And it's hecka cool.
Basically it's the freeware replacement for Duotrope, giving writers a way to compare markets based on statistics reported by other writers. I'm tagging this post under MarketWants because The Grinder basically tells you which pro markets want more submissions. As a matter of course one of the primary statistics reported on the site is the acceptance rates for the various markets. Which makes it easy to rank them (based on reports over the past 12 months as of 2/8/2014, with markets The Grinder identified as "closed" and markets with sample sizes fewer than 5 excluded):
| PUBLISHER | N | Acceptance Rate | Mean Response (days) |
| Nature | 74 | 21.62% | 36.47 |
| Grantville Gazette: Universe Annex | 25 | 8.00% | 67.28 |
| Daily Science Fiction | 906 | 7.28% | 21.62 |
| Cricket | 15 | 6.67% | 106.8 |
| Beneath Ceaseless Skies | 196 | 6.63% | 38.15 |
| AE | 67 | 5.97% | 104.4 |
| Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show | 275 | 5.45% | 59.88 |
| Analog Science Fiction and Fact | 121 | 4.96% | 163.97 |
| EscapePod | 149 | 4.70% | 29.51 |
| Flash Fiction Online | 205 | 3.90% | 34.84 |
| Asimov’s Science Fiction | 396 | 2.53% | 57.95 |
| BuzzyMag | 282 | 1.77% | 45.36 |
| Strange Horizons | 739 | 1.22% | 16.31 |
| Clarkesworld Magazine | 746 | 1.07% | 3.42 |
| Writers of the Future Anthology | 187 | 1.07% | 85.37 |
| Apex | 332 | 0.90% | 18.88 |
| Lightspeed Magazine | 409 | 0.73% | 3.55 |
| Cicada | 43 | 0.00% | 94.49 |
I was totally surprised (CAVEAT: the samples these numbers are based on are by no means random, and are likely heavily influenced by self-selection bias; that said, it's a whole lot better than nothing). Nature published more than 1 in 5 of the manuscripts they received last year (they publish once a week, and The Grinder reported that 16/74 got accepted, which means it represents about 16/52 = 31% of all stories published last year; not bad!). I have to admit, I hadn't really considered submitting to Nature because they state in their guidelines that their stories are "usually commissioned," but I doubt that any writers working by commission would come to The Grinder to report that their work was accepted.... Who knows, but the takeaway for me is, I'm going to start submitting to Nature. Another surprise was the Grantsville Gazette: Universe Annex. They published 1 out of every 12 or 13 submissions. The sample size is somewhat small compared to other markets (N = 25), but this is a market I didn't even know existed (Grantsville Gazette--not Universe Annex--is also listed in The Grinder with an acceptance rate of 0%; I wasn't even considering them for my MarketWants analysis because of their quirky rules). So anyway, it's useful information, if nothing else. Daily Science Fiction and Beneath Ceaseless Skies are good bets, as is Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, which surprised me at better than 1 in 20. Analog, EscapePod, Flash Fiction Online, and Asimov's follow close behind. Another big surprise was that Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Apex, and Lightspeed are such longshots (about 1 in 100). I've submitted to all four of those markets (several of them multiple times) because I thought they were better bets than premiere markets like Asimov's, Analog, or Intergalactic Medicine Show. Meanwhile, I wrote off the Writers of the Future Anthology because I thought the odds were weighted way too much against you to make it worth the effort. It beats or matches the acceptance rates of 3 out of the 4 1-in-100 markets I've been submitting to. I was just totally, totally wrong. This is exactly what makes a site like The Grinder so valuable. It strips all the distractors and red herrings away, letting you see just the bare numbers. And it increases your chances of publishing by about 20 times. |
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