Last week I posted my 2012 poetry submission statistics, which were better than I expected (34% acceptance rate, 68 submissions). So I looked at earlier years for a reality check.
In 2011, I submitted 69 bundles of poems, collaborations, poetry
comics, and short stories to various journals. 19 journals accepted my
work, which makes for a 28% acceptance rate. According to my records, I received 43 rejections. (One of these arrived within an hour of my submitting; a couple others arrived within a day. Others took 18 months or more.) Seven journals never replied. Interruptions: Collaborative Poems (with Daniel M. Shapiro) came out
in 2011, but I can't count the manuscript as a 2011 submission -- it was accepted for publication in 2009.
In 2010, I submitted 62 bundles of poems, collaborations, poetry comics, and short stories. I got 14 acceptances (23%), 39 rejections, and nine no reply.
In 2005, I submitted 60 bundles and got 13 acceptances (22%), 43 rejections, four no reply.
What strikes me about these numbers is that the number of submission bundles each year is about the same. That totally amazes me. I guess the lesson here is that no one should trust my estimates of anything. I would have guessed that my acceptance rate was lower than 10% and that I sent an average of about twenty submissions a year with a wide variance.
And by the way, I wouldn't interpret my increase in acceptance rate as evidence I've become a better poet (much as I'd like to think that were true). I think the increase probably comes from submitting more carefully, knowing the magazines better and thinking in terms of where do I want to be, with whom do I want to be associated, rather than what magazine is the most famous.
Nice job! Thanks for the encouragement. I've been using Duotrope to help me keep organized and sort through all of the guidelines and statistics. I agree that better research into where you submit helps to increase the acceptance rate.
Posted by: David J. Bauman | June 27, 2013 at 03:11 PM