STRENGTHEN YOUR SUBMISSIONS STRATEGY, Part 6 by Max Jason Peterson

So much of getting traditionally published requires patience and stamina—and hard work. It can get very tiring, especially when making a sale takes so much work shopping a piece around. Part of the reason I wanted to share these strategies in the first place is to give you hope. Rather than get discouraged by the number of submissions that haven’t netted a sale, or doubting the value of your piece (or worse, your writing abilities), you can use your statistics to keep your eye on the big picture. My hope is that, in addition to helping you get past the sting of rejection to get your piece right back out there quickly, you’ll come to see each rejection as a stepping stone to the next acceptance. After all, if it takes me an average of forty submissions to sell a short story, receiving rejection number thirty-nine can be pretty exciting. Beyond that, statistics kept over time can also help you narrow in on categories in which you’re especially successful—so that you can build on that success. Take a look at what types of material (short stories or poems? Mystery or mainstream?) are yielding sales with the fewest number of submissions. That might be an area to concentrate on as you create new works and figure out where to send them. So, in this installment, we’re going to look just a little bit more into yearly statistics.
 
If you find this intriguing and want to catch up on previous installments:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Last time, we discussed keeping a separate worksheet within the spreadsheet file that contains all your annual and big picture statistics. I call mine "Sub Totals." We created an overall, big picture set of totals that will be mostly self-generating, including these categories:
Submissions
Acceptances
Percent Accepted
Subs Per Acceptance
The work you did last time will keep these numbers flowing. The only thing you may need to keep an eye on over time is making sure that the formulas keep up with the growing number of lines on your main “Submissions” worksheet (the one that lists the titles of your works and where you’re sending them). The previous article explains how to update these formulas—just remember to do that. A good rule of thumb is to do this at the start of each new year, which is a good time to examine your overall submissions for the previous year.
 
So, these things grant us a general, lifetime overview of how many submissions you need in order to make a sale. That’s great! It helps you aim for that number. Rather than focusing on the rejection aspect of, you know, rejections, you can focus on them being a step closer to the magical number of submissions you need to make a sale. But, while hopefully these numbers will slowly improve over time, these are lifetime numbers, and very general ones at that. It can be really motivating to see how you did in each year, and compare the results to see how you’re improving. It can also be useful to look into more specific categories, such as poetry versus fiction, pro market versus semipro, etc.  
 
So, aside from the general overview of all my submissions on my “Sub Totals” page, I keep a record of such things listed by year. Please note: you’ll be calculating the rest of these statistics in a way that’s similar to the main four categories, but due to the constant sorting of the main Submissions worksheet, you’re going to need to calculate each fact individually, and once you find the result, type that actual number into the cell, rather than leaving the formula there. This is another reason why I recommend doing it just once a year, but storing the results permanently in your Sub Totals so that you can refer back to them for inspiration and a sense of progress.
 
So, first of all, I like to see how I’m improving overall from year to year in the four main categories,
Submissions
Acceptances
Percent Accepted
Subs Per Acceptance
I have a column for each year in which I capture these same overall totals. In this column by year, I also like to get more specific. After I get the grand totals, I also look into how I did by Type (fiction, poetry) and by tier (pro, semipro, token).
 
The process for getting your yearly totals is very similar to what we did last time. We’ll just be selecting a specific range of cells based on the dates when you submitted things. So, starting out with our four main categories, just select the column to the right of your results and type in the first year you want to study. Most likely, that’s the year you began your spreadsheet. (In my case, I had a detailed submissions record before I began using a spreadsheet, and I took the time to type in all the details for a few previous years as well. It’s tedious and time-consuming, but if you have the details and want to study a previous year, you certainly can.) To the right of that, you can add as many years as you want to keep studying these facts.
 

	A	B	C	D	E
1			2023	2024	2025
2	Submissions	1789
3	Acceptances	119
4	Percent Accepted	6.7%
5	Subs Per Acceptance	15.03
6
7	Fiction Subs
8	Fic Acceptances
9	Fic Percent
10	Fic Subs Per Acceptance
11	Fic Pro Subs
12	Fic Pro Accept
13	Fic Pro Percent
14	Fic Pro Subs Per Acceptance

 
Below the four main categories, you can also list more specific versions of them. Above, you’ll see that I’m also calculating all my fiction submissions separately from my poetry submissions, and that I’m then diving deeper into the fiction category to study how I did at each market tier. You can have as many categories and as much granularity as you want.
 
For yearly totals, sort your “Submissions” worksheet by “Date Out” (newest to oldest). To get the total subs for that year, follow the same steps as you did for grand totals, except you're only choosing the “Count” boxes that line up with “Date Out” matching that specific year.
 
To get your total acceptances for that year only, sort your “Submissions” worksheet by “Date In” (newest to oldest). Then follow the same steps as for “All Acceptances,” but only choose the lines that pertain to “Date In” for that specific year.
 
For the Fiction/Poetry, Pro/Semipro granularity, just add that at the top of the Sort order. Type (A to Z), Pro (largest to smallest), Date Out (newest to oldest), etc. I find this to be especially interesting, because it shows me how I’m doing in particular categories. Maybe I prefer to target that category in the coming year, while not ruling out the others. This also shows me if I am not submitting enough in a particular category and wish to change that.
 
Last year, I created a separate worksheet in which I track when I finish new works, or make significant revisions to existing ones. Not only does this list motivate me to keep working, I was able to use it to find the statistics for these new pieces, total them, and discover how their track record compares to the general pool.
 
There are so many ways to inspire and motivate yourself with data! Two things I regularly do is aim to send out a bit more than the average number of subs needed for an acceptance, and aim to hit a particular new creation amount per month (I’ve even created a separate column in my “New Works” sheet for new rough drafts—what I send to my critique groups, progress on a novel, etc.)
 
So, now you have all the basics for using a spreadsheet to get those numbers! Next time, we’ll look into keeping statistics with just a regular word processing document, for those who don’t dig spreadsheets.
 
Carry on with your submissions, friends! The number of things you send out directly correlates to success. And statistics will help you do that more effectively.
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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.