Ms. Haskell is Not Amused, Either

[merriehaskell]

Things that are ridiculously disheartening--

From my control panel in Duotrope:

Pending responses for last 12 months: 4 (Subscribe to a RSS feed Special RSS Feed of your Pending Submissions) BETA
Submissions sent last 12 months: 14
Submissions sent this month: 3
Acceptance ratio for the past 12 months: 30.77 %
Note: Your acceptance-rejection

Comments

[merriehaskell]

I'm SURE that they are flooded by people who like to tweak their stats. But it seems like there's got to be a better way! They're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. --And maybe they aren't, I'm not a statistical mastermind, but they sure are annoying me!

I did send them a relatively low-key suggestion letter to perhaps come up with other ways to weed out bad data--or to include good data, anyway. I tried not to be an ego monster about it. :)

But! If I have made the writing sound easy, then I have misled. It is not that it is easy. But for some personalities, it is less hard than the not-writing.

[merriehaskell]

I rather suspect that Duotrope is fighting more against stats tweakers than for the diligent folks who submit widely and get a 10% success rate, but who knows.

And hope is great. I'm glad you have hope. :)

[captainblack]

Who in the name of Blessed Basement Cat are these duotrope hamster-butts?
And how can I avoid them if I ever become a real writer like you?

[merriehaskell]

Well, they're pretty easy to avoid. It's a submission tracking website. No writer is obligated to use them. But I have found their site useful, since prior to that, this was my method of tracking: stats.merriehaskell.com (with some detailed stuff elsewhere).

[dendrophilous]

Bizarre.

[merriehaskell]

I'm puzzling over it even more than I was, 'cause I think what put me over into flag territory was reporting a dead market. Saying your submission was dead in the water should make that either a null or a rejection.

And I am boggled that they do acceptance to rejection ratio, and not acceptances as a percentage of all submissions, which I suppose makes writers feel happier, but it's like baseball stats in my mind: you get your at-bats, and if the market dies, that's an error that discounts your effort. Hm. Whatever.

I need an icon that disclaims all knowledge of sports.

[dendrophilous]

Acceptances/all would be misleadingly lower, though, based on pending submissions. I have to say I haven't spend a lot of time worrying about how to keep my stats. :)

I haven't paid much attention to Duotrope's statistics, though. What percentage of writers use it, and rejections probably are underreported.

[mrissa]

Not classy. (Er, Duotrope is being not-classy. Not you.)

[mevennen]

What?! This is insane!