Reality Check, Courtesy of John Klima

Electric Velocipede editor John Klima posted the above graphic on his blog this past Monday, showing his journal's submission and acceptance numbers from 2009.

Klima writes that he received 967 submissions last year from August through December, and of those submissions only 33 pieces were accepted for publication. That's an acceptance rate of about 3 percent.

It's a kind of reality check for writers, as it shows why it's so important that you're work be at its best when you send it out. Editors are deluged with submissions, and if your pieces aren't up to par it isn't hard for an editor to scrap them and find work that is.

Thanks to Klima for the blog post. I wish more editors would publish the numbers for their publications in a similar way.

Incidentally, Electric Velocipede's sale celebrating their 2009 win of the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine is still going, and as those who read the review on my genre blog know, it doesn't disappoint.