Friday, November 02, 2007

37 / 1,100

I received a contract in today's mail, my 37th acceptance of the year, which puts me behind my goal of one acceptance each week. I'm 37 acceptances for 44 weeks, well behind the blistering pace I set in the previous five years (63 acceptances in 2002, 55 in 2003, 75 in 2004, 57 in 2005, and 66 in 2006).

On the other hand, if my records are accurate, this is my 1,100th acceptance.

2 comments:

Kevin R. Tipple said...

Assuming your output is the same, do you think the drop is due to working with different editors, longer response times, or some other factor? Seems to me the market is shrinking a bit again. We did lose another good one in the sudden closing of Great Mystery & Suspense in the last few days.

Michael Bracken said...

To receive an acceptance a week, I need to produce slighly more than one finished ms. each week. I have not maintained that pace this year. Instead, other work--advertising, public relations, etc.--has kept me busy and, for good or ill, the other work generally pays better than short fiction.

And pays faster. The time between finished work and payment is often measured in days. The time between a finished short story and a check is usually measured in months, and sometimes is measured in years.

Sigh.

I went freelance to write more fiction. Instead, I'm writing less, but earning more!