Litopia

We’re delighted you’re here! You’re just a few clicks away from joining the ‘net’s oldest community for writers… and certainly the friendliest. Click the “Register” button to create a free account. See you in the Colony!

  • Clichés & Tropes! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em! Share your opinion in the latest Craft Chat, live now until Saturday

This is the challenge

What makes bad writing bad?

Interrobangs anyone?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Marc Joan

Basic
LV
0
 
For those who submit to magazines, the Grinder is a useful (and free) site to get insights on response times, rejection percentages, etc, per market. The site has recently been revamped in a minor way, mainly to do with data presentation. The result shows how challenging it can be to get published in the top-tier magazines. Look at the data for Clarkesworld, below. Purple lines = pending; green lines = accepted (look hard); and the red ones -- well, I think you know what they are...

upload_2016-5-26_17-36-13.png

And I suspect the odds are even worse for novel submissions to publishers....
 

Marc Joan

Basic
LV
0
 
Btw, the site seems to be mainly applicable to SF / F / horror magazines -- the data for lit fic magazines is patchy (eg only 4 entries for The Gettysburg Review, when of course they get hundreds), so probably shouldn't be given too much weight...
 

Chase Gamwell

Basic
LV
0
 
An agent I follow on twitter posted submission statistics from 2015 earlier this year. I did some math and the acceptance rate for a submission based on the numbers provided was 0.27% - that's only 9 offers of representation out of 3500 queries (with about 40 full requests that year)!
 

Robinne Weiss

Full Member
LV
0
 
An agent I follow on twitter posted submission statistics from 2015 earlier this year. I did some math and the acceptance rate for a submission based on the numbers provided was 0.27% - that's only 9 offers of representation out of 3500 queries (with about 40 full requests that year)!
I'm not listening, I'm not listening, I'm not listening... *sigh* I knew it was that bad, but put in stark numbers like that...yikes!
 

Chase Gamwell

Basic
LV
0
 
I'm not listening, I'm not listening, I'm not listening... *sigh* I knew it was that bad, but put in stark numbers like that...yikes!

Tell me about it. I have one full with an agent now and it hurts knowing that there is a greater than 99% chance that the agent will come back and tell me it's a pass. Not to mention the space opera I just finished and the cyberpunk thriller I'm almost 20K words into. It's definitely daunting...
 

Robinne Weiss

Full Member
LV
0
 
Yeah, I'm nearing the 50th rejection on my latest YA fantasy--there's still a partial out, but hope is fading fast.
 
A

Alistair Roberts

Guest
Better than I expected.... ! Given only about 0.05% of submissions actually get published. However, 100% of self-published books get published. :D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

What makes bad writing bad?

Interrobangs anyone?

Top