STRENGTHEN YOUR SUBMISSIONS STRATEGY, Part 5 by Max Jason Peterson (aka Adele Gardner)

 Happy Father's Day, Delbo G.!

Delbert R. Gardner and Adele Gardner

Growing up, I had the time of my life sharing the writing path with my father, Delbert R. Gardner, a talented writer of poetry, fiction, humor, and essays, who during my lifetime worked variously as a professor of English literature who taught creative writing, and as a writer/editor for TRADOC who felt a special mission to improve training materials for the Army thanks to his experiences in World War II. I’m writing this on the eve of Father’s Day, so I just wanted to share how much it always went to me that Dad was my writing mentor, always encouraging me, providing feedback when I wanted it that was always on a level I could benefit from while growing up, just sharing the joy of the writing life together, and also showing me all the ropes with submissions. I started submitting my stories at fourteen and had my first poems published at sixteen thanks to Dad’s guidance. We were also writing pals—sharing writing sessions; offering one another encouragement; sending out manuscripts through the post every month; celebrating one another’s acceptances and tips about editors who might like each other’s work. (And now I’m his literary executor; and it’s in that capacity that I first began using statistics to track our submissions.) Since he helped me so much, and since I got such a lucky break having such a father (in terms of being a writer, naturally; but also, he was just simply an extraordinary Dad, so loving and wise, playing with us, sharing jokes, helping us with our homework and with life—our best friend) I feel strongly about passing on some of the things I learned thanks to Dad—things he taught me, and things I went on to find out as a direct result of his influence.

So, as we begin the next phase of this series, here are the previous installments for those who want to catch up or review where we are:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

As in the previous installment, I’m going to be including some original-size graphics that are larger than we normally share in these blog posts, so that I can show you details of my spreadsheets.

Here’s what you can expect from the remainder of this series for now. First, I’m going to talk about yearly statistics and how they can help you—both as motivation and to better strategize your submissions. This will be covered in the next few installments. Next, I’ll discuss any other aspects of my submission spreadsheets that I haven’t covered. Then I will discuss how to do quite a lot of what I’ve outlined in this series, but using a word processing file rather than a spreadsheet, in case you find spreadsheets too complicated or cumbersome. Since this article is specifically about the statistics of it all, rather than submissions in general, we’ll probably wrap up there.

We’ve discussed how to handle the spreadsheet pages for sending out your work, including both to record where things have gone and to keep track of the next markets to send your work so you can keep the submissions flowing. (Sending your work right back out again after a rejection is one of the best methods to avoid letting the inevitable rejections get you down—and persistence is the among most important keys to breaking through!)

Now, we’re going to talk about yearly statistics. For me, this became an eye-opening way to really improve my strategy, in so many ways.

How can this help?

• You can determine which types of materials are working best for you and concentrate on these
• Conversely, you can identify areas where you might want to improve
• You can plan what you want to work on next
• You can identify what types of markets are most likely to accept more of your material and concentrate on those
• You can motivate yourself to increase your number of submissions, or subs to specific markets or creation of new material in a particular category

Now for how to do it!

Because I’m constantly sorting the “Submissions” worksheet, I keep a separate worksheet within the spreadsheet file. I call mine "Sub Totals." Here's what I'd advise at a minimum. Track these each year and keep a record of the results so you can see how you’re improving.

• Submissions (You can set goals for yourself per year)
• Acceptances (Always great to see in aggregate how well you did that year—and very much tied to the number of submissions you made)
• Percent Accepted (This is the percentage of submissions that get accepted. The number may seem small, but compare it to the percent of submissions the journal accepts and you’ll probably find you’re in good company! Keep an eye on this number, track it over time, and watch it grow.)
• Subs Per Acceptance (Once you figure out how many submissions it takes on average to generate an acceptance, you can aim to make at least this number of submissions. It’s not going to be instantaneous—it’s an average—but it does work! It also keeps you focused on sending things out instead of worrying about what got declined.)

First of all, you’re going to want to set those categories permanently across all the years so that you can see what your lifetime rate is. You can also set them up individually by year and by type of submission. You can be as broad or as granular as you want. So, for instance, I actually track these categories overall, but I also look at them by fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and books. And I look at them separately for my works and those of my father—as well as collaborations between us. And remember how, in your general submissions page, you’ll keep track of whether each market is in the pro, semipro, token, or copies/exposure payment category? (Remember, always send to the highest tier first—don’t self-reject!) I use these to further study my submissions by how well I did in each of those payment tiers. Believe me, it’s different! It can also direct your tactics. If you see that you’re very successful in one particular category—currently my highest rate of success lies with poetry, and usually in the semipro tier—you can choose to focus on that and really go with it.

In the upper left corner of my “Sub Totals” page, I have my lifetime Submissions, Acceptances, Percent Accepted, and Subs Per Acceptance categories permanently set up. This is the only group of statistics you won’t need to run manually once a year. It’s great to be able to look at this and see your running total at any time. And it’s all based on the good work you’ve been doing on the main submissions worksheet! You’ll be drawing your data from the “Count” column and the “Acceptances” column in that worksheet.

So, on your Sub Totals worksheet, starting in the top left corner, in Column A, type in the categories:

Submissions

Acceptances

Percent Accepted

Subs Per Acceptance

 

Now, in the cells to the right of each category (Column B), you’ll create the following formulas.

 

In the cell next to Submissions, type:

=SUM(

Now click on the tab for the “Submissions” worksheet. Find the “Count” column. Click into the topmost data square for that header. Hold down the shift key. Scroll down to the end of your document, then scroll even farther. Let those blank lines accumulate! Now click into one of those blank squares in the same column and hit Enter. You'll be transported magically back to your “Sub Totals” worksheet, with a number filled in. If you want to increase the number of lines without redoing the formula, just highlight the cell. Although it shows you a result such as 1,789, in the field at the top of the screen under the menu (the “formula bar”), you'll see the formula behind the number, looking something like this:

=SUM(Sheet1!B1:B2332)

Just put your cursor inside that formula and change that last number to something much higher, like:

=SUM(Sheet1!B1:B10000)

 

Next to Acceptances, type:

=SUM(

Now click on the tab for the “Submissions” worksheet. Find the “Acceptances” column. Do the same thing you just did above for Submissions.

 

Next to Percent Accepted, type:

=SUM(

First, put your cursor in the cell that holds the result for Acceptances (in my spreadsheet, that’s cell B3)

Now type a slash: /

Now put your cursor in the cell that holds the result for Submissions (in my spreadsheet, that’s cell B2)

Type a closing parenthesis and hit Enter.

Your formula should look something like this:

=SUM(B3/B2)

 

Next to Subs Per Acceptance, type:

=SUM(

This one is the opposite of Percent Accepted

First, put your cursor in the cell that holds the result for Submissions (in my spreadsheet, that’s cell B2)

Now type a slash: /

Now put your cursor in the cell that holds the result for Acceptances (in my spreadsheet, that’s cell B3)

Type a closing parenthesis and hit Enter.

Your formula should look something like this:

=SUM(B2/B3)

Voila! You now have overall statistics that will provide you with some incentives and insight and hopefully inspiration, even if you don’t wish to get more detailed. If you don’t want to study deeper, just make a note of what they are every New Year’s Day and watch your progress! Hopefully you will see your number of submissions needed for an acceptance grow smaller over time, and your percent of submissions accepted grow higher. And, of course, your Submissions and Acceptances totals grow as well!

Remember—the one statistic you can control is the number of submissions you make—but this one will naturally drive all the rest!

Next time, I’ll delve into how to study your statistics by year and by type of submission, so that you can really drill down into your strengths or improve areas you’d like to see receive better results.

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For more information about Max Jason Peterson, visit maxjasonpeterson.wordpress.com or the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram links through gardnercastle.com.