It’s January 7th on this side of the dateline – three years exactly
since I launched this assault upon the fiction marketplace. It’s always
interesting to review progress at this time of year.
Overall: After 1068 days, I now have a total of 1089
submissions, 66 placements (16.5:1 subs/acceptance ratio), 68 stories on
submission at this time (record still 81), thus 955 rejections (14.46:1
rejections/acceptance ratio).
In calendar year 2018, I made 353 submissions, receiving 26
placements (14.57:1 submissions/placement, or an acceptance rate of 7.36%,
slightly down from last year’s 8.16%).
Average time between acceptances in Year Three was 13.69
days, up from 11.4 last year (32 acceptances).
In professional terms, I now have 12 full pro placements,
though two are reprints in a pro anthology, generating a different pay scale
than their initial run.
Productivity is way down, just 20 stories this year (down
from 62 in 2017), totalling 130, 695 words (down from 247, 782 words
previously). I have over 170 stories registered at Submission Grinder.
Real life tends to get in the way, the pressures of making a
crust by means other than the highly competitive and occasional nature of
receiving decent wedge from writing, plus of course teaching and home
responsibilities. I would have liked to continue to churn out stories at the
pace of the two previous years, but this year I have perhaps written a greater
number of longer pieces, and marketed the whole opus more intensively. A
cynical view may be that greater effort resulted in a lesser return, and this
is true on the face of it. However, with a larger pool of stories to work with
I can afford to market more intensively and always have material in hand –
there are over fifty stories not on submission at this moment, and many choice
marketplaces are either temporarily closed or on themed volumes.
I have a third placement with Compelling Science Fiction, in addition to reprints of my two
earlier stories in their first hardback anthology. During this year I placed a
flash short with the prestigious Nature/Futures,
as well as with the exclusive Daily SF,
and scored a fifth placement with Lovecraftiana,
due out in a few weeks.
The outlook for the fourth year is difficult to predict, but
I will do everything in my power to come as closer to 100 placements one year
from today as possible. My first story for 2019 is already done and will be on
its way to an anthology shortly, and my next writing task is defined, another
anthology piece.
As ever, catch development here as they occur!
Cheers, Mike Adamson
Header image from royalty-free source.
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