- Joined
- Aug 29, 2011
- Messages
- 122
- Reaction score
- 28
Since I discovered Duotrope a few months ago it's come to play a central role in my writing strategies, alerting me to markets I was unaware of and helping me choose the best targets for the things I'm writing. Obviously it plays the same role for a lot of people on this board, but I've been wondering what percentages of writers in general make use of it.
Well, now I have a couple of numbers to play with. I entered the Evolved Publishing story contest, which had a deadline of 9/15. They also have a FB page, and I asked there if they could reveal how many entries they got. Answer: 142. This is interesting because Duotrope shows 16 pending submissions to the contest, or only about 10% of the total.
Of course, there are probably plenty of people who use Duotrope to find markets like this but don't bother reporting their personal submissions. Still, I'd be interested to find out--not that there's any way to do so--how many of those 142 entrants found the contest some other way, and are completely unaware of Duotrope's existence.
Another question that probably can't be answered: how many people are there trying to write in a serious way for publication? No way to answer that, of course, especially since there's no longer any way to unambiguously define "publication" (does a blog count?). Still, Duotrope provides some interesting numbers. They report more than 81 thousand responses just in fiction over the last 12 months (it fascinates me that there are more than 89 thousand poetry responses in the same period; I pay little attention to contemporary poetry, and I never would have imagined that the poetry number would be the larger of the two). As far as I can see they don't provide anywhere the actual number of writers who reported those 81K responses, which is surprising given the number of stats they do provide. It's probably safe to say that those 81 thousand are a very small portion of the overall activity in the fiction market, though. There's clearly a staggering amount of competition out there, which should make our successes even more fulfilling.
I guess I don't really have much of a point here; I just get fascinated by numbers like these. Also, I'm putting off work.
Well, now I have a couple of numbers to play with. I entered the Evolved Publishing story contest, which had a deadline of 9/15. They also have a FB page, and I asked there if they could reveal how many entries they got. Answer: 142. This is interesting because Duotrope shows 16 pending submissions to the contest, or only about 10% of the total.
Of course, there are probably plenty of people who use Duotrope to find markets like this but don't bother reporting their personal submissions. Still, I'd be interested to find out--not that there's any way to do so--how many of those 142 entrants found the contest some other way, and are completely unaware of Duotrope's existence.
Another question that probably can't be answered: how many people are there trying to write in a serious way for publication? No way to answer that, of course, especially since there's no longer any way to unambiguously define "publication" (does a blog count?). Still, Duotrope provides some interesting numbers. They report more than 81 thousand responses just in fiction over the last 12 months (it fascinates me that there are more than 89 thousand poetry responses in the same period; I pay little attention to contemporary poetry, and I never would have imagined that the poetry number would be the larger of the two). As far as I can see they don't provide anywhere the actual number of writers who reported those 81K responses, which is surprising given the number of stats they do provide. It's probably safe to say that those 81 thousand are a very small portion of the overall activity in the fiction market, though. There's clearly a staggering amount of competition out there, which should make our successes even more fulfilling.
I guess I don't really have much of a point here; I just get fascinated by numbers like these. Also, I'm putting off work.
