Hard to Get Into

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I decided to take a look at the publications I've been submitting to since I started in earnest in February 2008.

Since then, I've submitted 45 stories a total of 85 times. Some of those stories are rewrites. Of that number, eight publications have rejected me without publishing any of my submissions. I've received 7 rejections from one publication, 5 rejections each from two magazines, 4 rejections each from three, and 3 rejections each from two other literary publications. That works out to 38 times my stories have been rejected by literary publications that have never accepted anything I sent them.

Some of the stories that were rejected were accepted by other publications with no rewriting. While others were accepted by other publications after some rewriting. A few were published right here on my blog, and others have gone into hibernation until whatever time I decided to revive them.

So what does this tell me? That I need to seriously widen my choices of places to submit my work to and not count on those that have rejected my work suddenly accepting a story.