2024 Accountability Post

It's time for my annual accountability post where I discuss how many submissions vs. how many works I had published in the preceding year. I've been posting about my productivity of submissions since 2021 (and it can be read here), but really I have been keeping track of my submissions as far back as 1999. I started putting them into an Excel file since 2010, and I have been submitting larger numbers of works pretty consistently since 2017. You can see my 2022 accountability here, and my 2023 accountability here, if interested.

At some point, I realized that the publishing game is at least partially a numbers game. You have to make large numbers of submissions to see any positive results, unless you want to self-publish. And there is nothing wrong with self-publishing. As you will see later in this blog post, I actually self-published my first short story and poetry collection earlier this year and blogged about it last month. It started a few years ago when I read a blog from an author who said they try to reach 100 submissions per year. It inspired me to see how many submissions I could make each year. While I found I could not reach 100, I did find that 50 was an attainable number. Unfortunately, I no longer remember who wrote that original blog.

So this year, I did not quite make my 50 submissions goal. However, this was because I chose to work on longer works this year. I finally completed my second novel-length manuscript, Blood of the Werewolf, and began submitting it to agents. Additionally, I started working on my next novel, a mussy story titled Osiris. Because I spent a good portion of my writing year working on longer works instead of shorter works, I give myself a pass at not quite making the 50 submissions goal.

So, here are the numbers. I had a total of 41 submissions for publications, which is not too shy of my 50 submissions total. This includes seven book submissions to agents and small presses total, including my first completed manuscript, The Sorcerer, the aforementioned Blood of the Werewolf, and my first completed short story and poetry collection, Classic Camp's Classic Horror Emporium, which I submitted to myself for self-publication. Yes, I am counting that one. This exercise is supposed to be motivational after all. It is available on Amazon here, in case anyone is interested.

The rest of the list includes 22 short story submissions, which was the largest number as usual. I had 11 poetry submissions, and one essay or non-fiction submissions. I had only two successes, and it was a tough year for me for fiction and poetry, especially considering one of the successes was my self-published collection. My other success this year was my article on Fay Wray, which was published at Ravenous Monster.

There you have it. Fee free to see how you measure up. I have a relatively low bar this year for anyone to compare, but that is what I have been up to. I am still out there writing and submitting, but like last year, so far I am concentrating most of my time and energy on longer works. Hopefully, it starts bear fruit soon.