why).
With some exceptions, I don’t know for sure if any of the elements above were a factor in any of my rejections, but In the end, it really doesn’t matter. A lot of this comes down to timing. If I’d sent the story to Abyss & Apex first, well, you wouldn’t be reading this blog post. 🙂
The most important thing to take away from this post is that if you believe in a story or a poem or a novel or whatever, don’t give up on it. All those rejections likely have more to do with timing than the quality of your work. Keep writing, keep submitting, KEEP GOING.
Thoughts on my most-rejected story? Want to share your own tale of rejection woe? Tell me all about it in the comments.
Guest Post – A Numbers Game by Ai Jiang
Hey, folks, today is a momentous day on the blog, and we’re celebrating two pretty awesome events. First, this day and this post marks TEN YEARS of Rejectomancy. That’s a lot of no’s, not for us’s, and we’re gonna pass’s, somewhere around 800 if my math is right. But those numbers are a drop in the bucket, a measly fraction of the awe-inspiring numbers of one extremely talented and nigh supernaturally prolific Ai Jiang. Her submission, acceptance, and rejection numbers are simply off-the-charts, and she was kind enough to compile those numbers and share some words of wisdom for the second awesome event for today, my first ever guest post. Needless to say, I am absolutely thrilled to have someone as talented and just plain cool as Ai Jiang to help me kick off the next ten years of Rejectomancy.
Chance, Fortune, Persistent: Publishing, a Numbers Game?
When I set out to make publishing a career, I didn’t have a very clear plan in mind, it had simply been “write, continue to write, and send out my work to as many places as possible as many times as possible and see where they land.” That, and improving my craft using short form, refining at the sentence level, before moving onto tackling longer narratives and larger worlds. I still haven’t gotten the hang of properly writing novels.
As someone mighty competitive, especially when it comes to competing against myself, one thing I’d found myself doing the deeper I dove into publishing, at least the short fiction world at the start, was that I had sort of come into a gamified strategy, the kind of grinding quantity mindset of gamers when they’re trying to cross into the next level.
For the first two and a half years of writing and submitting short stories, I aimed for volume, because I’d thought the more stories I had and the more submissions I sent meant the higher the chance I had at getting published. I’m also someone who learns largely by doing, so writing a large quantity of short stories helped me in figuring out how to tackle the form. That, and craft videos and workshops, both paid and free, though mostly the latter in terms of whatever resources I can find online at the beginning. But ultimately, reading and simply consuming literature and analyzing it helped place my mind in a space that’s constantly thinking about stories and the creation of them.
But without further ado, below are the stats I’ve wrangled together from late 2020, when I first forayed into the short fiction world, to the end of 2022, when my submissions became fewer in number, and I’d been fortunate enough to receive numerous anthology solicitations that cleared me of my backlog. I’d also begun building my backlog in long form because of just how long I realized publishing takes—from the process of querying and acquiring an agent, going on sub, selling the book and negotiating the contract, along with the lead up before the book is actually published and out in the world.
Currently, in the long form backlog, I have one book on submission, a novella completed and edited, a novel in the editing stages, a short story collection, and a poetry collection.
What I’ve learned in the past few years is not just how important persistence is in this industry, but also how important it is to keep plowing forward unhaltingly in working on the next project because you never know just when or if something will sell. The only thing we can really rely on are the things within our own control when so much else in publishing is dependent on the decision of others—falling to chance and timing.
Submission Stats from September 2020 — September 2021
This includes both literary + genre journals/magazine submissions, and I’d noticed that I’d had a higher chance of landing genre work than I did with literary, but that could also be because the response timelines for literary magazines were often much longer on average as well
Submissions Sent
- Total — 604 (544 excluding withdrawn submissions)
Acceptances
- Total — 24 (Including reprints)
- Acceptance rate — ~4.4%
Rejections
- Total — 434
- Personal Rejections — 132
- Form Rejections — 302
(This is a rough estimate for personal vs form, sometimes I might get it wrong)
Withdrawn
- Total — 60
Pending Submissions at Time of Stats
- Total — 86
Submission Stats from 2021 Alone
Acceptances
- Total — 25
- Genre Breakdown — 8 literary | 17 speculative
- Sales Breakdown — 2 SFWA Pro Sales | 5 HWA Pro Sale | Semi-Pro/Token 16
Stories Published
- Total — 16
- Genre Breakdown — 6 literary | 10 speculative
Poem Acceptances
- Total — 13
- Genre Breakdown — 7 literary | 6 speculative
- Total Paid Sales — 6
Poems Published
- Total — 9
- Genre Breakdown — 7 literary | 2 speculative
Submission Stats from September 2021 — September 2022 Stats
Below are the stats for a mix of stories, poetry, CNF, anthology invitations, and reprints — doesn’t include withdrawn/no response submissions.
Submissions Sent
- Total — 797
Acceptances
- Total — 77
- Sales Breakdown — 24 SFWA/HWA | 41 Semi-pro/token | 12 Unpaid
- Overall Acceptance Rate — 9.7%
Published
- Total — 53
Rejections
- Total — 578
Submission Stats from January 2022 — September 2022
Submissions Sent
- Total — 477
Acceptances
- Total — 59
- Sales Breakdown — 20 SFWA/HWA Pro Sales | 30 Semi-pro/Token | 9 Unpaid
- Overall Acceptance Rate —12.4%
Published
- Total — 39
Rejections
- Total — 364
Overall Publication Stats
- 2021: ~26 publications, ~38 acceptances
- 2022: ~53 publications, ~59 acceptances
- 2023: ~28 publications, 2 books + 1 mini collection
- 2024: ~17 publications
- 2025: ~22 publications (including forthcoming later this year), 1 book
- 2026: 2 books forthcoming, other publications yet unknown
Total Earnings from 2021-2024
- 2021 — $2,677.39
- 2022 — $6,075.64
- 2023 — $13,871.21
- 2024 — $49,389.43
*The # of publications is a mix of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction sales. In 2023 and 2024, the income stream was much more diverse with books, editing, workshop, and reading payments as well.
Some fun POV Stats out of the stories I’ve had published from late 2020-2022
Out of 73 stories sold (not including reprints/CNF), the POVs include:
- 1st past: 19
- 1st present: 16
- 1st past/2nd address: 2
- 1st present/2nd address/2nd present: 1
- 1st present/2nd address: 1
- 1st plural present: 4
- 1st plural past: 2
- 1st past/1st plural past/3rd past: 1
- 2nd past: 1
- 2nd present: 8
- 2nd present/past: 1
- 3rd past: 14
- 3rd present: 1
- 1st/2nd/3rd: 1 (Linghun)
- 1st past/3rd past: 1
- 1st present/past: 1
Huge thanks to Ai Jiang for sharing her submission numbers with us and for always being open and honest about the trials and tribulations of being a working writer. To learn more about Ai Jiang and her work, click the images below or head over to her website and check out all the riveting sci-fi, fantasy, and horror she’s written in both short story and long form.
900 Submissions: An Analysis
I recently hit another big story submission milestone. I sent my 900th submission since I started tracking them on Duotrope back in 2012. Like I usually do with this big round numbers, I’ll break down my overall stats, but this time, since 800 subs was almost exactly one year ago, we’ll do a little side-by-side comparison, too.
First, the basic numbers.
| 800 Subs | 900 Subs* | |
| Rejections | 642 | 718 |
| Acceptances | 104 | 112 |
| Withdrawals | 26 | 29 |
| Lost/Never Responded | 22 | 22 |
| Pending | 6 | 21 |
So, I’ve definitely been more active in the last year than I have in a long time. In fact, the time it took me to get from 700 subs to 800 subs was almost two years, as opposed to the one year it took to go from 800 to 900. But how did these most recent 100 subs treat me? I’d say fair to middling.
I gained 76 rejections along with 8 new acceptances. That’s not terrible, especially since I still have 21 stories pending, and a few of those might turn into acceptances. As it is right now, I’m looking at about a 10% acceptance rate, which is lower than my historical average of about 15%. Still, I can live with one acceptance out of every ten subs.
*It was actually 902 submissions by the time I got around to running the report off Duotrope.
Okay, now lets look at distinct pieces and distinct publishers.
| 800 Subs | 900 Subs | |
| Total Distinct Stories | 164 | 183 |
| Microfiction | 4 | 4 |
| Flash Fiction | 127 | 136 |
| Short Stories | 29 | 39 |
| Novellas | 1 | 1 |
| Novels | 3 | 3 |
| Total Distinct Markets | 228 | 240 |
I’ve been writing a lot of new stories, which is evident in the chart above. In the past year, I’ve added nineteen new distinct stories, ten short stories and nine flash fiction pieces. Those stories also make up the bulk of the 21 pieces I currently have pending. Not bad.
I also added twelve new markets to my database, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that a bunch of brand-spanking-new, pro-paying zines have sprung up in the last twelve months or so. I’ve sent submissions to most of them, and it’s great to have more markets for flash fiction and shorts, seeing that we tend to lose a half dozen good ones every year.
Although 900 submissions is a big milestone, I’m really hoping I can hit 1,000 by year’s end. Hard to believe I’ve sent that many unsuspecting stories out into the cold, cold dark of submission land, but here were are.
Hit a submission milestone of your own lately? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Submission Statement: April 2025
April was a slightly better month than March, but though I made decent headway on a number of writing goals, it was still largely a disappointing month.
April 2025 Short Story Stats
- Submissions Sent: 12
- Rejections: 11
- No Response: 0
- Acceptances: 1
- Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0
- Withdrawals: 0
- Pending: 20
- New Stories: 2
I sent twelve submissions in April, which gave me a total of fifty-two for the year. That works out to an average of thirteen submissions a month, and puts me on pace for 156 by year’s end. That’s right on target, and even leaves me a little wiggle room if I have a slow submission month.
Eleven rejections is about average for the amount of submission I’m sending. In my experience, rejections tend come in waves, so I figure there’ll be double-digit months and months where I see as few as five or six. April, like March, saw a number the rejections of the 100-plus-day, final-round variety, i.e., heartbreakers. Despite some success, these rejections that cast a pall of disappointment over the entire month, but, you know, that’s the gig.
I did manage to sell a story in April and to a pro market to boot, so it’s not all bad news. I’m still behind when it comes to my acceptance goals, but there’s still time to make up ground in the coming months.
At some point, I knew my story-a-week goal was going to get tough, and I reached that point in April. I only wrote two new stories last month, which gives me fifteen (out of eighteen weeks). So I’m three off my pace. I might be able to catch up in the coming months by writing multiple stories in a week (especially if they’re flash), but I’m not going to worry too much about it. If I end up writing only 45-plus new stories by the end of the year, that’s still pretty damn good.
Rejections
Eleven rejections in March.
- Form Rejections: 8
- Personal Rejections: 3
- Close-But-No-Cigar Rejections: 3
Like March, April featured too many final-round, close-but-no-cigar rejections. Two were from pro markets and had 145-plus-day wait times. The last one was from a good semi-pro and came quite a bit quicker, after only 75 days. I don’t want to read too much into these rejections, but it does feel like I’m getting a lot more of them than I used to. Now, some of that could be just luck of the draw, but after talking to some writer pals who are also in the submission trenches, there’s a general sense that it’s gotten a bit tougher to break through than in years past. That’s anecdotal, of course, and I might get three acceptances in May that completely change my tune, but right now it does feel pretty damn challenging out there.
Like I did last month, I’ll share a couple of the heartbreaker rejections with ya.
Heartbreaker Rejection 1
Thank you for submitting [story] to [publisher]. We very much appreciate the chance to read your work, but we are regretfully saying no to this submission. We wish you luck with placing it elsewhere and hope you will continue to consider us in the future.
This was a tough one. It came from a professional market after a further consideration letter and a 154-day wait. The rejection is a simple form rejection, which isn’t that unusual even after a further consideration and a long wait. Like always, I’m not upset at the publisher or editor or anything silly like that. This kind of outcome is just a reality of submitting short stories, but like I said in my intro, there have been a lot of these lately, and I’m not to proud to admit they can take a mental toll on even a veteran rejectomancer. 😉
Heartbreaker Rejection 2
Many thanks for your interest in this anthology, and your patience while final selections were made. This is the sixth book in a collaborative series of annual horror anthologies with [editor], and we have enjoyed reading through the stories that were sent in for consideration. We received over 900 submissions in response to this call, which made the final decisions especially tough as [editor] was again only able to choose 4 stories for publication from this route.
I’m afraid we won’t be going ahead with your work this time, though we look forward to seeing more stories from you in future. If you’d be interested in submitting to us again please watch out for opportunities via our newsletter, website and social media pages.
Although this was certainly a heartbreaker rejection because it came after 149 days and was, as the rejections stated, part of final selections, the reason I’m posting it is not to elicit sympathy (that’s what the first one’s for), but to showcase the kind of odds you’re often up against when submitting stories to magazines and anthologies. In this case, only four stories were chosen out of 900 submissions. For the math nerds, that’s a miniscule 0.44%. Tough to break through with that kind of odds, but still worth trying.
2025 Writing Goals Bingo
Once more, here’s my writing goals bingo card after another full month of submissions.
I really would have liked to have filled in one of the acceptance goals, but I fell just short of both the first overall acceptance and pro acceptance marks. Hopefully, May will allow me to add a bit more green to my bingo card.
And that was April. May goals are the same: write more, submit more, and hopefully, get accepted more.
That was my month. How was yours?
Submission Statement: March 2025
To put it bluntly, March was a brutal month, but I did make some positive yardage. All of my trials, tribulations, and so, so many rejections below. 🙂
March 2025 Short Story Stats
- Submissions Sent: 14
- Rejections: 11
- No Response: 0
- Acceptances: 0
- Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0
- Withdrawals: 0
- Pending: 19
- New Stories: 4
I sent fourteen submissions last month, which gives me a total of forty for the year. I sent out another two this morning, so I’m technically up to forty-two. The goal is 150 subs for 2025, and I’m on pace with an average of about thirteen per month. I’m also on pace for hitting a secondary goal of 1,000 total submissions since I started recording my subs on Duotrope back in 2012. If I keep up the level of writing and submitting I maintained in the first quarter of the year, I should hit both goals.
The eleven rejections I received is not an overwhelming amount, especially for how many submissions I’m sending, but the fact that so many of them were close-but-no-cigar, final-round rejections from pro markets made for a tough month. More on that in the rejections section of this post.
I managed to write another four stories, which isn’t too bad as I was on vacation for over a week. That gives me a seventeen for the first quarter or roughly five stories per month. My goal is fifty-two stories for the year, and I’m well on my way to that mark. I’ve already finished the first story for April, so the second quarter is off to a good start, too.
Rejections
Eleven rejections in March.
- Form Rejections: 8
- Personal Rejections: 3
- Close-But-No-Cigar Rejections: 5
So, the big story here are the CBNC rejections, and I got a bunch of them last month. These kinds of rejections are especially tough because you know the story is good enough to get published, just not good enough this time. It comes with territory, and you just have to roll with it, but CBNCs do sting a bit more than your usual no. I’ll share a couple of my heartbreakers below. Keep in mind, this is not me calling out editors for rejecting me. That’s stupid and immature. As usual, this is just me pulling back the curtain a bit on how tough the writing industry can be sometimes.
Heartbreaker Rejection 1
I’m sorry to say that [publisher] will not be purchasing [story] for an upcoming issue. We received an overwhelming number of excellent pieces during this submissions period, and were ultimately able to choose fewer than 1% of them for publication.
Our longlist was made up of our favourite pieces, and yours was certainly among them. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. We’re grateful for the chance, and we wish you all the best in placing this elsewhere.
This rejection came after 146 days and a further consideration letter from a great pro market. I REALLY wanted this one, but it wasn’t in the cards this time. Still, as with all CBNC rejections, you have to look at the bright side. One, the story is definitely good enough to get published, and two, I know what kinds of stories to send this market so that next time, I might make the cut.
Heartbreaker Rejection 2
Thank you for submitting [story] to [publisher]. Unfortunately we have decided not to accept it for publication. I appreciate your patience with waiting for a final response, and best wishes with finding a home for this piece elsewhere.
The email subject line for this rejection was “Final round rejection / [story title] / [publisher]”, and I appreciate that. If I’m gonna get rejected, I’d rather the proverbial Band-Aid was ripped off quickly. This is a very cool new market, and I almost made their first issue. The only downside is they have a pretty specific theme, and I had just the one story that fit. So, if I submit again, I’ll need to write something specifically for their theme, which is certainly doable, and maybe even advisable seeing how close I got here.
2025 Writing Goals Bingo
The bingo card below breaks up my primary goals into 25 bite-size mini goals, and this month I get to mark another one complete.
I would have liked to have filled in one of the acceptance or new story goals, but I’ll take the first rejections goal, too. Hopefully, April will be a better month, and I can claim some more positive yardage.
And that was March. My goals for April are simply to write and submit more stories, and, hopefully, get a few of those stories accepted.
That was my month. How was yours?
Path to Publication: The Downer
Time for another path to publication, wherein I recount the long and painful journey of a story from creation to that vaunted state of publication. This time, we’ll be looking at “The Downer”, a spec-fic piece that I thought was an absolute slam dunk when I finished it and turned out to be a two-year, sixteen-submission death march that had me questioning my talent, my submissions targeting skills, and even my sanity by the end. Before we get into all the rejections and whatnot, let me tell you a little bit about the story.
Back in early 2020, I was vacationing in Hawaii, and one night I had a very vivid dream about a young woman who generated a kind of misfortune field, so that everyone who spent too much time around her would eventually suffer some kind of terrible accident. Now, I don’t generally dream that vividly, and even when I do, my dreams are a bunch of jumbled nonsense that are basically just manifestation of the brain weasels that chew on my gray matter every day. This time, however, I woke knowing I had a hell of a story idea, so I jotted down some notes, and when I got back home, I started writing. I decided to write the story as an epistolary, a decision that would later haunt me during the submission process. At the time, writing a story that was essentially a written job interview for the FBI seemed like the perfect fit for the character and the idea, but as you’ll see, it might have worked against me.
So, let’s dive into the submission data. I’m going to name each of the markets I submitted this work to just as a matter of record, but, please, do not misread that as me taking any of these publishers to task for not accepting the story. My intention here is not to point out publishers who “missed out” on my brilliant work (hah!); it’s simply to showcase how difficult it is sometimes to get a story published. Remember, it’s all about the right fit, and sometimes finding that fit can, well, give you fits (sorry).
| Submission | Market | Date Sent | Days Out | Result |
| 1 | The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF) | 1/31/20 | 1 | Rejection (Personal) |
| 2 | Escape Pod | 4/1/20 | 6 | Rejection (Personal) |
| 3 | Clarkesworld: Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine | 4/7/20 | 8 | Rejection (Form) |
| 4 | Asimov’s Science Fiction | 4/15/20 | 1 | Rejection (Form) |
| 5 | The Dark Magazine | 4/16/20 | 0 | Rejection (Form) |
| 6 | Cossmass Infinities | 4/17/20 | 95 | Rejection (Form) |
| 7 | Strange Horizons | 7/21/20 | 63 | Rejection (Form) |
| 8 | Apex | 9/22/20 | 76 | Rejection (Form, Shortlisted) |
| 9 | Diabolical Plots | 1/1/21 | 3 | Rejection (Form) |
| 10 | Black Static | 1/4/21 | 1 | Rejection (Form) |
| 11 | Lightspeed Magazine | 2/8/21 | 31 | Rejection (Form) |
| 12 | Pulp Literature | 3/11/21 | 41 | Rejection (Form) |
| 13 | Lamplight | 3/16/21 | 28 | Rejection (Form) |
| 14 | Uncharted Magazine | 4/18/21 | 52 | Rejection (Form) |
| 15 | Boneyard Soup Magazine | 6/9/21 | 115 | Rejection (Form) |
| 16 | On Spec | 9/26/21 | 126 | Accepted |
As you can see, “The Downer” was definitely put through its paces in the submission process, and though I ended up selling it to a damn good market, getting there was trying at times. Now, some of this is simply luck of the draw. Had On Spec been open to submissions earlier than it was, I might have submitted it there far sooner than I did, and, who knows, maybe I would have saved myself ten rejections or so. Of course, that’s just part of the whole process. You have to put the right story in front of the right editor at the right time. Sometimes you do that on the first submissions and sometimes you do it on the sixteenth.
I think there were maybe a couple of other things working against this story as well. One, like many of my pieces, it’s kind of a mishmash of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, and doesn’t fit neatly into any of those genres. That can make it somewhat hard to sell to markets that specialize in one genre or the other. The fact I sold it to a general spec-fic market kind of supports this theory, but it’s still mostly conjecture, though it’s something I’ve long suspected about certain pieces of mine.
I think what really held the story back, though, is something for which I do have some concrete data. The fact that it’s an epistolary very likely hurt its chances somewhat. I’ll offer up two pieces of evidence for that theory. The first come from the rejection I received from F&SF.
Thank you for giving me a chance to read “The Downer.” I thought this was an interesting character and premise, but the narrative did not persuade me that the epistolary format was the best way to tell/show this story at this length. (I see the appeal of the epistolary format here, particularly in setting up the narrative arc for the turn/reveal at the end; it just didn’t work for me. Part of that may be that I’ve answered mail for a number of high level executives, including a CEO and an executive vice president, and I pretty much answer mail all day now, and nobody who reads mail for someone important or for themselves would get to page 2 of this without skimming and putting it aside: so it might be me more than the story.) I’m going to pass on this story for Fantasy & Science Fiction, but I wish you best of luck finding the right market for it and hope that you’ll keep us in mind in the future.
In the meantime, we all hope you are doing well and staying healthy.
Best regards,
Charlie
It’s always great to get a personal note and some feedback from an editor as great as C.C. Finlay, and he makes an excellent point about the story, especially given his personal experience. Note, I don’t think that Charlie is prejudiced against epistolary stories in general, just that the format didn’t work for him here, and I appreciated that he explained why it didn’t. Unfortunately, I had a 5,000-word epistolary story already written, and since this was the story’s first rejection, I decided to soldier on, and keep submitting it as is. With hindsight being 20/20, and knowing that this would be the first of fourteen rejections, I think there’s an argument to be made that I should have taken the idea and character, which did work, scrapped the story, and rewritten it in a standard third-person limited POV or something of that nature.
Now, as for the other piece of evidence that the epistolary format might have hurt this story, well, it comes from an unexpected place, a rejection for another story from On Spec, the same market that accepted “The Downer.” When you get a close-but-no-cigar rejection from On Spec, they, like many publishers, will include some of the first reader feedback. Well, the rejected story was also an epistolary tale, and two of their readers expressed an issue with the format, one even saying that “we don’t generally like [epistolary] tales”. Now, obviously, I did manage to sell On Spec an epistolary story, so those readers obviously thought it was good enough despite the format. Again, let me stress that I have no animosity or resentment toward ANY editor or reader that rejected this story or any other for any reason. Editorial (or first reader) taste is a thing, and it can often be the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.
Now, did any of the markets pass on “The Downer” because it was an epistolary? Maybe. They might have had similar objections to those of C. C. Finlay, and simply felt that the format was the wrong one for this story but not the wrong format for any story. I’ll never know, and I am, of course, engaging in a bit of rejectomancy here, but, hey, it IS the name of the blog. 🙂
Anyway, I sold “The Downer” to On Spec on January 30th, 2022, and it was published in issue #123. It was my second sale to On Spec. They’ve also published another one of my oft-rejected stories, “The Back-Off” (bless them), another double-digit rejectee that will likely be the subject of a future path to publication post.
And there you have it, another arduous tale of submissions, rejections, and eventual acceptance triumph. Questions about the piece and it’s twisting path to publication? Or, do you have a tale of your own about an oft-rejected story that eventually found a home? I’d love to hear about either in the comments.
Surviving 700 Rejections
Last week, I hit another significant submission milestone. I received my 700th rejection since I started tracking them on Duotrope back in 2012. If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you know that when I hit a big round number like this, I like to take a deep dive into the stats and see what they can tell me. So, let’s do that. 🙂
First and Last
First up, let’s establish exactly how long I’ve been tracking all these no’s, not for us’s, and we’re gonna pass’s.
The first rejection I entered into Duotrope came on May 5th, 2012. The rejected story was “Feeding Time” and the rejecting market was Daily Science Fiction. The story was okay, and I did shop it around a bit after that, but I never found a home for it, and it now resides in the digital trunk where just-okay stories go to die. The market, Daily Science Fiction, is now sadly on indefinite hiatus, and was a market I tried unsuccessfully to crack for over a decade.
The last rejection, number 700, I received on March 16th, 2025. The story is a new one called “Love in the Time of Giardia” and it was rejected on it’s maiden submission by The Colored Lens. It’s a weird little story that I might struggle to place, but The Colored Lens had some good feedback, so I’ll look to revise this piece and keep trying.
Stories and Markets
Now let’s look at how many distinct stories I’ve had rejected and from how many markets.
Stories: I’ve had 159 distinct stories rejected. Of those 159, I’ve gone on to sell 76 of them, so roughly half. Additionally, fifteen of the rejected stories are out on currently out on submission, and five of them are currently being held for further consideration. So, I like my chances for finding homes for some of these oft-rejected stories. Currently, my most rejected stories, each with twenty-five total, are “Set in Stone” and “Time Has No Memory”. I’ve retired “Set in Stone” but “Time Has No Memory” has received half-a-dozen close-but-no-cigar rejections, and I believe I’ll eventually find it a home (I hope). Just for funsies here are my top ten most-rejected stories.
| Story | Rejections | Published? |
| Hell to Pay – Installment Plans Available! | 12 | Yes |
| Coffin Shopping | 13 | |
| Caroline | 15 | Yes |
| The Downer | 16 | Yes |
| The Scars You Keep | 16 | Yes |
| Trapping Disaster | 17 | |
| Paper Cut | 18 | Yes |
| Signs and Wonders | 18 | |
| Set in Stone | 25 | |
| Time Has No Memory | 25 |
As you can see, I’ve managed to sell five of my ten most-rejected pieces, and by the number of hold letters and close-but-no-cigar rejections received by “Trapping Disaster”, “Signs and Wonders”, and “Time Has No Memory”, I think I’ll eventually sell them as well. “Coffin Shopping” is a maybe. It’s a good story, but it’s setting and subject make it a hard sell. “Set in Stone” is a piece of what you might call juvenilia (I wrote it a long time ago), and it’s just not good enough for prime time; it’ll stay in the trunk where it belongs.
Markets: I have had the pleasure, nay the privilege, of getting rejected by 180 distinct markets. Many of these markets have since published my work, but I’m still knocking at the door of many more, especially some of the most vaunted pro outfits. Of my nineteen currently pending submissions, thirteen of them are with markets I’ve yet to publish with. Five of those thirteen submissions have been held for further consideration, so, you know, fingers crossed. Again, for shits and giggles, here are the ten markets that have rejected me the most.
| Publisher | Rejections | Acceptances |
| The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF) | 17 | 0 |
| Flame Tree Press | 20 | 5 |
| Factor Four Magazine | 21 | 4 |
| The Dark Magazine | 21 | 0 |
| Daily Science Fiction | 24 | 0 |
| NewMyths.com | 24 | 1 |
| Apex Magazine | 26 | 0 |
| The Arcanist | 31 | 16 |
| Flash Fiction Online | 38 | 0 |
| The Molotov Cocktail | 52 | 17 |
For simplicity’s sake, I’ve combined all of a publisher’s individual journals, contests, anthologies, and other projects under a single listing. So, for example, Flame Tree Press includes the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter and all their various anthologies. Like my most-rejected stories, I’ve managed to crack five of my most-rejected markets. I’ve gotten very close with Flash Fiction Online, making it to their final round of deliberation a handful of times. I’ve made it out of the slush pile with Apex, but not much further. I like my chances of eventually cracking those two, and I’ll keep trying. Of course, my chances of appearing in the pages (digital or print) of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction or Daily Science Fiction are pretty much zero at this point because both are on hiatus. Sadly, The Arcanist, which used to be my go-to for slightly humorous spec-fic stories, is also on indefinite hiatus.
Types of Rejections
I used to keep careful track of the type of rejections I received, even going so far as to separate form rejection into standard and higher-tier, but I’ve stopped doing that. It’s not that I don’t believe that higher-tier form rejections exist–they do–it’s just often difficult to tell which is which, and, in the grand scheme of things, I’m not sure it matters that much. Now, I only pay attention to personal rejections with some kind of feedback or shortlist/close-but-no-cigar rejections, as they can actually help me crack a market on my next submission. But, here’s the general breakdown of all 705 rejections.
- Form Rejections: 556
- Personal Rejections: 134
- Shortlist Rejections: 37
You’ll notice the math doesn’t quite add up here, and it looks like I have 727 rejections instead of 705. That’s because some of the form and personal rejections are also shortlist rejections. In truth, I think I might actually have more shortlist rejections than the 37 I have listed here, but there wasn’t an option to mark submissions as shortlisted Duotrope until fairly recently. If I had to guess, I’d say that maybe a third or a bit more of the form rejections are higher-tier form rejections, but, again, it doesn’t really matter that much.
Lessons and What’s Next
So, what has 700+ rejections taught me over the past decade and change? Quite a lot, actually, and I think there are two primary lessons every writer should take away from rejection. Here they are.
One, rejections are inevitable. No matter how good you are, not matter how perfect a match your story seems to be for a particular market, you WILL get rejected, and the more you submit, the more rejections you’ll receive. You have to accept the reality of rejections in the same way you accept the reality of bad weather. It’s gonna happen and there’s not much you can do about it. But, like any force of nature, rejections aren’t personal (though they might feel like they are), and though it’s okay to get upset when you receive a tough rejection, the more you get, the less you feel them.
Two, even good stories get rejected. If you take anything away from the mess of stats I posted, it should be that. Out of 100-plus stories I’ve sold, a good ninety percent of them were rejected at least once, and most were rejected quite a bit more. In fact, I’ve done the math, and every story I’ve sold receives four rejections on average before an acceptance. It’s even worse when you look at short stories (as opposed to flash fiction) where I average almost EIGHT rejections per acceptance. In other words, don’t get discouraged by one rejection, or hell, fifteen. An acceptance happens when you put the right story in front of the right editor at the right time. Miss any one of those, and no matter how good the story is, it’s gonna get rejected. Keep. Trying.
As for what’s next, well, I’ve renewed my focus on submitting short stories this year and set some lofty goals for myself. First, I’m aiming to write one new story per week. Then, I want to send 150 submissions, and receive twenty-four acceptances, twelve of them with pro markets. So far, I’m on track, and I’m already racking up the rejections. If things progress like they have been, you should see an 800-rejections post around this time next year.
Happy writing. 🙂
Submission Statement: February 2025
February has come and gone, and it was a pretty solid month for submissions. I’m still on pace to hit all my goals for the year, from the number of submissions sent to the number of new stories written. Let’s dive in and take a closer look at the numbers.
February 2025 Short Story Stats
- Submissions Sent: 11
- Rejections: 8
- No Response: 0
- Acceptances: 0
- Further Consideration/Shortlist: 1
- Withdrawals: 0
- Pending: 20
- New Stories: 7
I sent eleven submissions last month, four fewer than I sent in January. Strangely, this had little to do with not having enough stories to send, and much more to do with there not being enough open markets to send them to. I’m only submitting stories to markets that pay at least semi-pro rates, and I’m prioritizing those that pay a pro rate. What that means, especially when you have 20 pending submissions, is that you can quickly run out of desirable markets. This is particularly true with horror, where there are just fewer markets in general. So, toward the end of the month, I found myself with a handful of new stories and nowhere to send them. Thankfully, a bunch of markets opened up on March 1st, and I sent a flurry of submissions right away.
Sadly, no acceptances in February either, though I did receive another further consideration letter from a pro market, which brings my total to three. All of those held submissions are getting pretty long in the tooth, and I expect a decision this month on at least two of them.
My goal of writing one new story per week is still on track, and in February I completed five new stories, three shorts and two flashes. That gives me nine for the year, five of which are out on submissions, and I actually sold one in January. Not too bad.
Rejections
Eight rejections in February.
- Form Rejections: 8
- Personal Rejections: 0
- Close-But-No-Cigar Rejections: 0
A lot more rejections in February than January (all of the form variety), which is a trend I expect to continue. I’m sending out A LOT of submissions, and sim-subbing wherever I can. In addition, I’m submitting primarily to pro markets and tougher semi-pro zines. All this means the rejections are gonna start piling up, and I don’t think I’ll struggle to hit my goal of 100 no’s by the end of the year.
2025 Writing Goals Bingo
If you’ve been following my progress this year, then you know I have a new and fun way to track my writing goals. The bingo card below breaks up my primary goals into 25 bite-size mini goals, and this month I get to mark the first one complete.
Now, technically, I hit the 30 subs on March 1st, but I’m gonna go ahead an mark it complete here because, well, it feels good, damn it. Hopefully, when I update you on my March progress, I’ll have filled in a couple more squares.
And that was February. My goals for March are pretty much the same as last month: write one new story per week, send roughly 15 submissions, and, hopefully, net a couple of acceptances in the process.
That was my month. How was yours?
Submission Statement: January 2025
The first month of 2025 is in the books, and here’s my first submission statement for the new year. These updates will be a little different this year because my goals for 2025 are fairly ambitious. I’m also tracking them in a fun new way (more on that at the end of the post). For this first post, let me go ahead and quickly list my goals for 2025.
- Write one new story per week.
- Send 150 submissions.
- Receive 24 acceptances.
- Make 12 pro sales.
- Receive 100 rejections.
With the goals out of the way, here’s my monthly report card.
January 2025 Short Story Submissions
- Submissions Sent: 15
- Rejections: 3
- No Response: 0
- Acceptances: 2 (1 pro sale)
- Further Consideration/Shortlist: 2
- Withdrawals: 0
- Pending: 14
- New Stories: 6
January was a very good month, and I’m on pace for all my yearly goals, except maybe rejections, but that’s more of a booby prize than an actual goal, so I can live with it. I need to average about 14 to 15 submissions every month to hit that goal of 150. If I keep writing new stories, that shouldn’t be too difficult, though. I wrote six new pieces last month, three short stories and three flash fiction stories, and those accounted for the bulk of my January submissions. I’m sim-subbing more this year, too, which should also help me hit my submission goals. The two acceptances were good ones, and one of them is up there with the biggest sales of my short story career. More on those when I sign the contracts.
Rejections
Three rejections in January.
- Form Rejections: 3
- Personal Rejections: 0
- Close-But-No-Cigar Rejections: 0
Not much to talk about here. The three rejections I received were all boilerplate form rejections. Two of them might have been higher-tier rejections, but I’ve honestly stopped keeping track of those, so I’m just gonna call the form rejections and move on.
Writing Goals Bingo!
This is the new way I’m going to be tracking my writing goals for the year. Check it out. 🙂 
Yep, writing goals bingo. I don’t get to mark any of the boxes as complete for January, but I really didn’t expect to. I think I’ve got a pretty good shot at checking off a couple boxes in February, but we’ll see. If you’d like more info on writer goals bingo and how I made my bingo card, check out this post.
And that was January. My goals for the coming month are pretty straightforward. I want to write 4 new stories, send 15 submissions, and get 2 acceptances (1 pro sale). I won’t set a goal for rejections, but I’d need like a dozen to be on pace for a hundred for the year. lol
That was my month. How was yours?
Pro or Not Pro, That Is the Question
Recently, I outlined my writing goals for 2025, which you can see here. One of those goals is to make at least 12 pro sales, but that leads me to the following question. What exactly IS a pro sale? It’s not as cut and dry as you might think, so, in this post, I’m going to go over some of the ways folks determine if a sale is pro or not. I’m also going to cover some of the gray areas, and then give you my thoughts on how I’m personally going to determine pro or not pro for my own story sales.
First, a few caveats. I’m a genre writer who writes primarily sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and crime, so the definitions of professional payment I’ll be using pertain only to works sold to markets that publish those genres. I have neither the knowledge nor experience necessary to make that determination for lit-fic. Also, I write short fiction and flash fiction, so I won’t be covering pro sales for poetry or drabbles because, again, it’s just not what I do.
To kick things off, let’s cover what I consider no-brainers when it comes to determining a professional sale.
- SFWA qualifying markets. The SFWA has compiled a list of markets that offer professional payment. Though the SFWA has recently removed the list from their website while they make improvements to it, their monthly market report operates in much the same way. So, if you receive an acceptance for an original piece or a reprint (more on that later) from one of these markets, I think it is unequivocally a pro sale.
- SFWA and HWA minimum pro payments. Both the SFWA and HWA have minimum qualifying per-word rate for a market to be considered professional. For the SFWA, that’s 8 cents per word (USD), and for the HWA, it’s 5 cents per word (USD). So, if you’re paid 8 cents for a SFF story or 5 cents for a horror story, I think it’s fair to call it a pro sale.
Now, let’s get into the less obvious stuff, the gray areas that some folks might consider a pro sale and some might not. Below, I’ll briefly describe a situation where pro or not pro is not entirety clear and then tell you how I’m going to treat each one.
- Flat rate. Some markets don’t pay a per-word rate and instead pay a flat dollar amount for stories. So how do you determine if such a payment is a pro payment? The easiest thing to do is to divide that dollar amount by the number of words in your story, and see if your per-word rate matches up with the SFWA or HWA qualifying rates. For example, Uncharted Magazine pays $200.00 (USD) for all stories between 1,000 and 5,000 words. So, if I sell them a 3,000 words sci-fi story, that 200 bucks works out to about 6.5 cents per word, which technically isn’t a pro rate for SFF, but since they’re on the SFWA list of qualifying markets, I’d say it is. Confused yet? Here’s how I’m gonna treat flat rates. If the market is on the SFWA qualifying market list, then I’m treating it as a pro sale no matter what. For stories not on that list, both SFF and horror, I’ll consider the sale pro if the per word rate works out to 8 cents or 5 cents respectively.
- Reprints sold to pro markets. Reprints are almost always paid at a lesser rate than original stories. For example, PodCastle, a market that both pays 8 cents per word for original fiction AND is on the SFWA list of qualifying markets pays a $100.00 flat rate for reprints. Now, no matter how long your story is, 100 bucks is not likely to work out to a pro payment when you calculate the per word rate. My verdict on this is pretty simple. If you sell a reprint to an obviously pro market, it’s a pro sale even if you’re paid less than the SFWA or HWA qualifying rate.
- Foreign currencies. I submit to markets all over the world, and I’ve been paid per word rates in Canadian dollars (CAD), Australian dollars (AUD), British pounds (GBP), and a few others. Well, if you know your exchange rates, then this can make determining a pro sale kind of tricky. Here’s a good example. I’ve been published by a couple of Canadian markets, one of which pays 5 cents (CAD) per word. Now, if I sell them a horror story, I’m technically getting 5 cents per word and that technically means it’s a pro sale. Of course, when you look at exchange rates, that 5 cents CAD equates to about 3.5 cents per word (USD), which would be a semi-pro sale. It can go the other way, too. If I sell a horror story to a market that pays 4 cents a word (GBP), I’m actually making 5 cents per word (USD). My verdict? For SFF markets, I’m gonna go by the SFWA qualifying markets list. The Canadian market I mentioned above is not on that list, so I’d consider them a semi-pro sale (though one I am quite happy to have). For a horror or crime story, I think if the payment works out to 5 cents a word (USD), I might consider it a pro sale, but I’m still kinda iffy on it.
- Cross-genre works. I tend to mash up genres a lot, most often mixing sci-fi/horror, sci-fi/crime, and horror/crime. This can present an interesting conundrum when I’m trying to determine a pro sale. If I sell my sci-fi/horror piece to a horror market and receive 5 cents per word, I’ve made a pro sale, right? But if I sell that same story to a sci-fi market and receive the same 5 cents per word, I have not made a pro sale (unless the market is on the SFWA qualifying list). It’s weird and uneven, but I do think it’s pretty straightforward, and in this case you have to go by the market and not the story. So, in my above example, the sale to a horror story is pro, the sale to the sci-fi market is semi-pro.
- Mystery/Crime stories. Unlike the SFWA and the HWA, the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) has not set a minimum per word rate for a pro sale. They have a list of approved publishers and markets and have stated that a minimum payment of at least $25.00 is required for a sale to be considered toward active membership, but no clearly defined pro rate. From what I’ve gathered from talking with folks who are far more accomplished in the genre than I am, this is because the short mystery/crime market is quite a bit smaller than the SFF/horror markets, so the distinction between pro and semi/pro is not as useful. That said, there are a couple mystery/crime publishers that I think anyone would consider professional markets by any definition of the word. These are Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and they both pay 5 cents per word or more. My gut instinct is to set the pro bar for my own purposes at 5 cents per word for crime/mystery markets. Still, truth be told, I’m not entirely sure how I’m gonna judge my crime story sales that aren’t to no-brainer markets. I’m just gonna have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
Okay, so there you have it, most of the ways you might judge a story as pro or not. There are some scenarios and corner cases I likely haven’t considered, but what I’ve got here should cover a good 95% of the scenarios a writer might find themselves in. To recap, for my own personal goals, here’s how I’m going to determine pro sales. A sale is pro if . . .
- The market is on the SFWA qualifying market list.
- If the market pays at least 8 cents per word for SFF and 5 cents per word for horror.
- If the market pays a flat rates that works out to a per word rate of 8 cents or 5 cents.
- If the story is a reprints sold to obviously pro market.
Please remember that all of my opinions above are simply how I’m going to determine pro sales for MY work. This is not a guide for how you should determine pro sales for YOUR work. I like to define and codify things, and this is just an attempt to do that so I can feel good about a silly little goal I’ve set for myself. 🙂
Thoughts on what makes a sale pro or not pro? Any scenarios I missed you’d like to talk about? I’d love to here from you in the comments.
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