Category: slush Page 1 of 5

When I updated the submissions system, I created a few new reports for story length and genre distribution, so the second in my 2022 submissions data dive will focus there.

We accept submissions of short stories (up to 7500 words), novelettes (7500-17500 words), and short novellas (17500-22000 words). Here’s a look submissions opened in 2022 by month:

I noticed that our inventory of novelettes was a bit shorter than normal in late September. The small growth in October is a direct result of call I put out on social media, but it was a very temporary effect.

And here’s how 2022 looks in comparison to previous years:

This graph clearly demonstrates when we’ve increased our word count limits, but it also confirms my suspicions about the downturn in novelettes. We’ll probably have to put out regular calls for more novelettes until this corrects itself. I would actually like to see this grow by more than a few percentage points in 2023.

Now let’s look at submissions opened by genre:

You can barely see them, but there are tiny spots of Horror in there. Those are people who ignored our guidelines, a warning on the old submissions page, and submitted a story anyway. Other typically includes a bunch of things we don’t publish, but is sometimes used by authors of magical realism stories when they can’t bring themselves to call it Fantasy. Blends are covered by SFF (Science Fiction blended with Fantasy), SFH (Science Fiction with Horror), and FH (Fantasy with Horror, or Dark Fantasy). Science Fiction was the most popular genre for our submissions in 2022.

Let’s compare 2022 to previous years:

Once upon a time, we did accept horror submissions. You can clearly see that ended in 2018. (A shrinking because it happened during 2018 and a virtual absence after.) From that point forward, Other and Dark Fantasy grew a little bigger. Some of that was caused by the redistribution of the percentages, but the majority of it can be attributed to some authors ignoring the guidelines. (They thought we wouldn’t  notice when they hid horror in there.) Eliminating horror submissions did result in a decrease in submissions, so it was only a small percentage that decided to play that game.

Here’s a look at submissions opened by year:

Prior to 2018, we had annual increases in submission volume. You can see how eliminating horror impacted submissions in 2018 and 2019. (Most of the authors submitting horror at the time stuck to their genre, so declines of this amount were anticipated.) Courtesy of the pandemic, 2020 was a wild year for submissions and an anomaly in the data. 2021 and 2022 appear to demonstrate a return to stability and slow growth in submissions. There were some changes though… but that’s a story for next time.

I’ll start this year’s dive into Clarkesworld Magazine submissions data with a by-country analysis. This builds on graphs I shared last year.

Note: Country data is determined by the originating IP address, which can obviously lead to some errors. For example, an American author living in Canada will be listed under Canada and a Chinese author living in China, but using a VPN located in Germany would be listed under Germany. Country names are provided by a third party database we use to process this data.

61.8% of all submissions came from the USA. It’s hard to tell in the graph, but it just beats 2020’s low of 62.04%. The number of submissions from the USA grew in 2022, but the rest of the world grew more quickly. We have actively encouraged submissions from around the world, but I do believe that part of this trend is natural growth. Unfortunately, we seem to be the only publication reporting this kind of data, so I have no way to verify that theory.

India and Australia continue to fight for 4th and 5th place, with Australia taking back 4th after losing it last year. Both countries increased in their total submissions in 2022. Australia just grew more.

The number of countries participating showed considerable growth over the prior year and showed the largest growth of all the blocks.

As I have noted previously, I dislike having to group 140+ countries into “other” the numbers for many of them are so small that they become practically invisible on the graph. Graphing them together also allows me to demonstrate their collective importance, despite their individual size.

Here’s a little more detail that breaks the top 15 (16 because of a tie) countries by submission volume.

Similar charts for previous years can be found in last year’s report.

NOTE:

We saw a significant increase in plagiarism and AI-written stories, particularly towards the end of 2022. The overwhelming majority of these submissions are originating from three countries. The above data does not include those submissions, but may still be impacted by works we did not immediately identify as either. As the tools enabling these behaviors become more sophisticated, casual detection will decline and identification will become more time-consuming. The number of rejected, but undetected, works in violation will grow.

Anything seriously considered for publication is checked far more thoroughly than a rejected work. Anyone caught in violation is permanently banned from submitting.

One of the metrics I use for whether or not the Spanish Language Project is successful is by comparing it to previous year’s data. Is it changing the profile of the submissions we have received in the past?

Just over 98% of the authors participating have never submitted a story to us before the window opened.

First week submission totals compared to submissions received in all of 2022:

If anyone had any doubts about the negative impact of a language barrier on the submissions process, this data should put that to rest.

Today’s dive into the 2021 submission data for Clarkesworld Magazine looks at the volume of submissions from each author in 2021. Returning authors are authors that had submitted at least one story in 2020 or earlier.

The pool of regularly submitting authors is probably smaller than most people expected. An overwhelming majority of authors only submitted a single story in 2021 and nearly 70% of those people were submitting a story to us for the first time. Just under 2000 authors submitted more than one work in all of 2021 and of those half only submitted two. The ratio between US and non-US submissions remains consistent throughout the data. No one submitted more than 40 stories last year (which is the most anyone has done in the last three years). If a number is missing, no one submitted that number of times.

Returning authors represented 38% of all authors and 48% of all submissions. This is in line with previous years. (A surge in first time authors in 2020 led to the returning rate to fall to 36%. That’s the only time it’s gone that low, though actual number of returning authors was consistent.)

Why does this happen? I don’t have that data, but I can make some educated guesses. I know a lot of writers just drop out of the field. Imposter syndrome plus rejection can be a powerful one-two punch. Some discover that it isn’t their passion or that doing it for money ruins it for them. There’s also the possibility that our short rejection times are intimidating to some. And then there’s the occasional spikes in submissions we receive when we’re (unfortunately) featured on a “write for money” website. I imagine that most of those don’t stick around when they realize it isn’t as easy as stringing some words together (or in some cases, cut & pasting). There’s also socio-economic factors that play in for some. Just not enough time to devote to something that won’t help pay the bills.

On a much lesser scale, you have the impact of solicitation of more established authors, loss of writing time when novels enter the picture, and the common desire to be published more broadly (an author may start submitting work to other markets instead of yours in pursuit of that goal). I can’t stress just how small a percentage of the entire pool this is. It’s only impactful if “name” authors are your priority and we choose to treat them like everyone else. We value new authors just as highly. Both are an important part of the short fiction ecosystem.

Anyhow, what we’re seeing is probably some combination of the above and more. (Like the people who complain about not getting feedback.)

Some positives you won’t find in the graph (since it’s focused on submissions, not acceptances):

• In 2021, we accepted 8 works submitted by authors on their first try (with us).
• A bit more than half of all works accepted were by authors we had never published before.

and one piece of data I’d like to highlight:

• The lifetime average for all authors we accepted works by in 2021 was 7.5 rejections before their first sale to us. This represents a range of 1-62 Clarkesworld submissions before that first sale. (So don’t give up after the 8th!)

All the data I’ve been digging through (combined with 15 years of the submissions themselves) has had me thinking about the role of persistence, imposter syndrome, and self-rejection in submissions. Over the years, I’ve started coming around to thinking that in addition to skill, both persistence and (some reasonable level) of imposter syndrome are necessary to get a career off the ground. Imposter syndrome is to be fought when it’s the impetus behind self-rejection, but if we’re listening, it’s also the voice that reminds us we have more to learn. Persistence comes into play making us act on it. Learn more, improve your craft, and keep submitting work. Persistence only becomes troublesome when it veers into stubborness. That’s where you starting making the same mistakes over and over and expect a different result. (This is very common among the angry writers I hear from periodically. There’s typically a lack growth happening in their work from submission to submission.) The only good self-rejection is when it stops you from doing this. (Side note: An observable trajectory of improvement is a unifying thread behind every author we’ve worked with. I can see it in the submissions.)

As much as it would probably swamp us with more submissions, I’d love to see a little more of the right kind of persistence in this data, even if it only means one story every year or two. You decide what pace is healthy or practical. Just keep submitting them here, there, or wherever.

Today’s dive into Clarkesworld Magazine submissions data starts with updated versions of some graphs I shared last year. Country data is determined by originating IP address, which can obviously lead to some errors. For example, an American author living in Canada will be listed under Canada and a Chinese author living in China, but using a VPN located in Germany would be listed under Germany. Country names are provided by a third party database we use to process this data.

The results for both of these graphs were more-or-less expected. In 2020, we saw some significant increases in stories from outside the US. Like most data spikes we’ve seen over the years, there’s a momentary decline that lands somewhere between the previous two values. Naturally, we’d like it to keep moving upwards, but understand that this will take time.

At the end of last year, India was within 15 submissions of passing Australia for the #4 slot. We knew it would be a close race, but expected India (which has showed an annual growth trend) to pass them this year. The margin is still very close, 17 submissions in fact.

As the volume of stories from the US is such a significant percentage of those received, removing them allows a better view of what’s happening with the rest of the world:

I dislike having to group 120+ countries into “other” the numbers for many of them are so small that they become practically invisible on the graph. Graphing them together also allows me to demonstrate their collective importance, despite their individual size.

This year, I dug a bit deeper to give you a bit more detail into “other” by showing the top 15 countries by submission.

This is Mexico and Pakistan’s first time in the top 15.

“Other” for 2021 includes the following countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Bermuda, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Georgia, Ghana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Korea (Republic of), Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

I’ve created similar graphs for 2020, 2019, and 2018 so you can see how to top 15 have been changing over recent years.

And finally, for the latest installment in why acceptance rates are useless data:

As previously mentioned, our acceptance rate falls around 0.55%. In 2021, it was 0.52% for submissions from the US and 22.22% for submissions from Trinidad. The bad math take on this would be that we greatly favor Trinidad. (For those keeping score: bath math suggests that you submit novella length science fiction from Trinidad for optimal chances at success. Let’s blow you mind and mention that one of the stories we accepted from Trinidad was a science fiction novella.) Meanwhile, back in reality, the truth is that one or two people can dramatically change the results when the sample size is small, like with novellas or stories from Trinidad. Quality and quantity don’t have a stable relationship with one another. There is no secret formula to success.