Progress Meter

Arica Travis: Book 1

4074 / 40000 words. 10% done!

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Updated SFWA Markets Acceptance Rates

It's been about 9 months since I posted my list from The Grinder of SFWA-qualified short fiction markets' acceptance rates, which mean this is probably a good enough time for an update.  Again, this is based on the previous twelve months (from today) and excludes markets The Grinder had listed as closed and those with sample sizes fewer than 5.

PublisherNAcceptance RateMean Response (days)
Nature Science Fiction Flash Pro Payment7320.55%47.49
Daily Science Fiction9408.51%22.23
Escape Pod1987.07%28.75
AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review786.41%96.73
Cricket405.00%85.35
Beneath Ceaseless Skies2734.40%30.02
Crossed Genres Magazine3614.30%66.63
Flash Fiction Online3383.25%24.52
Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show3903.08%47.37
Grantville Gazette: Universe Annex333.03%39.09
Analog Science Fiction & Fact Science Fiction2082.88%150.48
Apex Magazine4932.43%33.07
Asimov's Science Fiction5512.18%46.34
Writers of the Future Contest2601.92%86.24
Tor.com2651.89%144.89
Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF)5471.64%24.32
Strange Horizons8661.50%15.02
Nightmare Magazine1731.16%3.65
Clarkesworld Magazine9561.05%3.04
Buzzy Mag4650.86%45.75
Cicada1180.85%49.82

It looks like things have stayed pretty similar to how they were 9 months ago, with Nature, DSF, AE, Cricket, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies shuffling a little but staying toward the top.  Escape Pod and Apex jumped up quite a few places, but Grantville Gazette: Universe Annex plunged to the middle and Strange Horizons, Buzzy Mag, Clarkesworld, and WotF stayed in the single digits or lower, with Cicada still at the bottom.



Tuesday, October 21, 2014

A Writer's Definition of Success

I saw a post from Brad R. Torgersen the other day on his definition of success, and I really liked it--not so much his definition itself, but the idea of having an iterative list of key markerstones that define what you are working towards, your own definition of success.

So here's mine (at least for now).  Completed steps are marked with an "X" (to be updated soon...):

Success (for me) = ...

(X) ...first short fiction sale.

(_) ...first professional short fiction sale.

(_) ...final SFWA-qualifying professional short fiction sale.

(_) ...first professional novel sale.


Once I've accomplished these key markers I think I'll feel a lot more confident about promoting my writing and there will be more point to working towards things like increasing readership, improving sales, etc., at which point I'll likely need to make a new list of goals.  But for now, I think these four "short-term" goals will keep me moving in the direction I'd like to go.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Is My Writing Improving? Observed Vs. Expected

A couple of months ago I got a little frustrated with my progress in my writing, having what appeared to me to be a lengthy lull in publications.  This got me thinking about probabilities and how many submissions I should have to make for each acceptance, etc., which is something I've written about at length before.

But one thing that occurred to me was that it would be nice to have some kind of metric on an ongoing basis so I could see how well I'm performing compared to the expected number of submissions required for each acceptance.  So I think this is pretty cool: as I've noted before, The Grinder posts acceptance rates, which can loosely be used to approximate a submission's probability of acceptance for a given market.  Summing up these probabilities over time gives a rough indicator of how many acceptances should be expected during that time, which can then be compared to the actual number of publications that occurred.

Here's my "over-under" for the past two years since I started submitting to science fiction markets:

YearQuarterSubsExpObsExp (Yr)Obs (Yr)Obs-Exp
2012Q490.63590
2013Q190.67960
2013Q280.99491
2013Q340.159102.46951-1.4695
2013Q410.0250
2014Q191.1081
2014Q230.38190
2014Q3100.908912.42382-0.4238
Total4.89333

The "Subs" column is the number of submissions I made to science fiction markets during each quarter.  The "Exp" column is the sum of the acceptance rates for all the markets I submitted to during each quarter.  The "Obs" column is the actual number of publications I had during each quarter.  So based on the submissions I've made so far, I should have had four stories accepted for publication.  I've had three, which puts me below the expected value for the average writer who logs submissions on The Grinder.  However, subsetting it by year, that one missing publication can (in my mind) be attributed to the learning curve that I went through that first year of submissions.  The "Obs-Exp" column captures the difference between the observed and expected values for each year, which I'm calling the over-under.  My over-under for the first year was -1.4695, which put me a whole publication behind where I should have been.  But in my second year, my over-under was only -0.4238, meaning I actually hit my target of two publications based on the markets I submitted to.  Which means I've improved as a writer (either in the writing itself or in selection of better fitting markets for the stories submitted).

I think this is a really good way to measure improvement in writing performance over time.

Now I just have to exceed the expectations long enough to make up for that missing publication....

Friday, October 10, 2014

Science Fiction Art Markets

On a sidetrack, I decided to look at what science fiction markets accept art submissions, and it ended up being more complicated than I expected.  This list is by no means comprehensive, but I think it provides a decent sample of the speculative art submissions opportunities and pay rates out there right now:

Marketlowerupper
Fantasy Scroll Mag$10$15
Unlikely Story$10$25
Wisdom Crieth Without$10$40
Pithy Pages$15$15
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine$20$100
Body Parts Magazine$20$20
Electric Spec$20$20
Strangelet Journal$20$20
The Colored Lens$20$20
Lackington’s$25$40
Scigentasy: Gender Stories in Science Fiction$25$25
Nameless Magazine$30$150
Strange Horizons$50$80
Apex Magazine$60$60
Perihelion Science Fiction$60$60
Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy$60$60
Daily Science Fiction$75$75
Shimmer$90$90
Clarkesworld Magazine$200$200
Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show$200$400

I pulled these from The Grinder on September 26, 2014, and winnowed the list of all pro and semi-pro science fiction markets from 115 down to these twenty after excluding all markets that did not have art submissions guidelines clearly posted on their website, did not post specific pay rates, and/or did not accept electronic submissions.  Not as long a list as I was expecting, but a good starting point.