updated numbers and such.

[tanaise]

This is not the chances of getting published, but merely an analysis of the stories that were published in the past two years. I looked at total stories published by the market, unique authors, new authors, the sex of the authors, and the likelihood that a story in that publication is a first publication credit and the likelihood that an author in that publication had had their first publications there in the timeframe covered by the analysis. This is all based on 2001 and 2002 data. Basically, I stuck them all in an excel file, and then crossreferenced it against the data at http://www.isfdb.org. I may be overestimating with SH's details because the database doesn't include *any* SH data at all. I did first short-fiction sale only data--no previous fiction sales of any length. (There were only a couple of people who had a novel out the same year but no other short fiction--I excluded them. Conversely, there were about the same number of people who had made previous sales in a different genre, who I did include) There were also multiple stories by new authors in several markets--SH of course, but also Analog and FSF. The authors data at SH was estimated based on the average difference between stories and authors for Asimovs and Analog. Overall is total stories divided by new authors. Authors is total authors divided by new authors.

	total stories	Total authors	new authors	sex ratio(men:women)	overall	authors
Analog	147	102	8	5 :3	1:18	1:13
Asimovs	142	97	3	1:2	1:47	1:32
SH	111	75	39	19:20	1:3	1:2
F&SF	158	96	8	6:2	1:20	1:12
overall	558	370	58	31:27	1:10	1:6

One thing I do notice right away is that despite FSF printing the most stories, they also print the smallest percentage of unique authors. The others range from 65-75%, but FSF is 60%

I'm planning to do the same with ROF and Scifi.com, eventually. If anyone wants to help me out and collect all the titles and authors from them, I'll love you. But if not, I'll do it myself (said the little red hen.) And see if I share with any of you.

Comments

[cissa.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting info. F&SF is the one I read; I may need to sample some of the others, too. What's "SH"?

F&SF does seem to have a lot of the same authors. Not a bad thing, since I mostly like them, but I'm interested in some more breadth, too.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Strange Horizons: http://www.strangehorizons.com It's the oldest of the pro online mags, and it's where Firing is, so I can't send it to Asimov's now. *pines*

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It looks very intriguing...

Cool info!

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

Must be something in the air -- I've spent a fair bit of time this past week compiling very similar data for SH, at various people's requests. If you're interested, I'll email you my version when I get it done (should be this weekend).

Thanks for pointing out that SH stuff isn't in the ISFDB; I'll have to rectify that. I find that ISFDB is often missing info about recent short fiction, especially in markets other than the Big Four print prozines, and I never seem to get around to entering that info. But it's an excellent resource, and gets better with more data, so I really ought to add new stuff as I encounter it.

Mostly wanted to make one small correction to your comment: SH isn't actually the oldest of the currently extant online prozines, even going only by SFWA pro standards. Gothic.net has been around for a couple years longer than we have, and Sci Fiction launched about four or five months before we did; they both achieved SFWA pro status a bit before we did as well. There are also several other online magazines that pay SFWA pro rates but whose authors haven't yet applied for SFWA membership, so SFWA hasn't ruled on their pro status; a couple of those (notably Would That It Were) were around before we were as well.

Anyway, thanks for the link! (We often follow backlinks from our referrers page, so if you link to us sometimes we appear.... The online version of nomenlocation.)

--jed

Re: Cool info!

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Oh, that would be lovely! I used the hyperscientific method of copying everything from the website and sorting through it, so I'd love to see if realer numbers still agreed with mine.

I'm just so glad the ISFDB isn't gone again that I tolerate it being sadly out of date. Usually. Until I get overconfident in it, which is usually when it disappears and I can't find it for ages. Whereupon I love it again. It's not the healthiest of relationships, I admit.

I'm not exactly sure why I decided to do this, but the writing mailing list (for the Online Writing Workshop) I'm on always has someone new come through periodically and ask what their 'chances' are of getting published. And we had old data from last year or so that we'd show with the numbers of new writers in the various pro magazines. And I've got Excel and Access on my computer, and I've gone a little crazy lately. And I work at a statistical agency, even if my work with stats is minimal, it still seems to have worn off. I'm even scared of my source notes and explanations of variables as this gets closer to a final draft. :)

[oracne.livejournal.com]

This is awesome! I posted a link in genreneep, so maybe you'll get your volunteers! Or at least some good comments.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Well, this is actually last year's stuff--the final version is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tanaise/178253.html, but I'm planning on doing it again this year, maybe adding more magazines, and potentially tackling the novel markets. But thank you for the comment and the publicizing of it.

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

Did you ever do this for 2003? If you haven't yet, and if you're still going to, and if you want data for SH, lemme know; some of the data you want is very easy for me to pull from our database.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Actually, that would be so fabulous. I started doing 2003 in November or so, and keep meaning to pick it up and get the rest of the data plugged in. I'm ending up with a lot more work this year, as I want to make next year easier, so I have to collect 2002 and 2003 seperately. I think I have all the raw data for SH (basically story, author and date, which I pulled easily from the website, but if you know what the new authors were for the two years, that would save me so much cross checking.