May the Odds Be in Your Favor
Dec. 7th, 2021 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingDuring the past month I saw a call for submissions for a super-niche genre fiction zine. The zine’s account has two dozen followers on Twitter, and the submissions post has three dozen notes on Tumblr.
Since it’s a digital zine that didn’t seem to have a lot of interest, I figured that it was probably a reasonable use of my time to custom-craft a piece of writing according to the zine’s super-niche specifications. I put a solid month of work into the story and felt confident when I submitted it.
I received a rejection email yesterday evening. What the head editor wrote is that, although he and the other two editors genuinely loved my submission, it fit into three distinct thematic categories that already had other finalists. Apparently they only accepted 15 stories… out of more than 350 submissions.
Again, the zine’s Twitter account has 25 followers, and its submissions post only has 35 notes on Tumblr. This is a small zine that isn’t listed on Duotrope. And, I can’t emphasize this strongly enough, the call for submissions was highly specific and super niche. How did they get more than 350 submissions?
Is this just the level of competition people are up against these days? Did I perhaps pick the absolute worst time to start a career as a writer?
Since it’s a digital zine that didn’t seem to have a lot of interest, I figured that it was probably a reasonable use of my time to custom-craft a piece of writing according to the zine’s super-niche specifications. I put a solid month of work into the story and felt confident when I submitted it.
I received a rejection email yesterday evening. What the head editor wrote is that, although he and the other two editors genuinely loved my submission, it fit into three distinct thematic categories that already had other finalists. Apparently they only accepted 15 stories… out of more than 350 submissions.
Again, the zine’s Twitter account has 25 followers, and its submissions post only has 35 notes on Tumblr. This is a small zine that isn’t listed on Duotrope. And, I can’t emphasize this strongly enough, the call for submissions was highly specific and super niche. How did they get more than 350 submissions?
Is this just the level of competition people are up against these days? Did I perhaps pick the absolute worst time to start a career as a writer?
