STRENGTHEN YOUR SUBMISSIONS STRATEGY, Part 7 by Max Jason Peterson

Delbert R. Gardner.
Photo by Adele Gardner

This series is dedicated to my loving father and mentor, Delbert R. Gardner, a beautifully lyrical and insightful poet and writer, who taught me how to submit my work when I was fourteen and gave me a postage allowance to do so at a time when we could ill afford it.

So far in this series, I’ve focused on using spreadsheets to track submissions as well as accomplishments. But I started using statistics to motivate me long before I switched to the spreadsheet format. If you find that spreadsheets are daunting, too much work, or just a greater level of detail than you need, this installment will share how I tracked my basic statistics in a word processing document.

While previous installments in this series do focus on spreadsheets, I hope that some of the advice about sticking with it and motivating oneself by the number of works sent out, rather than focusing on individual rejections, will still be helpful. 

So here are the prior episodes in the series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

I started out with notecards to track submissions, back in the day. So, when I switched to a Word document, I inserted a table under the title of each work, as this helped me visualize. But you can do this as a list rather than a table if you prefer.

Navigation: I’m also submitting multiple kinds of pieces—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, my father’s manuscripts, etc.—so I devised a series of codes that would let me do a quick “find” so that I could just look at those types of things. If this sounds like something you want to do, just figure out what would work for you as a search key. It should be something unique that doesn’t give a lot of false positives, so maybe include some symbols. More on that below.

Markets: Before we discuss the statistics of it all, I’d like to mention that from all the advice I read, starting with one of my favorite SF/F authors, Roger Zelazny, I knew that it was a great idea to prepare a list of markets that would be appropriate for each work, starting with the best paying and working down the list. Then whenever the piece comes back, just send it to the next one on the list automatically. Not only does this save time and keep you moving toward your goals, it helps stop you from spinning your wheels about the previous rejection or wondering about the story’s worth. As always, if you as the author see something you want to fix about the story, or agree strongly with something an editor said who passed on the story, do that. But DO NOT REVISE based on rejections unless you agree. All a rejection means is that it didn’t find a match with that particular market. If an editor provides suggested revisions and states that they’d like to see the piece again, feel free to do that if you concur. But you still don’t have to—you can still choose to seek out the editor who loves the piece as it is.

For each piece I’m sending out, I have a header with the title of the work. I’ve found it useful to follow that up with the length of the piece (words if prose; lines if poetry). The table underneath provided a list in numerical order of all the places where I sent that piece. Because the list was numbered, I could quickly see how many times it had gone out overall. I also listed the date I sent it, the date it came back, the title of the market, and any useful comments I received.  

Above the title of the piece, I inserted a special line of code that I made up to help me search for things. For instance, it was very helpful to be able to find all the poems that were not under consideration so that I could put together a batch to send out. It was also helpful to know if something was unpublished or a reprint, for the few markets that take them.

So, in my case, my search key might look something like this:

Available*F***

“Available” means it’s available for first publication—it has not yet been published. The asterisk in between is just a symbol I used to help keep from getting extraneous search results and to make the search string easier for me to read. “F” means fiction. The *** at the end means it is not currently under consideration at any market. Likewise,

Reprint*P

“Reprint” means it has been published. “P” means poetry. The lack of asterisks at the end indicates that I sent it to a market and haven’t heard back yet. When I send something out, I delete those three asterisks at the end of the string. When it comes back—I plug in the date it was returned into the table, then add the asterisks again unless I’m sending it right back out immediately.

Below the title, once the piece has been published, I also add lines that list where it has appeared.  

First text publication: Clarkesworld, June 2022

Text reprint: Night Terrors, October 2023

First audio publication: Tours of the Night, November 2023

This way I can keep track of my bibliography as well. If you keep your “Published” lines consistent and distinct, you can also search by these, say if you want to count up your number of publications (provided your search string is unique, when you “Find,” the number of your “Results” will be the number of unique titles you’ve had published. It can be useful.

 

Here’s a made-up example:

Available*F***

Those Pesky Cat Aliens!

5,000 words

# subs	Date Out	Date In	Market	Comments
1	1-2-23	3-2-23	Asimov's	Better luck next time.
2	3-3-23	3-5-23	Clarkesworld	So sorry. We have enough cat stories.
3	3-6-23	3-16-23	F&SF	I liked it, but not enough.

 

So, for instance, I can easily search to find only unpublished fiction ready to be sent by searching for:

Available*F***

 

In the Comments field, I could include many things, such as editorial or critique notes for potential improvement, contract terms, market details, when I sent a query, etc. To be honest, I miss that aspect of using the Word document. I still use my “notes” cell in the spreadsheet for this, but it’s not easy to see it all at a glance, and a really long note gets complicated in my spreadsheet format.

Still discussing the nuts and bolts of how this sort of submission tracker works, one of the things you always want to avoid doing is double-submitting to a market. You don’t want to send the same story twice; you also don’t want to send a new batch of poems before they’ve finished with the first one.

Likewise, when you get something back from a market you want to crack, you want to send them the next thing on your list that isn’t already under consideration elsewhere. You will also want to do this if you hear the market is open or looking for a particular theme.

So, to find out if material is already at a particular market, or what's next to send, I would use the Find feature for the title of the market, and in the Find column on the left, I’d change the display from “Headings” or “Pages” to “Results,” which gives a preview of each result. I could scroll through this overview to go straight to what I needed. This Results preview will help you see the Date Out-Date In notation as well, so that you don’t need to look at the things that have already been to that market. If you simply click “next” to see each instance, the Date Out-Date In lines above your result will also help you quickly see if this piece is currently under consideration elsewhere. Be careful about that—it’s called “simultaneous submissions”—and while some literary markets and an increasing number of genre markets are okay with that, a lot of markets still require that they be the only ones to consider a piece until either they pass, or you officially send them a notice that you are withdrawing it from consideration.

Now for the actual statistics! Yes, it’s a little more work in a document, but it’s not overwhelming. You can just keep very basic statistics, such as number of submissions overall to reach an acceptance of any kind. Or you can get as granular as you like. I enjoyed tracking my success by type of work (fiction, poetry, etc.) at various pay tiers: pro (i.e., meets a basic level of pay per word as determined by a professional organization like the Horror Writers Association), semipro (I personally choose to designate this as below the pro payment but still a decent amount), token payment (anything—usually is too small to be stated in whole cents per word), copy (pays in copies only).

For the statistical element, I kept all the statistics at the top of the document where I could get to them quickly. Then, I just kept track as things went out, came back, or got accepted.

So, while you are submitting, count up how much you sent of what type, then add it all to the grand totals at the top of your document. Likewise, anytime you get an acceptance, go to your document, note the information, and add it to your statistics.

At the start of my document, I kept a separate list with the following:

Total subs:

Total acceptances:

Percent accepted: (divide the acceptances by the submissions)

Subs per acceptance: (divide the submissions by the acceptances)

I also created a section where I could count by fiction/poetry, pro, semipro, token, etc. Basically, it’s the same as the “Sub Totals” page of the Excel file, except you have to calculate each time you submit or receive an acceptance, and mine wasn’t broken down by year (though you could do that, too).

I’m sure there are also other great ways to look at submissions and inspire oneself. I find it so encouraging to look at my statistics and use them as a point to aim for, rather than getting discouraged by rejections. Whatever method you choose, good luck! May you find inspiration and insight as you pursue publication!

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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.