Rejectomancy Summary 2024

This year I’ve written the more short stories and poems than any year previously, and it’s only October. Things have been going well—I’ve sold five stories, one poem, and have six pieces being held by editors for further consideration—but there’s also been more rejection than ever as well.

Only a short time ago, such volumes of rejections would have really set me back. Even a major sale doesn’t make up for a couple of rejections from smaller markets—the brain simply isn’t wired that way. Our loss aversion bias often kicks in and overrides any logical assessment (for details see The Decision Lab’s primer on loss aversion).

But I’ve been lucky enough to have met some great artists over the last year, who have been kind enough to share details on how things are really going, behind the carefully managed hype they’re obliged to present on sales channels and social media.

So here’s a quick summary of my stats for the year so far (since 1st Jan 2024):

And here’s a breakdown of percentages in each category, excluding pending responses:

A 3% acceptance rate isn’t fantastic, but it isn’t terrible either—especially considering that I’ve been focusing on higher-tier markets this year with acceptance rates in the <1% range. Also, while I’m still new to this, I’ve heard from many seasoned short story writers that this year has been especially difficult when it comes to landing sales. Many pros haven’t managed to land any sales at all, so I’m counting myself lucky.

Some of the stories currently being held by editors will translate to further sales. There’s also the magic bag of pending submissions; if we assume that the 3% sales rate holds then we’d expect another 2 sales. We can get a conservative estimate of the final sales count by assuming maybe 2 of the 6 stories being held will sell; altogether we’d have 10 sales from 262 submissions, around 4% of the total.

And then, of course, there’s the rest of the year to play with.