It’s hard to imagine that Submitit has been going strong now for over four years. Near the end of 2021 (around a year in) I wrote a post titled “How Well Does Submitit Work?” At the time, it worked pretty darn well. We’d gotten 25 stories or essays published (it’d only been a year, remember), with a success rate of over 60%.
Since then, we’ve increased the count to . . . wait for it . . . 240 published stories and essays! We’ve helped literally hundreds of writers get their worked published in such journals as Southern Humanities Review, Raleigh Review, Southern Indiana Review, New England Review, The Florida Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Southeast Review, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, failbetter, and scores of others. (You can read more about our “publishings,” with testimonials, here.)
And I’m happy to say, we’re still doing well: exactly 61.4% of the stories and essays we submit find homes in literary journals!
The breakdowns for submission packages are similar to last time’s: a little under 50-50 for the 10-journal package, around 60% for the 15-journal package, and high 60s for the 20-journal package.
So, ahem, to improve your chances, sign up for the 20-journal package.
(Our Journals List Only package comes in a little under 60%—writers on their own tend to shoot a little higher, I suspect.)
Getting more than half of the work we submit published in literary journals is something I really couldn’t have dreamed of when I started Submitit. And when you consider that I’m careful with the journals in my database (think of all the “zero-star” journals with ridiculously high acceptance rates that I refuse to include), not to mention, many clients (understandably) decide to keep their submission aim high, even in second rounds, I think the number is even more impressive.
Of course, Submitit’s success is largely thanks to you, our writers. We really are a team here. Without your wonderful short stories and essays, none of this would be possible. So to all of our clients: thank you! And (raising my glass—as it happens, a Woodford Reserve Double Oaked bourbon) here’s to many more years of acceptances.
Erik Harper Klass is the founder of Submitit, a full-service submissions and editing company. He has published stories and essays in a variety of journals, including New England Review, South Carolina Review, Yemassee (Cola Literary Review), Blood Orange Review, Slippery Elm, Summerset Review, and many others, and he has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. He has published a novella from Buttonhook Press.
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