The inestimable Jay Lake is collecting how many rejections you've had before the first sale. If you haven't made a sale he's also soliciting that information. If you made a sale with your first short story submission (chokes back visceral response to shout "Bastard!" with a John Cleese as Basil Fawlty kind of enthusiasm), he also wants to know that (as well as how many rejections you've received since then).
It's pretty good information reading the comments. Also it's good to see many authors saying "I had these many before my first pro sale, and these many to dat afterward." That was one of the side comments that either came up in the Short Story Panel or in the conversation afterward that once you have a sale, there's no baptism complete with descending dove that means you'll only sell stories from then on. In fact, you'll pretty much be rejected for sometime afterward. Heck, just look at Jay. He's somewhat a BNA now, and he has a 50% rejection rate for his short stories.
I'll need to go home and count before posting mine (looks longingly over at the "bragging rights" column. Sigh).
3 comments:
Wait, didn't you have a ne sale to an anthology recently? Why isn't that listed in your brag column? Did I miss something here?
Sorry - my keyboard's failing. That's supposed to be 'nice sale'.
Camille, I don't have the contract yet (talked with the editor at Confusion, he's still psyched, I'm still psyched, and yes I need to get him the new frame, he said waving toward Detroit). So I don't comfortable putting that in the "Sold" column before the signatures are there. So I count it as an "acceptance." Yeah it's probably only a difference in my little head, but I want to be Real(tm) about what I say here.
The hold up includes lots of things including the editor trying to get us authors a better deal with the publisher.
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