How many rejections before success?

Some small presses have open calls from time to time. We're advised against querying presses and agents at the same time (...so don't) on the other hand, here and there an open call makes sense. I've tried three. All told, things can eventually add up to 100.

Thanks, Patty - where do you hear about open calls?

I heard about E-bury's on Twitter. I heard about Angry Robot's here. I saw one on an eco-publisher's website.

I bet you can google 'open submission novel' or something like this and find some.

A few big houses have open subs--but from what I gather it's a bad idea to try this with a big house bc an agent has more pull and also it will take years for them to get back.

other folks here are more savvy.

I joined AW in early Nov of 2004, so I've been here growing old, literally, with a lot of members. I've seen the earliest and not so earliest members leave (breaks my heart) and I know who, out of the older, seasoned crowd is still here, interacting, teaching, advising, helping and following the other members. Most of our Mods deserve to be knighted for their incredible years of service. Y'all know who you are too. My published days go back to 1987 almost to the day when I saw James D. McDonald begin his publishing career. Man, I can't describe the thrill and exciting days of the SFF community back then. I think that I have written about 32 full-sized novels and racked up thousands and thousands of rejections. I do believe, with some coy vindictiveness, that I have rejected more publishers and agents than anyone here, and that was when I was in between agents and during my small proactive/agent years. I had my 15 minutes of fame from 1988 to 1991. I'll never recapture that again. I guess I'm the Harlan Ellison of writer advocates and instructors. Dear God I can lose my temper with this industry. But I love her, him, it.

Guh, when I think of J.K. I think oh, hell no. that was a cakewalk. The press sensationalized the rejections. Her elaborate research, note-taking and countless revisions for five years for the first book was the real test of her moxie.

I took 15 rejects before my first agent. I took 25 for my second, and I gobbled up 420 for my third (but I rejected about six or seven agents out of that batch). The last agent submissions nearly sent me into a nervous breakdown. You can see a huge chasm between the first two and third. It is so subjective and depends upon so many factors, it's hard to pull an average rejection number out of it. What's more important is learning from your mistakes and zeroing closer and closer to what you believe is the perfect manuscript. And what's so cool about it, is that there is no perfect manuscript. It's the journey that's the prize. Enjoy where you've been and you'll really love it when you get there

Thanks, Patty - that's helpful and good to know about probably not trying with the bigger publishers.

Triceretops, what a post! And yes, let's none of us forget that writing, submitting, publishing -- it's all an adventure. While it can be tough-going and disheartening, never lose the joy of writing and improving. Do I care if my stuff gets published? Of course I do. But I care more that I'm writing it, because I love writing more than anything in the world.

Thanks to everyone in this thread. I knew the handful of rejections I've received were nothing to cry about. However even after reading books and reports stating to expect rejections, I still could not help but question my work each time I got one. Now seeing how many here have seen hundreds, I feel much more confident.

In India, we don't go through agents, not usually. In any case the few agents we have here can be quite untrustworthy as they also offer paid services. Most reputed publishers here accept work directly from the writer. I went directly and was rejected more times than I can count. Maybe 30 or so and it hurt that they didn't even ask for the full novel. I talked to some author friends of mine (they have published with Penguin) and found out that they got publishing deals when they met some editor during a literary festival. They managed to cut through the slush pile. That gave me more confidence in my work. My friends told me that my query was most likely not whetted properly. Or maybe the publisher wasn't looking for books in that genre. Maybe my timing was all wrong. I had confidence in my work but also knew that there were many other good writers out there, and that big publishers today look for big names to sell their books. All this information kept my confidence up. I was sure nothing was wrong with my work. It was a matter of bad timing, bad luck, anonymity and zero contacts. It was sheer chance that I entered a novel writing contest at PILF 2018 (Pune International Literary Festival.) The winner would get a publishing contract from a Pune based publsher, one of the sponsors of the litfest. I sent in my entry literally on the last day because I came to know of the contest by chance. Well, I had to send in the full novel straightaway and I knew that gave me a chance. The synopsis of my novel did not do justice to the novel as it has too many layers but unfortunately, publishers (or agents for that matter) just want the synopsis and a few chapters. This time, I was sending the whole thing, and well, I won. I got a publisher by sheer luck.

The first submission I ever made in my life ended with a sale.

It was a piece of flash fiction, and it sold to an online SF market that paid pro rates.

At the time, I thought: "Wow. I must be really good at this. I've got a 100% success rate."

And then I didn't write or submit anything for a few years after that.

Now, I'm starting all over again. I've racked up more than 35 rejections across 7 different short stories.

And not a single sale after that first extremely lucky one.

I know those numbers are paltry, and I should probably be casting a wider net.

But somehow, every rejection I get makes me more determined to make the next story I write better – even if my 'success rate' has consistently plummeted from 100% down to 3%

When (not if) I make another sale, I'll let you know exactly how many rejections it took.

Over a hundred before I finally landed a contract. And even then it wasn't due to query writing, I simply fell ass over backwards and met my publisher on Twitter (2012). I met my agent through the publisher in 2014.

These stories are optimistic, I just received my 19th rejection.