How Accurate Are Acceptance Rates for Literary Magazines, Really?

And do they even matter?

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Every time I think about stats in indie lit I get that Lil Jon song stuck in my head. You know, the one that goes:

Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots

Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots

Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots

Except, well, it’s not exactly that song, because in my head I just think:

Stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats

Stats, stats, stats, stats, stats

Stats, stats, stats, stats, stats

And yeah, I mean, I don’t know if you can even call that “getting a song stuck in your head” because I don’t know any other words to that song. So it might be more accurate to say that every time I think about stats in indie lit I…yell a single word at myself inside my head over, and over, and over.

Neat.

Why am I thinking about stats so much, you ask. Well, we recently hit 100,000 tracked submissions, then we partnered with The Submission Grinder to make our stats more accurate (adding on another 500,000+), then got to thinking how the only truly accurate stats would have to come from submittable, and then and then and—hey, let’s just take it from the beginning.

Not so long ago in the Chill Subs Universe…

Karina and I always thought stats should be free. By “stats”¹ we mean acceptance rates for submissions to literary magazines. The percentage of submissions a lit mag accepts and publishes.

Basically, what are your chances of getting in? I don’t know many writers who full-on don’t care about stats. At least not many who treat indie lit as some sort of advancement opportunity. Also, humans are competitive. It’s just a thing.

When a lit mag with under an <1% acceptance rate accepts me, I feel better than when a lit mag with a 7% acceptance rate loves me for the same reason it means more when my dad says, “I love you” than my mom. Scarcity breeds value.

So, but like, how are these stats created and what might we be missing when we see them?

First, there is the issue that not all writers track their submissions. Maybe half? We did a poll on Twitter once, it came out like this:

Confidence, inspired.

THEN you have the problem wherein there are like, a dozen different trackers you can use not to mention the many-many who use their own spreadsheet.

So, end of the day, you’re looking at hopefully 10-30% of all submissions for a lit mag being used to tell you their acceptance rates depending on where you’re looking—BUT THERE’S MORE!

Rejections are under reported. For the same reason I call my brother up to tell him our dad said, “I love you,” but don’t on days our father just says, “catch you later.” We are proud of our acceptances and want to tell people when they happen, hell—we want our future selves to remember those wins on days when seven rejections come in at once that we can’t be fucked to go and log into our tracker.

And, of course, we may not remember the day or update our trackers late, and so on and on and on.

Then, on the editorial side, magazines change hands, readers come aboard, boards get shaken up, and those running the magazine three years ago might not be those looking at your work today. So the statistics you’d be getting aren’t even relevant anymore. So, really, at some point the weighted value of tracked submissions needs to lessen the further back you go.

Different places have tried to manage these problems. The Submissions Grinder, for example, only tracks submissions from the past 12 months to account for indie lit’s revolving door of readers and editors.

Duotrope paywalls their tracker and claim it makes their statistics more accurate because their members are more invested and therefore more likely to actively track submissions. Because, sure.

We went a couple of different routes to experiment with what works best. First, we just ask editors what their acceptance rate is. We assumed this would lead to the best rates and likely would if all editors were honest, up to date, and controlled their admin panels on Chill Subs. Hmm, not always the case, let’s say. (Especially with something like response times, editors are inevitably…optimistic. But focusing on acceptance rates today.)

And don’t even get me started on how much acceptance rates vary by genre and what to do about partial acceptances for packets of poems. If 2/5 are accepted is that three rejections?!? Yeash.

So…WHAT TO DO?

Well, as a platform trying to suss out this information, it’s on us to come up with new fun ways. For some outlets, we now have our data, their reported data, AND Submission Grinder’s 12-month average which we hope will give writers all of the information they need to make an informed decision. But we are working on something even better that will give us 100% accuracy for some magazines. Basically, the only place that can provide pinpoint accurate submission statistics is the submissions manager editors use. And this is quite neat because Submittable allows editors to download this information for each call. So not only could we get exact statistics for the magazine, but have them for each genre. Not bad. Still, this takes time. We’re working on something for it.

So what can you do in the meantime?

Have a little bit more perspective on stats² . Especially with acceptance rates. A lot of the time a magazine is way more competitive than you think. For example, I asked Shannan to share some of ONLY POEMS Statistics for us. Since they’ve been around less than a year we should at least be able to avoid the question of editorial changes and all that jazz.

We have them at 277 tracked submissions with a 0.78% acceptance rate and a 31 day response time. Submission Grinder has 33 tracked submissions with a 0% acceptance rate. Want to know how many submissions they’ve actually had? 3,438. How many acceptances? 9. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.26%

Is 0.26% all that different from 0.78%? I don’t know, Dad, is it?

Maybe not, but when you’re dealing with an equivalent disparity of something like 7% vs 2%³ that is much different. Right or wrong, people perceive that 7% acceptance rate differently.

The good news is that a lit mag is almost always more competitive than the statistics would indicate. The bad news is that acceptance rates matter…almost not at all in the grand scheme. They tend to be a side-effect of what actually matters (depending on your goals): readers, awards, popularity, presentation, community building, etc.

I think following them can be fun, and feels good when you get accepted, and can reflect a publication’s popularity. But, it can also just be a lit mag with limited space and a super choosy editor.

Don’t be a sucker for hard to get.

But also, I’m not going to listen to that advice because hey, it’s dumb. It’s dumb in the same way only eating whole grain pasta is dumb. It feels good to get accepted somewhere with under a 1% acceptance rate even if it means nothing.

Scarcity doesn’t breed value, value breeds value. I get that. Logically. 100%. But I’m human with a dumb brain that likes shiny things and to be in the club that says, “Not a lot of people get to be in this club!”

So maybe don’t care? Maybe do? Maybe tell your kids you love them more so they don’t have this problem later in life?⁴ And maybe eat regular pasta sometimes? Unless you have a gluten allergy or something cause that wouldn’t be good. And maybe I’ve run out of shit to say about acceptance rates because they aren’t so important…

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1. stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats….

2. stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats….

3. I have no clue if this is an equivalent disparity or not because I am shit at math…and Shelby is also shit at math but said, “2 and 7 is a difference of five, and .2 and .7 has a difference of .5, so yeah?” and I said, “Maybe, I think so?” and so maybe we shouldn’t be allowed to write articles about acceptance rates but hey, we have too much confidence with too little oversight so this is what you’re getting.

4. I’m kidding. My parents told me they loved me all of the time. It was gross.