Battle of the Sexes poll.

[tanaise]

From comments in Hannah's journal, but probably more useful here:

I think it's because I wonder at a couple of things that we all tend to take for granted (most recently examples from comments in Charlie's post as well as the post itself)--that women are less likely to submit to the big markets, that we sub in different patterns than men, that not as many are subbing places.

but ultimately, I know my data will be flawed since it draws upon a self-selected sample, and presumably an elite sample as well (LJ users). So mostly it's just that I'm curious.

Okay. Totally non-scientific, but it's as good as you're going to get in these parts. Pass it around. (*Please* pass it around. A poll is only as good as its sources, and I will make no ground shaking discoveries based solely on my friends list, as I know what most of you will answer already.) Marvel at the answers. I'll do a summary or a follow up as necessary.

Oh, and if you're looking at this poll and sad because you lack an LJ account and thus can't take my poll, you can always email me (livejournal address, please), and I'll add you in at the end, when I put all the numbers into excel tables and stuff.


I can't edit the quiz, so I'll just put notes in here.

For 'top-down' read--a ranking of pro-to-not based on whatever you see as the priorities, such as pay, prestige, etc. I just want to know if you're starting at the top of a list, whatever you see that top as, and working down to the bottom, as opposed to the other options listed.

If you make a mistake/forget something/whatever, you can change your answers even after you've submitted the poll.

I know the submission numbers are weird--round to the nearest. I was posting in a hurry before a meeting, and panicked when it told me I could only have 20 options, since math is HARD. If you'd like to clarify your submission numbers in comments, please do so. If you have a pro-submits to pro-sales ratio handy, that would also be loffly because I realize i didn't ask that in the poll.

[Poll #747888]

Comments

[rnb.livejournal.com]

I've only submitted to places that I really like and like the fiction that they usually print. How much they pay or whether or not I thought my story was more than likely to be bought didn't really enter into it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do a top-down approach, but not as you listed: not in order of pay, in order of how much I like the publication for various reasons including but not limited to pay.

I have stopped submitting to some pro markets, and some of those I've stopped submitting to probably wouldn't have matched up very well with the stories I'm trying to sell anyway, but feelings of futility are not the reason why I stopped.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Why did you stop?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Oops I was confused by the shiny buttons and I forgot to note my TTA sale. If it matters.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

you should be able to edit your response. if it matters that much.

And see if i let you play with ticky boxes again.

[jim0052.livejournal.com]

Aside from sales to now-defunct pro magazines such as Worlds of If (1), Aboriginal SF (2), Stardate Magazine (2), and Amazing Stories (1), and one to a non-genre magazine (Cicada), slightly more than half of my sales have been to original anthologies.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Yes, I purposely left anthos off the list because sa far as I can tell most pro anthos are invitation only.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

That would be, loosely top-down in the order that I'd like to be published there (which may or may not relate to the amount of $ on offer).

But I've recently had enough solicitations and few enough stories that I've been choosing by who says they want me as much as by who I happen to want.

[ccfinlay.livejournal.com]

I submit in a mix of top-down and targeted. If I know or like the editors at a semi-pro and they ask me for something, and I have a story that I think fits, sometimes I'll send it there. Also, when Sci Fiction and Infinite Matrix were still open, I wasn't quite top-down because I still sent most things to F&SF first (because of the turnaround time and the fact that they buy my stuff). But mostly I sub to places I want to appear, not just places I think will accept me.

[charmingbillie.livejournal.com]

Some of my pro sales would fall under 'other'--mostly antho sales (and not invite only because no one ever invites me :-(

I also do a top-down/targeted combination. I almost never sub to the semi-pros not because I don't like some of them but because I am a slow writer and either don't have anything, have already trunked it, sold it or some other reason I can't think of right now.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I do targeted top-down submitting. I chose whatever markets I think the story will work for, write up a submssion rotation, and then start sending them out.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

Kind of top-down, with targetting and a random element (sometimes based on e-subbing or whether someone mentions a particular market to me).

I don't think I've submitted seriously enough for long enough to consider myself serious. And I'm kind of uncertain about what goal/s I'm furthering by submitting.

The first round of subbing I did was mostly because I had some short stories and it's what you do with short stories. I suspect this renewed round has started off much the same way.

[megmccarron.livejournal.com]

OK, I admit it -- I'm an early trunker. So half my sales have been people asking me for stories, and my un-trunking something for the occassion that actually didn't suck at all. Also, an instructor at clarion told me some genre mags were probably not worth my time, b/c there was no mutal love, and i agree. generally, i don't sub places i don't read. almost everything goes thru F&SF first. and would have gone thru scifiction. then it's a bit more scattershot.

Has anyone started to wonder if Gordon and JJA are really trying to build a secret NSA-style database of everything everyone is doing in the genre right now? that we are helping THEM watch US?!

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

I haven't *stopped* subbing to any markets, but there are markets I will not sub to. Generally those associated with a certain editor who I think is an ignorant little gnome, and I'd rather not have my name and his appearing together, unless it's in a post about his gnomehood.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Name gnome names!

[rudi.livejournal.com]

I use a top-down/targeted approach. Most everything goes to FSF first. If there's a semi-pro or for the love market that really seems like the right place to send a particular story, I'll move them on up to the 2nd or 3rd slot. If someone actually asks for something, I short-circuit the process and I find the thing I think they might like and get it right to them, no matter where it's been, or hasn't been. (As long as it isn't somewhere else at the moment.)

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I submit with a targeted top-down approach. That is, I submit to the market I think the best fit for the story, out of a limited selection of markets that pay pro rates (though may not qualify for SFWA pro because they don't publish often enough, e.g. Black Gate, or haven't been around long enough, e.g. Baen's Universe).

Then the next market I think might like it, and so on. If I run out of well-respected* markets, I trunk it. (If I'm not writing stories good enough to sell to those markets, then I don't want the stories in public.) I will take a chance and send stories I suspect are not editorially appropriate to some markets, because, to paraphrase JW Campbell, it's not my business to be rejecting stories for them.

F&SF pretty automatically gets first crack at everything (the few stories I write), because they are fast, pro-qualifying, pay well, and publish a broad range of things, so almost nothing is outright inappropriate for their editorial slant (as opposed to, say, a unicorn story for Analog).


*

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

The one sale I made to Arabella, who died before they paid me, counts as pro I think.

I don't sub to Analog mainly because any SF I might write is never going to be as 'hard' SF as they want. And there is one market, notable as being probably the same one that Amanda was talking about, that I won't sub to ever again. Holding a story almost a year, telling me that he'd already rejected it and I hadn't noticed, and then sending an actual rejection two months later is too flakey for me.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I'm talking about a bigot, not a flake, but I know you've had problems with him too.

*kills self with vaguery*

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Deceased pro markets to which I have sold: Amazing Stories, Dragon Magazine, Fantasy Book, Pulphouse, 3SF, Absolute Magnitude.

Non-deceased pro market not on the list -- DAW anthologies.



Interesting poll.

[davidlevine]

Add me to the list of those who use a targeted top-down strategy. I make a list of the markets which I think might buy the story, then submit to those in descending order of pay and prestige (as others have said, I submit to the markets that I would like to appear in first). BUT: I might not follow this list exactly, especially if I happen to already have a story at a certain market when it comes up in the list.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Like many others, I'm top-down/targeted, but I'll spice it up with a scattershot element! <g> That is, I start with F&SF and then Strange Horizons (for a confluence of reasons), then (or sometimes before) try the places where I think it stands a really good chance, and beyond that, I fling things at whatever's open. I've had enough instances of things selling where I didn't expect them to that I'm disinclined to decide a story isn't appropriate for a market; I try most things most places. (Within reason. Asimov's, for example, gets only the less high-fantastical of my stories, and I don't sub to Analog at all, being more or less purely a fantasy writer. Etc.)

I sub and sometimes sell to respected semi-pro markets, generally but not always after the pro ones -- oh, and I forgot to list my Talebones sale in my entry -- but I tend to stop when they hit the point of a flat fee instead of a per-word rate; I think Lone Star Stories might be my only exception to that.

[scalzi.livejournal.com]

I typically don't write short stories unless I've pre-sold them to an editor or publisher. Part of the reason for this is that I make better money writing other sorts of things (non-fiction articles and corporate writing, fiction and non-fiction books), and since writing is how I pay my mortgage, writing stories that I haven't already placed somewhere is low on my list of things to do (most of my unpaid writing time goes to my blog). This means I have an excellent track record in placing the stories I've written; on the other hand, it also means I don't write a lot of short stories (in fact, I've only written five SF short stories so far).

Outside of SF I've written one other short story, when I did a fundraiser off my personal site; folks would make a donation to me (which I then passed along to Reading is Fundamental) and then in return I sent them a short story, a poem and a humorous article via e-mail. The fundraiser made $750, which I suppose means that if I'd been paid for all three I would have gotten $250 each; for the story in question that would have worked out to about four-and-a-half cents a word.

If I did write a SF story just for fun and then later decide to sell it, I would not be likely to submit it to Asimov's, Analog or F&SF, not because I'd be worried about not being able to sell there, but because none of the three accept e-mail submissions, and printing things out is a hassle. My first stop would be Strange Horizons, and if it didn't sell there I'd probably simply put it up on my own site.

Speculative Accounting

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

The fundraiser made $750, which I suppose means that if I'd been paid for all three I would have gotten $250 each...

Nah, you'd not have gotten $250 for the poem most anywhere, so you may as well call it $10 for the poem, and divide the rest between the article and the story, which catapults you well past 4.5 cents a word.

*grin*

[janni.livejournal.com]

I've sold a couple genre stories to Cricket, which is a pro market but technically falls into the children's genre rather than the fantasy one.

I'm extremely picky about submitting to semi-pro markets--basically, they have to be both doing something that makes me say "hey, that's really cool" and be getting some notice (because doing cool things doesn't matter if no one ever sees them). Even then, I submit to pro markets first. I'm very much of the top-down school, though knowing there's a deadline for a market that interests me can make me vary that a little.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I submit using a top-down approach, but based on audience size rather than pro/semi-pro per se. I want my stories to reach the maximum number of people, and I target on that basis.

Of course, I'm not very successful, but I submit to pro first, and to overseas markets primarily.

[plaguedocs.livejournal.com]

I put top down, but like many others, I tend to use a combination approach. Sometimes I write horror, sometimes SF, sometimes both more or less mixed together and with or without dollops of F. So, I don't always sub to the same set of markets. I do sub to F & SF if I think the story might be remotely suitable. Not much to lose except a bit of postage. I get put off by extremely slow markets, so a slow, pro market might get bumped down the list below semi-pros I like. I only sub to places where I'd be proud to see my work displayed (there's a few with decent pay rates that I just think look...tacky).

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Much like in real life, I don't know how to hold a grudge... So in spite of some flaky editorial behavior, I've continued submitting to some places that I probably shouldn't--just moved them further down the list. When the decision comes to trunk it or to face potential crap, I choose crap every time.

Though, to be fair, for my experience, extreme flakiness so far hasn't been duplicated in any one place. Also: I work in a high-volume document delivery operation, and no matter how good the procedures and processes, things slip through the cracks. Statistically improbable though it is, there always seems to be one poor patron every so often who appears to get picked on--it seems like every possible thing that can go wrong does go wrong for several requests in a row. I have great sympathy for people who seem to get it right for everyone except me until it's proven to be personal.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I think the number of submissions _per story_ is an interesting marker - I am getting the impression that people who make sales aren't necessarily better writers when they start out, but *more persistent*; and I have an inkling that you'll get a gender split in it.

And yes, count me into the 'targetted top-down' camp - pro markets I think are a good match, pro markets that aren't /semi-pro that are; anything else; but I haven't gotten that far down the list before running out of steam.

I'm currently using my available capacity for collecting rejections on the hunt for an agent. Same principle, different market.

[hkneale.livejournal.com]

Yeah, targeted top-down method. I submit to the highest-paying market that fits the category of my story.

Granted, I tend to look for markets that allow esubs, as I live in Australia and US markets tend to be expensive postage-wise (We're talking $5.00 plus $1.00 SASE to send something to GVG), but that doesn't completely stop me.

If I've got a story that I think might be ideal to a certain market (Say, a moon story for Artemis), I'll print-n-post.

[naomikritzer]

I checked "top down," but I want to note that I use a combination of top-down and targeted. If I have a fantasy story, I'm not going to send it to Analog. If I have a cat story, I'm not going to send it to a market that says in their GLs that they hate cat stories, even if I think it's the most brilliant cat story in the world and they also say that they will break their own rules if they happen to fall in love with a story. Also, I tend to start by submitting my stories to markets that have not bought it in the past.

I realized after hitting "submit" that I had mis-remembered the market I gave up on as pro; it's semi-pro. (At some point I stopped submitting to Weird Tales. Nothing against the magazine -- I have a good friend, Kelly McCullough, whose sold a bunch of work there. I just concluded after a number of rejections that my stories were a long way from what they were looking for, which is fair enough. I have been left totally cold by stories that have won multiple awards, so obviously tastes vary.)

[naomikritzer]

Now I've read back through the other comments and see that this is what everyone else said. ::smacks self for replying without reading::

Like some others have said, I've also quit submitting to some markets (or opted not to submit in the first place) because of extreme flakiness -- either with me, or writers I know. (Flakiness = not paying, not responding to submissions for unreasonably long times, not responding to queries, not publishing on any sort of regular basis.) I won't name names; most of these markets are either now defunct, or at some point cleaned up their act.