Rejections, feedback, delays, payment, and numbers
September 8, 2022 2:22 PM Subscribe
Amit Gupta gives readers and writers a peek behind the curtain: How much time does it take to sell a short scifi story, and how much do you make? "10 publications rejected the story before it found a publisher.... Read on for all the gory details including actual emails!"
Many publications don’t allow simultaneous submissions. That means if you send a story to magazine A, you can’t submit it elsewhere until you get a rejection from magazine A. That could take days, but more likely weeks or months. Some of the best pubs take the longest.Wow, I was not aware of this practice. I'm sure someone can enlighten me as to the rationale behind this, but on the face of it, seems pretty fucked up.
posted by jeremias at 3:17 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think it as our own cstross who said, in the foreword to one of his story collections, that he writes short stories less for the money but because there's a shorter interval between finishing the story and getting feedback. If the feedback is good, then it's "punch the button harder, monkey!"
posted by SPrintF at 3:21 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by SPrintF at 3:21 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Wow, I was not aware of this practice. I'm sure someone can enlighten me as to the rationale behind this, but on the face of it, seems pretty fucked up.
I'd imagine it's about the contracts and the time it takes to go through the slush pile - the editors don't want to spend time evaluating a story only to find it was sold.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:49 PM on September 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'd imagine it's about the contracts and the time it takes to go through the slush pile - the editors don't want to spend time evaluating a story only to find it was sold.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:49 PM on September 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Non-simultaneous submissions used to be the standard, with simultaneous submissions being the outlier, or at least stated as such by publishers/publications/Writer's Market. There were various reasons for it, but the time frame for dealing with print submissions made it potentially more of a problem for publications (all print, of course) if an author pulled a manuscript.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:08 PM on September 8, 2022
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:08 PM on September 8, 2022
NoxAeternum is right, but also, if everybody allows sim subs then the slush piles balloon. Because everybody is submitting everywhere all the time. Or, well, a lot of confident people are submitting everywhere all the time, and less confident people or people who have some sense that they should be circumspect submit to fewer places. So like in poetry, most of my female friends tend to send to 3-5 places at the same time and don't send to long shot publications, whereas my male friends tend to send to 20+ places at the same time including the places that are the hardest to get into. So sim subs end up favoring shameless self-promoters, which ends up having a gendered component. That complicates an already unequal playing field. POC poet friends report similar stuff. We are forever telling each other to submit with the confidence of a mediocre white dude.
I watched the switchover from sim subs being relatively rare to being very common in the lit world, and slush piles and wait times got really out of hand, which of course incentivizes people to sim sub to more places. I don't like the practice but I don't see what other option most writers have once it becomes the norm. It's good for a writer to be able to sim sub but it ends up being bad for the writer because instead of it taking most places 6-8 weeks to get back to you, it takes 6-8 months. I hope the sf world continues to resist going down the sim sub path.
My biggest takeaway from this is Tor.com pays much better than most places! Most of my short stories were published in places like Strange Horizons which pays competitively at something like $0.08/word (it's been awhile so I am not sure, but thereabouts) and I'd be over the moon to make over $1,000 on a short story. And even then it's not worth it, if you are writing to make a living. That's part of the reason so many writers treat short stories as loss leaders and expect to make the real money from a novel (and of course most writers simply don't make a living wage regardless, but sf is better about that than most genres, at least in my experience).
My strategy is to apply to the long-long-long-shot pubs that accept simultaneous subs first. Then I start submitting to pubs that disallow simultaneous submissions, starting with the most prestigious, fastest-rejecting ones. The faster you’re rejected, the faster you can send it elsewhere.
When I was still actively writing (I took some time off to run a small press and have been sucked into a very demanding day job, and though I am back to writing just in the past few months, I am working on a novel so haven't sent out submissions in probably 3 years), this was also my strategy. I love fast rejections--the only thing better is an acceptance.
Thanks for the interesting post!
posted by joannemerriam at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
I watched the switchover from sim subs being relatively rare to being very common in the lit world, and slush piles and wait times got really out of hand, which of course incentivizes people to sim sub to more places. I don't like the practice but I don't see what other option most writers have once it becomes the norm. It's good for a writer to be able to sim sub but it ends up being bad for the writer because instead of it taking most places 6-8 weeks to get back to you, it takes 6-8 months. I hope the sf world continues to resist going down the sim sub path.
My biggest takeaway from this is Tor.com pays much better than most places! Most of my short stories were published in places like Strange Horizons which pays competitively at something like $0.08/word (it's been awhile so I am not sure, but thereabouts) and I'd be over the moon to make over $1,000 on a short story. And even then it's not worth it, if you are writing to make a living. That's part of the reason so many writers treat short stories as loss leaders and expect to make the real money from a novel (and of course most writers simply don't make a living wage regardless, but sf is better about that than most genres, at least in my experience).
My strategy is to apply to the long-long-long-shot pubs that accept simultaneous subs first. Then I start submitting to pubs that disallow simultaneous submissions, starting with the most prestigious, fastest-rejecting ones. The faster you’re rejected, the faster you can send it elsewhere.
When I was still actively writing (I took some time off to run a small press and have been sucked into a very demanding day job, and though I am back to writing just in the past few months, I am working on a novel so haven't sent out submissions in probably 3 years), this was also my strategy. I love fast rejections--the only thing better is an acceptance.
Thanks for the interesting post!
posted by joannemerriam at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
I must have missed the part where Mr. Gupta secured the senders' permission before publicly posting private email that was neither unsolicited nor harassing.
posted by sourcequench at 6:33 PM on September 8, 2022
posted by sourcequench at 6:33 PM on September 8, 2022
Seems like it's still similar to when I was trying (successfully in a few cases) to get stories published a decade ago. I very much appreciated the personal rejections though - they were always short but often included some very good advice on how the story I'd submitted could be tightened up.
One story though - some of the rejections were positively angry. It eventually got published, with some glee on the part of the editor, in the late, lamented M-Brane SF.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:13 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
One story though - some of the rejections were positively angry. It eventually got published, with some glee on the part of the editor, in the late, lamented M-Brane SF.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:13 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
This lines up with my experience with short SFF, including the long silent times even after acceptance, except for the pay. Tor.com pays a premium over other outlets, but is notably harder to break into barring being noticed by someone with connections. And even its pay isn’t commensurate with the time and effort!
That said, I still write short stories. I grew up in a tiny Arkansas town whose library, before I was born, had a librarian who loved SFF and stocked the shelves with short story anthologies. For me, that’s what I read during the golden age of science fiction (i.e. when I was twelve). Writing short stories gives me a chance to try wildly different things and write in very different modes than my default. It’s the lab where I cook up new experiments, hook the clamps to their bolts, and shout, “LIVE!” And, much to my amazement, every once in a while they do.
posted by sgranade at 7:32 PM on September 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
That said, I still write short stories. I grew up in a tiny Arkansas town whose library, before I was born, had a librarian who loved SFF and stocked the shelves with short story anthologies. For me, that’s what I read during the golden age of science fiction (i.e. when I was twelve). Writing short stories gives me a chance to try wildly different things and write in very different modes than my default. It’s the lab where I cook up new experiments, hook the clamps to their bolts, and shout, “LIVE!” And, much to my amazement, every once in a while they do.
posted by sgranade at 7:32 PM on September 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
My short story experience is different.
(spoiler: what follows is an exercise in being an outlier)
I've written exactly one short story for submission: "Alien Animal Encounters," which was picked up for publication at the first magazine I submitted it to, Strange Horizons. I wrote almost no short stories after that until the publication of Old Man's War, after which I decided not to write short stories for others unless they were solicited (usually by anthologies but occasionally by magazines or other outlets), and that the solicitation was a guarantee of publication. As a result of this I've never had a short story rejected for publication.
When I do write non-solicited short stories, I almost always post them on my own site rather than attempt to publish them elsewhere. The reasons for this are a) I'm lazy and submitting is a pain, whereas my site is already there; b) the readership numbers of my site are as good as many professional fiction sites, c) once I've finished a story I want it out as quickly as possible, and my own site is usually the best way to do that. Honestly it's just easier to post on my own site.
I don't tend to seek feedback from others on my short stories prior to publication, partly because I'm a horrifying ego monster who wouldn't listen anyway, and partly because, again, that would take time and I'm lazy. However, I don't typically ask for feedback from anyone on any writing I do, so this is in keeping with a wider trend regarding my writing. I also tend to write short stories pretty quickly; if it's 6k words or under I can usually bang it out in a day. The short story that became the basis for the "Three Robots" episode of Love Death + Robots was written in about 45 minutes; to be fair it was about 1,500 words.
Indeed, most of my short story output is under 2,000 words; my short story collection is titled Miniatures because of this. This is partly because under 2,000 words is one of my two writing sweet spots (the other is novel length), and partly because much of the short fiction I write these days is written to be read aloud while I am on tour, and 2,000 words the the upper limit of how much you can read of any one piece before people start to squirm in their seats. It also suits my attention span for writing short fiction.
In short: I'm weird and privileged and Gupta's experience is rather more common than mine.
posted by jscalzi at 8:17 PM on September 8, 2022 [21 favorites]
(spoiler: what follows is an exercise in being an outlier)
I've written exactly one short story for submission: "Alien Animal Encounters," which was picked up for publication at the first magazine I submitted it to, Strange Horizons. I wrote almost no short stories after that until the publication of Old Man's War, after which I decided not to write short stories for others unless they were solicited (usually by anthologies but occasionally by magazines or other outlets), and that the solicitation was a guarantee of publication. As a result of this I've never had a short story rejected for publication.
When I do write non-solicited short stories, I almost always post them on my own site rather than attempt to publish them elsewhere. The reasons for this are a) I'm lazy and submitting is a pain, whereas my site is already there; b) the readership numbers of my site are as good as many professional fiction sites, c) once I've finished a story I want it out as quickly as possible, and my own site is usually the best way to do that. Honestly it's just easier to post on my own site.
I don't tend to seek feedback from others on my short stories prior to publication, partly because I'm a horrifying ego monster who wouldn't listen anyway, and partly because, again, that would take time and I'm lazy. However, I don't typically ask for feedback from anyone on any writing I do, so this is in keeping with a wider trend regarding my writing. I also tend to write short stories pretty quickly; if it's 6k words or under I can usually bang it out in a day. The short story that became the basis for the "Three Robots" episode of Love Death + Robots was written in about 45 minutes; to be fair it was about 1,500 words.
Indeed, most of my short story output is under 2,000 words; my short story collection is titled Miniatures because of this. This is partly because under 2,000 words is one of my two writing sweet spots (the other is novel length), and partly because much of the short fiction I write these days is written to be read aloud while I am on tour, and 2,000 words the the upper limit of how much you can read of any one piece before people start to squirm in their seats. It also suits my attention span for writing short fiction.
In short: I'm weird and privileged and Gupta's experience is rather more common than mine.
posted by jscalzi at 8:17 PM on September 8, 2022 [21 favorites]
I must have missed the part where Mr. Gupta secured the senders' permission before publicly posting private email that was neither unsolicited nor harassing.While it might be nice to get permission, and good for your career, I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong with publishing your own correspondence. In this case I think it’s not so different from discussing your wages with coworkers.
And who knows that he didn’t get permission?
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 9:00 PM on September 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Good lord, whenever I start getting down about the state of the nonfiction freelance writing business, I hear things like 2.5 years and $0.08 a word and feel a loooot better
posted by gottabefunky at 9:38 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by gottabefunky at 9:38 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's grim, right enough. I have stories that have gone literal years before being sold. Heck, this one was written in I think 2012 and didn't get published until this year.
It is absolutely completely unsustainable to make anything resembling an income from short SFF fiction. You'd have to be published in every major magazine multiple times each month to attain even the equivalent of a minimum wage income. (And I mean the crappy $7.25 one.) On the one hand, it means that the people who do it are definitely doing it for love of the form. On the other hand, that means that all of us have to squeeze our writing in the odd nooks and crannies around working an actual job to pay rent instead of committing ourselves to a writing career and really developing our skills.
It's frequently very depressing, especially once you get past the dozen or so high-end "good" markets and get down into the $0.01 or $0.005 per word area. Spending ten hours writing, revising, and editing, and then probably several more hours researching venues and submitting, and waiting years for success, all for like thirty bucks? Ouchies.
posted by Scattercat at 12:35 AM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
It is absolutely completely unsustainable to make anything resembling an income from short SFF fiction. You'd have to be published in every major magazine multiple times each month to attain even the equivalent of a minimum wage income. (And I mean the crappy $7.25 one.) On the one hand, it means that the people who do it are definitely doing it for love of the form. On the other hand, that means that all of us have to squeeze our writing in the odd nooks and crannies around working an actual job to pay rent instead of committing ourselves to a writing career and really developing our skills.
It's frequently very depressing, especially once you get past the dozen or so high-end "good" markets and get down into the $0.01 or $0.005 per word area. Spending ten hours writing, revising, and editing, and then probably several more hours researching venues and submitting, and waiting years for success, all for like thirty bucks? Ouchies.
posted by Scattercat at 12:35 AM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
This was great--and yeah, depressing, but interesting! I immediately rushed off to share it with my writer's group, especially with someone who is really focused on SFFs shorts. (With a sort of sick horror: "Is this actually how it is? Is it this awful for everyone?")
One thing I was wondering was, is it normal to solicit that much feedback on a story? I can't imagine. Nothing against feedback--working recently with a cowriter, I was amazed by how much my Pure and Important Words could be improved just by putting them in someone else's hands--but that's like, so many opinions, so many notes, how would you ever know what to use? Or is the value there more in the networking?
I do envy the simplicity of shorts, though--at least having something to show someone else. I don't really know how to write a short story, and when I've wanted to share something or get advice on this current book, the big obstacle has been that there's nothing to show yet except pasted-together drafts with lots of TK's and notes-to-self. Maybe Gupta has the right idea!
posted by mittens at 4:06 AM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
One thing I was wondering was, is it normal to solicit that much feedback on a story? I can't imagine. Nothing against feedback--working recently with a cowriter, I was amazed by how much my Pure and Important Words could be improved just by putting them in someone else's hands--but that's like, so many opinions, so many notes, how would you ever know what to use? Or is the value there more in the networking?
I do envy the simplicity of shorts, though--at least having something to show someone else. I don't really know how to write a short story, and when I've wanted to share something or get advice on this current book, the big obstacle has been that there's nothing to show yet except pasted-together drafts with lots of TK's and notes-to-self. Maybe Gupta has the right idea!
posted by mittens at 4:06 AM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
My observations suggest that that much feedback is very common in (certain types) of new writers, and more established writers pare down their beta readers/feedback givers to a handful at most. Partly because it's just not feasible to process that much feedback usefully in a timeframe that makes sense, and partly because most feedback doesn't end up being helpful - you find the people who see the holes you want to fill, and you get them to check your work, rather than asking anyone who can formulate an opinion to opine.
I'm sure there are exceptions - there always are! - but the short-fiction writers I know are generally in the under-5-betas category once they find their professional groove. And I think most of them don't get feedback at all on every story, just the ones they're not confident about.
posted by restless_nomad at 6:39 AM on September 9, 2022
I'm sure there are exceptions - there always are! - but the short-fiction writers I know are generally in the under-5-betas category once they find their professional groove. And I think most of them don't get feedback at all on every story, just the ones they're not confident about.
posted by restless_nomad at 6:39 AM on September 9, 2022
this was really validating for me to see as someone who has been working on the same story for years but has totally lacked the motivation to continue working on it after my dayjob since I end up so drained afterwards
like it is a ton of work that you do if you really love it and it isn't at all sustainable unless you have the kind of go-get-em, mildly hypomanic energy that it requires to do this kind of extra thorough documentation / reviewing / etc
posted by paimapi at 8:29 AM on September 9, 2022
like it is a ton of work that you do if you really love it and it isn't at all sustainable unless you have the kind of go-get-em, mildly hypomanic energy that it requires to do this kind of extra thorough documentation / reviewing / etc
posted by paimapi at 8:29 AM on September 9, 2022
it's also really validating to hear about the gulf between mediocre white male writers and POC/queer/women writers existing both due to systemic reasons and also because of the just sheer overconfidence of some of these men
like the difference in the quality of writing for people like Rebecca Roanhorse, Ted Chiang, NK Jemisin, Ann Leckie, etc and some of the books I've read by white dudes who have published so many more books and have such higher profiles and whose books always seem to be carried in bulk at every bookstore I go to that's not avowedly, intentionally feminist/queer/political wasn't just some weird coincidence, it's totally a thing
I want my kids to grow up in a much better world than the one I'm living in and I'm glad that publishers and awards committees are intentionally trying to make that our reality
posted by paimapi at 8:38 AM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
like the difference in the quality of writing for people like Rebecca Roanhorse, Ted Chiang, NK Jemisin, Ann Leckie, etc and some of the books I've read by white dudes who have published so many more books and have such higher profiles and whose books always seem to be carried in bulk at every bookstore I go to that's not avowedly, intentionally feminist/queer/political wasn't just some weird coincidence, it's totally a thing
I want my kids to grow up in a much better world than the one I'm living in and I'm glad that publishers and awards committees are intentionally trying to make that our reality
posted by paimapi at 8:38 AM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Young Me was a genre writer for a time. Did okay at it. Was in sfwa for an afternoon or so.
Then I got the opportunity to meet a lot of Tor people of the 2000s.
They were some of the worst people I've ever met. (I've worked in tech but never in music, film, or television)
My first exposure was a bullying mean girl Tor undereditor who was the top draw at a regional workshop where I was on staff. She thought she was Harlan Ellison. She preened like a queen as she sat on the stage above the audience and delivered devastating salon-worthy bon mots against every writer in the room. Some of them were crying by the end.
Unimpressed by Tor and its staff, I took great pleasure in watching the Neilsens Hayden shit in their hands during Racefail. Patrick deleted his LJ in a rage when his progressive bona fides were challenged by an LJ anon. Teresa posted a bunch of stuff about how all Viable Paradise graduates were now in a bad odor with them because they knew the LJ anon was a VP person.
(Disclaimer: I am a VP person as well, but not THAT VP person)
I exited fiction writing for a bunch of reasons and with a tiny little bit of regret, but never having to deal with those people again was not part of the regret.
posted by Sauce Trough at 5:37 PM on September 9, 2022
Then I got the opportunity to meet a lot of Tor people of the 2000s.
They were some of the worst people I've ever met. (I've worked in tech but never in music, film, or television)
My first exposure was a bullying mean girl Tor undereditor who was the top draw at a regional workshop where I was on staff. She thought she was Harlan Ellison. She preened like a queen as she sat on the stage above the audience and delivered devastating salon-worthy bon mots against every writer in the room. Some of them were crying by the end.
Unimpressed by Tor and its staff, I took great pleasure in watching the Neilsens Hayden shit in their hands during Racefail. Patrick deleted his LJ in a rage when his progressive bona fides were challenged by an LJ anon. Teresa posted a bunch of stuff about how all Viable Paradise graduates were now in a bad odor with them because they knew the LJ anon was a VP person.
(Disclaimer: I am a VP person as well, but not THAT VP person)
I exited fiction writing for a bunch of reasons and with a tiny little bit of regret, but never having to deal with those people again was not part of the regret.
posted by Sauce Trough at 5:37 PM on September 9, 2022
The truth is, no one in any creative field right now is making anything near a living wage (except maybe JJ Abrams, or that Scalzi guy.) William Gibson will look you in the eye and say "there's no money in it" even though it's clear that the single slim volume of short stories he's produced is, by a wide margin, the best work he ever written.
But, to short SF fiction's credit, things get published, things get read, things get critiqued, things get responded to. There are "markets" (that is, journals or periodicals) that have endured, publishing new works and works that respond to earlier works, for decades. We are still visiting Omelas. We are still arguing about The Cold Equations. We writers, and our work, are part of the long, unbroken chain of thoughts, ideas, perspectives, that speculative fiction has produced. "He Built a Crooked House", a story written by Heinlein in 1941 and published in Astounding Science Fiction, provoked a story by Jonathan Lethem, "The Crooked House", that appeared in The New Yorker, last year.
People do it because they love it, and they do it because they want to be heard. Yes it's messy, and it's not an even playing field. It will never be great until people of all races and creeds and orientations and callings can afford to participate.
The people who labor in its fields deserve to be paid better, yes, especially if their work is relevant and readers care about it.
posted by newdaddy at 7:38 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
But, to short SF fiction's credit, things get published, things get read, things get critiqued, things get responded to. There are "markets" (that is, journals or periodicals) that have endured, publishing new works and works that respond to earlier works, for decades. We are still visiting Omelas. We are still arguing about The Cold Equations. We writers, and our work, are part of the long, unbroken chain of thoughts, ideas, perspectives, that speculative fiction has produced. "He Built a Crooked House", a story written by Heinlein in 1941 and published in Astounding Science Fiction, provoked a story by Jonathan Lethem, "The Crooked House", that appeared in The New Yorker, last year.
People do it because they love it, and they do it because they want to be heard. Yes it's messy, and it's not an even playing field. It will never be great until people of all races and creeds and orientations and callings can afford to participate.
The people who labor in its fields deserve to be paid better, yes, especially if their work is relevant and readers care about it.
posted by newdaddy at 7:38 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
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It's hard getting used to all the rejection.
I participate in the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, which was suggested to me in MeFi but I don't remember where. On the workshop, my stories have received 121 reviews—which are the only reason I've managed to improve as a writer and make any sales whatsoever—and submitted 112 reviews of my own. I've made a few writer friends too.
I'm in a bit of a lull now, but there were a few months when I thought about writing all the time. I'd lie awake in bed working out something tricky in a story I was writing, or coming up with new ideas. I'd play hooky from my actual work to write. I'm in a more sedate pace now, but I still think about writing a lot and write about every other day.
I started writing when I was 50 years old. You don't usually think of picking up something new at this age. It's nice to know I can still fulfill a lifelong ambition even if I started late in the game.
Also, wow, Tor pays really well.
posted by signal at 3:11 PM on September 8, 2022 [32 favorites]