How Many Rejections Does It Take to Make a Sale?

The Trippy Trip to Selling a Short Story

I finally sold a story to a pro-pay home that I first penned in April 2022.

That’s 21 months.

Or 653 days, to be exact.

51 total rejections.

It was originally called The Wormhole to Farout and was written to a prompt, “Starseeds,” given by the Flametree Flash Fiction Newsletter contest.

Ps. For real science fiction nerds, Farout is a real planet, “2018 VG₁₈ is a distant trans-Neptunian object, nicknamed Farout, that was discovered when it was 123 AU from the Sun, more than three times the average distance between the Sun and Pluto.” Wikipedia

Many of my short stories start as flash pieces, written to monthly prompts given by Flametree, Apex, and the now defunct Apparition Lit. The Wormhole to Farout was originally 950 words. Then, if they aren’t purchased by flash venues, I expand them.

It got rejected 22 times.

Some of the personal comments included:

(I’m not listing the markets because I didn’t obtain permission to share their notes. I’m sure they WOULD give permission, but I’m not going to bug the editors.)

“However, although I enjoyed the piece, I regret to tell you that it didn't make it into my "yes" pile this time around.”

“We did thoroughly enjoy reading your piece; your story was compelling and well-written.”

“I'm afraid I'm going to pass. This story is basically identical to Stephen King's short story The Jaunt.”

OMG. Is that where my inspiration came from? A story I read from Stephen King when I was young? PS. It wasn’t identical. But based on this comment, I gave it a hefty rewrite, lengthened it, and changed the title.

Now, the story was called The Trippy Trip to Triton and ran just under 3000 words.

I added in a character arc of a woman desperate to marry her wealthy, drug-addicted boyfriend and his unrelenting search for the ultimate high.

It racked up 29 more rejections and 1 acceptance

-which I withdrew from. The market misrepresented the pay scale, or I misread the guidelines. Either way, I had too much faith in this story to sell it to a token-paying magazine. The editors were gracious.

Some comments from the editors who rejected the longer version:

“This story had some very interesting ideas, but we wanted more focus on characterization and stakes to support the action.”

“While this story is well-written, it's not quite the right pick for our publication.”

“We enjoyed this well-written story with its tight character dynamic. We especially enjoyed Angela's interior struggle as the story progressed.”

I would have loved to publish this. Thank you so much for sending it. (from a Kickstarter that failed to fund)

Your assured writing and intriguing concept pulled us in with this piece, but in the end we felt that it didn't quite fit the needs of the magazine

And finally…

Thank you for submitting 'The Trippy Trip to Triton' to Pulp
Literature. If the story is still available, we'd love to place it in
one of our upcoming issues, exact issue number tbd.

If you enjoyed learning about the long journey to selling this story (similar to a dark, long voyage through the void of space), I have two collections filled with the same sort of info PLUS insights from the editors on what they buy and why.

AND