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I think it's because I wonder at a couple of things that we all tend to take for granted (most recently examples from comments in Charlie's post as well as the post itself)--that women are less likely to submit to the big markets, that we sub in different patterns than men, that not as many are subbing places.Okay. Totally non-scientific, but it's as good as you're going to get in these parts. Pass it around. (*Please* pass it around. A poll is only as good as its sources, and I will make no ground shaking discoveries based solely on my friends list, as I know what most of you will answer already.) Marvel at the answers. I'll do a summary or a follow up as necessary.
but ultimately, I know my data will be flawed since it draws upon a self-selected sample, and presumably an elite sample as well (LJ users). So mostly it's just that I'm curious.
Oh, and if you're looking at this poll and sad because you lack an LJ account and thus can't take my poll, you can always email me (livejournal address, please), and I'll add you in at the end, when I put all the numbers into excel tables and stuff.
I can't edit the quiz, so I'll just put notes in here.
For 'top-down' read--a ranking of pro-to-not based on whatever you see as the priorities, such as pay, prestige, etc. I just want to know if you're starting at the top of a list, whatever you see that top as, and working down to the bottom, as opposed to the other options listed.
If you make a mistake/forget something/whatever, you can change your answers even after you've submitted the poll.
I know the submission numbers are weird--round to the nearest. I was posting in a hurry before a meeting, and panicked when it told me I could only have 20 options, since math is HARD. If you'd like to clarify your submission numbers in comments, please do so. If you have a pro-submits to pro-sales ratio handy, that would also be loffly because I realize i didn't ask that in the poll.
Poll #747888 Battle of the sexes
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 135
I am: (for simplicity's sake, what you identify as.)
I am a: (variation of SFWA rules)
View Answers
| pro (three or more pro short story sales, a pro novel sale) |
   41 (30.6%) |
| neo-pro (less than three, more than one pro sale) |
| 24 (17.9%) |
| semi-pro (no pro-sales, sales to other magazines) |
| 32 (23.9%) |
| amateur (submitting, no sales) |
| 35 (26.1%) |
| not yet submitting my stories. |
| 2 (1.5%) |
I submit my stories to:
I use a _________ method of submitting stories.
View Answers
| top-down (from pro to for-the-love, usually ranked by pay rate) |
| 77 (57.5%) |
| scatter-shot (whatever market is open when the story is finished) |
| 12 (9.0%) |
| targeted (I only send stories where I think they'll have the best chance) |
| 36 (26.9%) |
| other (use comments) |
| 9 (6.7%) |
I have made at least ________ fiction submissions. (don't count poetry)
View Answers
Mean: 110.40 Median: 51 Std. Dev 130.95
Mean: 110.40 Median: 51 Std. Dev 130.95
| 1 |
| 44 (33.1%) |
| 51 |
| 32 (24.1%) |
| 101 |
| 16 (12.0%) |
| 151 |
| 9 (6.8%) |
| 201 |
| 7 (5.3%) |
| 251 |
| 9 (6.8%) |
| 301 |
| 4 (3.0%) |
| 351 |
| 2 (1.5%) |
| 401 |
| 1 (0.8%) |
| 451 |
| 9 (6.8%) |
I have been seriously submitting stories for _______ years.
View Answers
Mean: 6.52 Median: 4.5 Std. Dev 5.82
Mean: 6.52 Median: 4.5 Std. Dev 5.82
| 0 (0.0%) |
| 1 |
| 20 (15.4%) |
| 2 |
| 18 (13.8%) |
| 3 |
| 16 (12.3%) |
| 4 |
| 11 (8.5%) |
| 5 |
| 18 (13.8%) |
| 6 |
| 4 (3.1%) |
| 7 |
| 4 (3.1%) |
| 8 |
| 5 (3.8%) |
| 9 |
| 2 (1.5%) |
| 10 |
| 4 (3.1%) |
| 11 |
| 2 (1.5%) |
| 12 |
| 3 (2.3%) |
| 13 |
| 2 (1.5%) |
| 14 |
| 2 (1.5%) |
| 15 |
| 4 (3.1%) |
| 16 |
| 3 (2.3%) |
| 17 |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| 18 |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| 19 |
| 1 (0.8%) |
| 20 |
| 11 (8.5%) |
I have stopped sending stories to a pro market because I don't think I have a chance there.
I submit to: (Pros only: http://www.sfwa.org/org/qualify.htm#Q5)
View Answers
| F&SF |
| 1 (0.8%) |
| Asimov's |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Analog |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| SH |
| 2 (1.6%) |
| Interzone |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| ROF |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Chizine |
| 3 (2.4%) |
| Brutarian |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| WOTF |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Cemetary Dance |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| TTA |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Now-dead pro markets (you can list in comments if you want) |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Non-genre magazines |
| 4 (3.3%) |
I have sold stories to: (pro magazine sales only)
View Answers
| FSF |
| 1 (1.6%) |
| Asimovs |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Analog |
| 4 (6.2%) |
| SH |
| 11 (17.2%) |
| Scifi.com |
| 1 (1.6%) |
| Interzone |
| 1 (1.6%) |
| ROF |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Chizine |
| 1 (1.6%) |
| Brutarian |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| WOTF |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Cemetary Dance |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| TTA |
| 2 (3.1%) |
| genre sale to non-genre mag (New Yorker, etc) |
| 4 (6.2%) |
| now-dead pro market (you can list in comments if you want) |
| 8 (12.5%) |
Notable non-pro sales (You get 75 characters. make them count)
Any questions I should have asked? (I'll do a follow up quiz if there are good ones.)
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June 14 2006, 15:21:19 UTC 5 years ago
June 14 2006, 15:21:24 UTC 5 years ago
I have stopped submitting to some pro markets, and some of those I've stopped submitting to probably wouldn't have matched up very well with the stories I'm trying to sell anyway, but feelings of futility are not the reason why I stopped.
June 14 2006, 17:31:26 UTC 5 years ago
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June 14 2006, 15:41:55 UTC 5 years ago
June 14 2006, 15:50:58 UTC 5 years ago
And see if i let you play with ticky boxes again.
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June 14 2006, 15:59:21 UTC 5 years ago
June 14 2006, 16:04:06 UTC 5 years ago
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June 14 2006, 17:45:05 UTC 5 years ago
But I've recently had enough solicitations and few enough stories that I've been choosing by who says they want me as much as by who I happen to want.
June 14 2006, 18:29:35 UTC 5 years ago
June 14 2006, 18:39:33 UTC 5 years ago
I also do a top-down/targeted combination. I almost never sub to the semi-pros not because I don't like some of them but because I am a slow writer and either don't have anything, have already trunked it, sold it or some other reason I can't think of right now.
June 14 2006, 19:16:54 UTC 5 years ago
June 14 2006, 20:05:24 UTC 5 years ago
I don't think I've submitted seriously enough for long enough to consider myself serious. And I'm kind of uncertain about what goal/s I'm furthering by submitting.
The first round of subbing I did was mostly because I had some short stories and it's what you do with short stories. I suspect this renewed round has started off much the same way.
June 14 2006, 20:08:51 UTC 5 years ago
Has anyone started to wonder if Gordon and JJA are really trying to build a secret NSA-style database of everything everyone is doing in the genre right now? that we are helping THEM watch US?!
June 14 2006, 20:42:02 UTC 5 years ago
June 14 2006, 21:58:51 UTC 5 years ago
5 years ago
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June 14 2006, 21:22:33 UTC 5 years ago
June 14 2006, 21:25:36 UTC 5 years ago
Then the next market I think might like it, and so on. If I run out of well-respected* markets, I trunk it. (If I'm not writing stories good enough to sell to those markets, then I don't want the stories in public.) I will take a chance and send stories I suspect are not editorially appropriate to some markets, because, to paraphrase JW Campbell, it's not my business to be rejecting stories for them.
F&SF pretty automatically gets first crack at everything (the few stories I write), because they are fast, pro-qualifying, pay well, and publish a broad range of things, so almost nothing is outright inappropriate for their editorial slant (as opposed to, say, a unicorn story for Analog).
*well-respected markets are all those that pay pro rates, or that at least have a well known reputation for not buying crap.
June 14 2006, 21:31:16 UTC 5 years ago
I don't sub to Analog mainly because any SF I might write is never going to be as 'hard' SF as they want. And there is one market, notable as being probably the same one that Amanda was talking about, that I won't sub to ever again. Holding a story almost a year, telling me that he'd already rejected it and I hadn't noticed, and then sending an actual rejection two months later is too flakey for me.
June 14 2006, 22:11:26 UTC 5 years ago
*kills self with vaguery*
June 14 2006, 23:38:49 UTC 5 years ago
Non-deceased pro market not on the list -- DAW anthologies.
Interesting poll.
June 14 2006, 23:47:24 UTC 5 years ago
June 15 2006, 00:25:13 UTC 5 years ago
I sub and sometimes sell to respected semi-pro markets, generally but not always after the pro ones -- oh, and I forgot to list my Talebones sale in my entry -- but I tend to stop when they hit the point of a flat fee instead of a per-word rate; I think Lone Star Stories might be my only exception to that.
June 15 2006, 00:41:56 UTC 5 years ago
Outside of SF I've written one other short story, when I did a fundraiser off my personal site; folks would make a donation to me (which I then passed along to Reading is Fundamental) and then in return I sent them a short story, a poem and a humorous article via e-mail. The fundraiser made $750, which I suppose means that if I'd been paid for all three I would have gotten $250 each; for the story in question that would have worked out to about four-and-a-half cents a word.
If I did write a SF story just for fun and then later decide to sell it, I would not be likely to submit it to Asimov's, Analog or F&SF, not because I'd be worried about not being able to sell there, but because none of the three accept e-mail submissions, and printing things out is a hassle. My first stop would be Strange Horizons, and if it didn't sell there I'd probably simply put it up on my own site.
June 15 2006, 03:01:57 UTC 5 years ago
Speculative Accounting
The fundraiser made $750, which I suppose means that if I'd been paid for all three I would have gotten $250 each...Nah, you'd not have gotten $250 for the poem most anywhere, so you may as well call it $10 for the poem, and divide the rest between the article and the story, which catapults you well past 4.5 cents a word.
*grin*
5 years ago
June 15 2006, 01:09:13 UTC 5 years ago
I'm extremely picky about submitting to semi-pro markets--basically, they have to be both doing something that makes me say "hey, that's really cool" and be getting some notice (because doing cool things doesn't matter if no one ever sees them). Even then, I submit to pro markets first. I'm very much of the top-down school, though knowing there's a deadline for a market that interests me can make me vary that a little.
June 15 2006, 01:34:17 UTC 5 years ago
Of course, I'm not very successful, but I submit to pro first, and to overseas markets primarily.
June 15 2006, 01:43:08 UTC 5 years ago
June 15 2006, 03:13:28 UTC 5 years ago
Though, to be fair, for my experience, extreme flakiness so far hasn't been duplicated in any one place. Also: I work in a high-volume document delivery operation, and no matter how good the procedures and processes, things slip through the cracks. Statistically improbable though it is, there always seems to be one poor patron every so often who appears to get picked on--it seems like every possible thing that can go wrong does go wrong for several requests in a row. I have great sympathy for people who seem to get it right for everyone except me until it's proven to be personal.
June 15 2006, 13:02:05 UTC 5 years ago
And yes, count me into the 'targetted top-down' camp - pro markets I think are a good match, pro markets that aren't /semi-pro that are; anything else; but I haven't gotten that far down the list before running out of steam.
I'm currently using my available capacity for collecting rejections on the hunt for an agent. Same principle, different market.
June 16 2006, 14:27:39 UTC 5 years ago
Granted, I tend to look for markets that allow esubs, as I live in Australia and US markets tend to be expensive postage-wise (We're talking $5.00 plus $1.00 SASE to send something to GVG), but that doesn't completely stop me.
If I've got a story that I think might be ideal to a certain market (Say, a moon story for Artemis), I'll print-n-post.
June 16 2006, 23:13:38 UTC 5 years ago
I realized after hitting "submit" that I had mis-remembered the market I gave up on as pro; it's semi-pro. (At some point I stopped submitting to Weird Tales. Nothing against the magazine -- I have a good friend, Kelly McCullough, whose sold a bunch of work there. I just concluded after a number of rejections that my stories were a long way from what they were looking for, which is fair enough. I have been left totally cold by stories that have won multiple awards, so obviously tastes vary.)
June 16 2006, 23:19:14 UTC 5 years ago
Like some others have said, I've also quit submitting to some markets (or opted not to submit in the first place) because of extreme flakiness -- either with me, or writers I know. (Flakiness = not paying, not responding to submissions for unreasonably long times, not responding to queries, not publishing on any sort of regular basis.) I won't name names; most of these markets are either now defunct, or at some point cleaned up their act.
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