So I've been submitting stories for about a year or so now, and I've gotten into some competitive, smaller press journals with acceptance rates around 2%. So far so good.
But, what I really want, and can't seem to accomplish, is to get into the big, University-sponsored journals like The Kenyon Review, Hayden's Ferry, Bat City, etc. Those places all accept less than 1%. So what does it take to make the jump? Has anybody done it successfully? I mean, is there a quantum leap in story quality between a 2% acceptance market and a 0.8% (ie The Kenyon Review). Does it just come down to the editor? Personally, as a reader, I can't say it's a huge difference, from what I can tell.
First, forget acceptance rates. They're meaningless. Far, far more often than not, acceptance rate is simply a matter of how many stories a magazine receives. If a magazine receives a thousand submissions per issue, and buys ten stories, that's a one percent acceptance rate. If a magazine receives only one hundred submissions per issue, and still buys ten stories, that's a ten per cent acceptance rate.
Either way, each magazine still needs the same number of stories.
The Kenyon Review may have a 0.8% acceptance rate, but they still buy a certain number of stories each issue. The acceptance rate is so low because a bazillion writers submit there on a regular basis.
Even when two magazines buy same number of stories per issue, acceptance rates can vary greatly. This is why they mean nothing.
What it takes is the same with every magazine. It takes a good story that fits the magazine. More, it takes a story the editor likes more than any of the other good stories he sees.
Even more, if it's a magazine that routinely publishes well-known writers, your story has to be better than the stories the well-known writers submit at the same time. Not as good as, but, in the opinion of the editor, better.
The good news is that "better" very often means different. In terms of quality, your story and that of the well-known writer may be equal. In terms of originality, of saying something fresh, however, your story can edge out that of the well-known writer.
If you can find something fresh to say, or if you can find a way to say something old in a better way, you're way ahead of the game.
The best way to read a magazine is not with an eye toward giving an editor what he's already published, or by giving him pretty much the same thing other writers are giving him, but by giving him what he hasn't published, what no other writer
can give him.
My sales percentage jumped tremendously when I learn to ask, "What hasn't this editor seen. What is it that no one else is submitting? What can I give this editor that no other writer out there can possibly write?"
The answer was my unique life experience. My unique viewpoint. My unique knowledge of this place and that time. My unique adventures, talks with real people, etc.
I learned to tell a story that no one else could tell because no one else had lived my life.
