Submissions statistics

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Old Hack

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I've spent the day Googling for statistics about submissions. And I've not found anything worth reading.

Please help me! Does anyone know of any good places to look for stats on how many submissions are made each year to publishers? How many of those are rejected, how many accepted, and stuff like that?

I feel like I'm slowly turning invisible!
 

nevada

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THey're just guesses. Nobody actually keeps stats. There's not a central clearing house where agents and publishers submit their daily numbers. It's not hockey central. Sorry.
 

MidnightMuse

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I've spent the day Googling for statistics about submissions. And I've not found anything worth reading.

Please help me! Does anyone know of any good places to look for stats on how many submissions are made each year to publishers? How many of those are rejected, how many accepted, and stuff like that?

I feel like I'm slowly turning invisible!

In case we don't already feel like microscopic bacteria - Kristin Nelson posted her stats for the year 2007, and it was calculated that a new, debut author stood a .027% chance of landing her as their agent :D

(where's the smilie face that shoots itself in the head?)
 

Karen Duvall

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QueryTracker.net can create stat reports on different agents using a variety of criteria if you're into that sort of thing. But stats are based only on user input to QueryTracker, so it's not a reflection on every query, every submission, or every offer. But I think it's a fair sample based on averages for a small group. It's agents only, though. No publishers.
 

Michael Davis

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My experiences have been similar to Mightnight muse. I submitted close to 200 agent/publish queries and got two interested (e.g. contract). I also remember the letters from the agents/pubs that stated a less then 1% accept rate. One in fact stated they received 23000 a year and accepted about 20. Its hard for me to envision someone actually going through that many submissions with a keen eye. Thats why the query/synopsis is so so critical. Hope that helps.
 

scope

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Para Publishing & Dan Poynter (google them) have incredible stats about many things book and publishing related..

I don't know actual numbers, but I'd be surprised if anything above one percent of submissions wind up as published books. It's probably less than one percent.
 

nevada

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okay fine, I was wrong. It is like hockey central. But I agree with Shadowferret. Why agonize over the numbers? They're not exactly encouraging.
 

JeanneTGC

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I'm with Ferret and Nevada. Statistics are well and good, but they can be manipulated. And what matters is what an agent or publisher thinks of your book at whatever point in time they read it. If they love it, they'll find a way to take it.
 

Old Hack

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I wasn't looking for statistics in relation to any of my submissions--my agent takes care of all of that for me. It's something I'm interested in, and wanted to blog about.

I'm reluctant to use anything from Dan Poynter's site directly as it contains so much misinformation about self-publishing, but I will go and check out some of the links that it contains--there might well be somethign useful there, thank you. And thanks for all the other suggestions. I'll check them all out today.
 
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