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My seven hundredth short story rejection

I was going to talk about some more about noir novels today, but instead I am going to post about getting my seven hundredth rejection (yesterday, from Lightspeed). Long-time readers might recall my previous rejection milestones:

Clearly, this is an accelerating pace (which is due, mostly, to increased submissions volume). At this rate, I can expect 800 to come in around 5-6 months.

Saleswise, this has been my best century so far. From rejections 501-600, I sold exactly nothing, but from 601-700, I’ve made 5 short story sales (3 of them at professional rates), so that’s definitely something.

Every time I make this post, I am somewhat astonished at these ever-growing statistics: 105 stories of mine have gotten at least one rejection, and 165 markets have rejected at least one story of mine.

I feel pretty good about where I’m at, and I have reason to believe that my next century will be even more successful than the last one. However, I am looking forward to the day when my rejection rate slows down, not because my productivity has decreased, but because editors are buying my stories at a rate sufficient to slow my submissions volume (since frequently-rejected stories are better for submissions volume than quickly-accepted ones). It will be nice to reach a day when years–multiple years–pass between rejection centuries.

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