The first submission period for Frozen Wavelets (the upcoming speculative flash fiction and poetry zine hosted by this blog) closed on 15 July. It had started on July 1. As I am not only a writer myself but a professional number cruncher (among other things), I’ve decided to offer some stats based on the submission received. The overall purpose is fun, mind you, but these numbers can also offer some interesting insight.
Number of overall submissions: 417
Fiction submissions: 277 Poetry: 140
The genres were overall even, albeit fantasy and slipstream were prevalent in fiction (57%). The quality was overall impressive, and I was genuinely happy with what I have received.
Incidentally, while the majority of submitters made the effort to read (and observe) the guidelines, a few chose to joyfully ignore them, making my life easier when it came to the difficult task to decide what to select for publication. Needless to say, not following the guidelines equals rejection, and I am not talking about genuine mistakes (which all of us do and that they are perfectly forgivable); I talk about blatantly ignoring them, to the point of rudeness (yes, it happened that, too). One even decided, in all his wisdom, to brighten up my day sending me porn (and in visual, not written form). Another sent over a virus instead, proving, in case I needed it, the value of a submission system not relying on emails. Note taken for the future.
Finally, acceptance rates: I have accepted more poetry than fiction for this submission window, and this is probably due to the fact that the majority of poems and haiku sent my way were SF-y, the way I like them. The acceptance rate for flash fiction (both original and reprint) was about 9%.
I am now in the process of preparing contracts and sending them out. The idea is to finish everything by this month so that I can devote September to start publishing on this blog a few of the accepted pieces. I can’t wait to share them with the world.
Really??? Porn AND a virus! The mind boggles… as a writer, there are often times when I wonder at the hurdles I have to jump over when submitting – I now begin to see why.