Statistics
Occasional information about submission statistics and surveys.
Metaphorosis has been open for submissions for two years now, which seemed a suitable point for another round of statistics. This time, though, rather than a comprehensive dig through the results, I’ve chosen a few tidbits that may be of interest. The period covers 1 Oct 2015 to 30 Sep 2017. About the submitters Most common submitter first name: David (more on that in January…) Submitters requesting “no feedback”: 9% Not anonymous: 8% (since 1…
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By chance, I learned today that we’ve had exactly 100 non-anonymous submissions since we re-instituted the anonymity requirement on 1 January 2017. Overall, in that time, we’ve had 1,197 submissions. So, a fair number of people don’t read the guidelines. I’d say don’t read them carefully, but the anonymity requirement is in bold red text. What happens when we get non-anonymized submissions is that we reject the submission, with a somewhat harshly worded note,…
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We get a lot of great submissions, but it’s no secret that we turn away over 95% of what we see. The stories we reject vary widely in quality. Some, though, have peculiarities of formatting that lead me to suspect the authors are facing unusual obstacles. In addition, I’m very confident that some of our submitters don’t have English as a native language. Beautiful writing will always be a criterion for Metaphorosis – that’s the…
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Most of the stories we publish have gone through an editorial revision process. I’d estimate that less than 5% are accepted as is. And even the ones that I expect to require only light revision sometimes end up taking longer than expected. In short, revision is central to our acceptance system. As editor, I enjoy the process – the discussion with authors about what they’re really trying to say, the structural adjustments, the fine tuning.…
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We opened to submissions on 1 October 2015, and I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what’s come in over that first year. Raw numbers Submissions Total – 1,901 Average – 5.2/day High – 16/day Low – 0/day Words Total – 6,825,436 Novels’ worth – 68 (@100k words/novel) Average word count – 3,590 High – 24,000 Low – 200 Genres Fantasy 41% Science fiction 36% Other or mixed 23% Acceptance rate…
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We recently published some statistics on rewrites. One thing we didn’t dig into in detail is just how many rewrites are involved. A word on process – when I offer an author a chance to rewrite, we’re entering into a relationship. It’s a rare case when I say to the author, “Fix these few things and I’ll buy your story.” (Even when I do, not everyone takes the offer). What I’m saying is “Let’s have…
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