Rejections 2025

On Substack, Barbara Krasner wrote about how she’d made an effort to get published in 2025. She sent 660 submissions. For poetry she got a 25% acceptance rate. For fiction she got an 8% acceptance rate. Overall she had 93 poems, 14 essays, 4 short stories, 11 flash fiction,and 2 flash nonfiction pieces accepted. Closer to home, Jim Murdock had 137 poems published in 2025.

In 2025 I made an effort too. I ended up with 9 pieces of prose and 2 poems published. The year began ok but in Autumn/Winter 2025 I had no acceptances - not for want of trying. Here are some significant 2025 dates -

• 8th Nov - having not had an acceptance for nearly 2 months, I broke a record of mine by sending out 14 pieces in a day - 6 poems, 4 flashes, and 4 stories. That meant I had total of 38 pieces out. It didn't help
• 6th Dec - I finally got an acceptance - of a piece sent out months before, written years ago
• 28th Dec - I got an acceptance of a recently sent out 2022 piece

It's at least a year since I've written anything that's been accepted. What am I doing wrong?

• Maybe I've been writing too much, and the quality's gone down - well I've certainly written more this year. My output in 2025 was 5 poems, 36 Flashes and 7 stories - about 22k words. I've hardly ever written more in a year.
• Many of the magazines I used to be in frequently have gone - I've found nothing to replace Poetry Nottingham (20 poems) or Weyfarers (24 poems).
• I'm reluctant to pay submission fees, but the magazines most suited to my work now ask for them - I'm generally in favour of fees. $3 for 3 poems or a story is fair enough. However, I struggle with paying $3 to submit a single 100 word piece of Flash.

This year I shall pay to submit stories that I think merit publication - a couple of my favourite stories remain unpublished - and cannibalize the rest.