Match Percentages, Acceptance Percentages, Submission Volumes, Etc.

When we send you a list of journals, you’ll notice several labels for each one: “Match” (match percent), “Year” (inception year), “Acceptance” (acceptance percent), and “Volume” (submission volume). In this post, I’ll explain what these labels mean, and why they’re important.

Match Percent

This is always a percentage between 0 and 100. To put it simply, it’s a numerical measure of how closely your work matches the journal’s work. (You can read more about the driver behind this number—our algorithm—here.)

But what does the number really mean? What’s a good match? What’s a bad one?

Generally speaking, anything over 80% is very good. Anything over 70% is pretty good. We’ll sometimes submit work in the 60s, but the odds aren’t great. A match in the 50s or lower is like playing carnival games (very low odds).

Of our 322 acceptances (as of this writing (and holy shit that’s awesome! if I do say so myself)), only 24 of them had match percentages under 70%, and only one—one!—came in under 60% (the match was 59%). The median is 81%. The average is 79%.

We’ll usually submit in order, from best match to worst, and we’ll do our best to stay at least in the 60s or better. But note that we’ll sometimes have no choice: If a client requests an aggressive strategy, or if something about the piece (often length or lack of “literariness”) simply limits the number of journals that show up when we run the algorithm, we may have to (reluctantly) submit to journals with low match scores.

Inception Year

When submitting to literary journals, we (as writers) are always trying to find journals that will last, but sadly, journals do go defunct. This is part of the submission game, especially if we’re targeting easier or newer journals. As you hopefully know, we do our best to find journals with staying power. The inception year is a decent measure of this staying power. (You can read more about how we choose our journals here.)

Acceptance Percent

This number refers to the estimated acceptance rate of the journal. Most top journals accept less than 1% of their submissions. This means, for example, if Ploughshares or The Missouri Review or The New Yorker receives 200 submissions, the journal might accept 1 of them (or, frankly, none of them). Mid- and lower-tier journals, of course, often have higher acceptance rates.

For clients who stick to the standard (“medium,” mid-tier) strategy for round one, we’ll usually try to stay away from the “< 1%” journals. Certainly, for clients who opt for an “easy” strategy in round one, and for all clients in round two (unless we’re told otherwise), we’ll try to shoot for journals with higher acceptance rates, typically over 3%. (For more about submission strategies, click here.)

We display the acceptance percentages as ranges for a few reasons:

• The accuracy of these numbers varies depending on submission volume. If a journal has accepted 1 of 10 submissions (and thus shows a very high 10% acceptance rate), that’s really not telling us much. On the other hand, if a journal has accepted 10 of 100 submissions, the number is likely far more accurate. (If volume is low, we usually estimate a 3–5% acceptance rate; a high number, yes, but reasonable, we think, for smaller, low-volume journals.)

• Acceptance rates change over time. I’ve seen journals go from 0% to 10% and back again over months and years. We do our best to find a happy average.

• New journals, of course, have no or little submission data, so, again, we estimate (usually 3–5%).

Note that we update these numbers around once a year.

Submission Volume

Submission volume—which we present alphabetically (that is, with words ("low,” “medium,” “high,” etc.)) instead of numerically—gives you a rough idea of how many submissions a journal receives relative to other journals.

Why do we include this? We think it’s a good way—probably the only reasonable way—to measure a journal’s general popularity. The more well-known the journal, the more submissions, on average, the journal will receive. Submission volume also gives you an idea of how confident we should be with the acceptance percent. (Note that volume does not, however, necessarily have anything to do with the quality of a journal.)

Some writers might request that we focus on—that is, start with—journals with high submission volumes. That’s fine (just let us know). Keep in mind, however, that for second rounds, when many of the journals are newer and smaller, you’ll often see low submission volumes (which also often means less competition); this is by design.

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I hope that helps you understand our journals lists. Good luck with submissions!

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