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Let’s Do Math Together!!

April 18, 2014/in Blog / Caitlin Bagwell

Hello!

How are you, my fellow laureates?

It’s getting to be the end of the submission cycle for winter/spring journals. We are tired people. So many submissions!

http://www.hahastop.com/pictures/Smart_Baby_Is_Smart.jpg

It’s also that time of year when we all pull out our calculators, or ask someone, anyone better at math to crunch the numbers, or we just give up all around and try and Google it.

http://tarynvoget.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Blog_FarsideMidvale_350px.jpg

It’s not just tax season, people.  It’s the time that writers check their email by the minute waiting for the accepted/rejected emails. It’s also the time when, when you read for the fiction team, and you cry a little when you look at ALL the submissions that have JUST come in that day, and you wonder why you agreed to do this in the first place.

http://static2.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/Makes+me+sad+to+think+that+that+dog+is+most+_0c0389343af11cc5bdee00a1a50da9c9.gif

So, let’s crunch the numbers for Lunch Ticket, shall we?!

Fiction gets 14 slots to fill in the upcoming issue. We have split it up so that we have 10 slots for fiction over five pages long, and 4 slots for flash fiction, or fiction less than four pages long.

As of today, when I did all the maths, Lunch Ticket has received 218 fiction submissions, and counting.

And now it is time do some magic!

(also called math)

http://quicklol.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/table-cloth-fail.gif

If we do the mathemagic, then we see that with just the submissions we have now and the slots we have, every piece has a 6% chance of filling that slot.

However, so far, we have only accepted 8.

I say again, we have only accepted 8.

This makes our acceptance rate 3.36 %.

Which makes our rejection rate almost 96%.

Granted, the rejection percentage will come down when we close to submissions. If we project our stats, I think our acceptance rate might go up to around 5%, thus lowering our rejection rate a bit.

Doing some more mathemagic, let’s look at who we are accepting:

https://drupal.org/files/project-images/gob-car-dance.gif

So far, we have accepted 5 men and 3 women (one person submitted with just their initials, so who knows?).

Our acceptance rate for men is about 3.3 %, but for women we have barely cleared 1%. These are the numbers that our literary magazine looks at when accepting new pieces. We are trying very hard to have our final count be 7 women and 7 men. We just have a lot of sorting to do until we have our final numbers.

http://img.pandawhale.com/65740-Particular-Cat-gif-Screw-this-fx8I.gif

Why, as a writer, are these numbers important? Because we spend so much time writing our own stories that we forget that other people are doing the same. When we turn to the business end of writing and getting published, if we want to increase our chances of getting published, it helps to know where we would have the best chance of that happening.

Transparency in numbers is hard to find for other lit mags. However, Bartleby Snopes has a good breakdown of their own stats. When I compared their data with ours, our rates of rejections and acceptances are running pretty close to each other.

What does this mean?

It means that an acceptance rate around 3% is pretty standard for just about every literary magazine. This means that it is still tough to get your work published with online lit mags such as ourselves.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view2/1812813/dory-just-keep-swimming-o.gif

So, we need to do what Dory tells us, and just keep swimming. While the numbers are daunting, it should remind us all that our personal fiction needs to be the best it can be in order to be published. All we can do is just keep writing.

 

 

 

 

 

Caitlin Bagwell, author photo

Caitlin was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She still lives there, and this makes her a rare unicorn in a sea of transplanted twenty-somethings who came to be artists and drink cheap beer. Also, she is now in her 30s and has moved on to Bourbon. She is a current MFA candidate in fiction at Antioch University LA. She has been published here and there with the last one being in Chiasmus Press’ Stories from the Edge: A Northwest Anthology.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/rubix.jpeg 350 350 Caitlin Bagwell https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Caitlin Bagwell2014-04-18 13:33:212022-02-10 11:56:13Let’s Do Math Together!!

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Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

QVC-land

May 6, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / D. E. Hardy
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Diana-Hardy_QVC_Feature_Photo.png 533 800 D. E. Hardy https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png D. E. Hardy2022-05-06 23:45:322022-05-06 23:45:32QVC-land

Escape Artists at the End of the World

April 29, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Lisa Levy
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/waldemar-brandt-eIOPDU3Fkwk-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1707 2560 Lisa Levy https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Lisa Levy2022-04-29 23:49:582022-06-13 18:34:12Escape Artists at the End of the World

The House in the Middle

April 15, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/alec-douglas-iuC9fvq63J8-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 2560 1707 Megan Vasquez https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Megan Vasquez2022-04-15 23:45:322022-04-15 23:45:32The House in the Middle

More coming soon!

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every Monday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Eggs, No Basket

June 27, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, CNF / Kelsi Long
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/raiyan-zach-jDkrpWtSkb4-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 2560 1440 Kelsi Long https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Kelsi Long2022-06-27 11:55:552022-06-27 11:55:55Eggs, No Basket

The Revolution Began at Book Club

June 20, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, Fiction / Sari Fordham
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/alexis-brown-omeaHbEFlN4-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1707 2560 Sari Fordham https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Sari Fordham2022-06-20 11:55:162022-06-20 11:55:16The Revolution Began at Book Club

A Letter to the Dead Grandmothers That Raised Us

June 13, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, Poetry / Levi J. Mericle
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/khamkeo-vilaysing-AMQEB4-uG9k-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1829 2560 Levi J. Mericle https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Levi J. Mericle2022-06-13 11:55:132022-06-13 11:55:13A Letter to the Dead Grandmothers That Raised Us

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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Brendan Nurczyk https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Brendan Nurczyk2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Abigail E. Calimaran https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Abigail E. Calimaran2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

More School Lunch »

Word From the Editor

The variety in this issue speaks not only to the eclectic world we inhabit but to the power of the human spirit. We live in an uncertain world. In the U.S., we’re seeing mass shootings daily. Across the world, we’re still very much in a pandemic, some being trapped in their homes for weeks on end, others struggling to stay alive in hospitals. War continues to wage in Ukraine. Iran and North Korea are working diligently to make nuclear weapons. The list goes on. Still, we have artists who are willing and able to be vulnerable with one another, to share stories and art to help us try and make sense of our world.

More from the current editor »
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