Colum’s comment on my previous post, The numbers game, prompted me to wonder how quickly I’ve placed stories – ie, how many submissions has it taken for each story I’ve written before I’ve sold it. So I went back to my trusty spreadsheet, wrangled some numbers and produced this neat little bar chart:

A couple of the stories I sold to the first place I submitted them were written specifically for anthologies. The ones which took seven or eight goes are the older stories… which does suggest I’m getting better at this lark.

Having said all that, I’ve yet to sell stories to any of the big venues, such as Interzone, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, or the Big Three US paper mags (though I’m not especially bothered about submitting to the last).