13 Damn Fine Lit Mags with 5-10% Acceptance Rates
Less competitive but still excellent lit mags with all the details.
Acceptance rates are such a funny and frustrating aspect of submitting to lit mags. If you haven’t looked at them much, they are what they sound like: the % of work a lit mag typically accepts out of their total submissions.
But where does this number come from? Well, until Chill Subs, the only way was through writers tracking their submissions. This leads to some issues, though. Writers are more likely to report acceptances over rejections. Everyone has different levels of dedication. Personally, I used to track my submissions maybe 40% of the time? I’m better now. Like 65%.
So, we had a novel idea. Why not just ask the editors? You know, the folks reading these submissions day-in-and-out. Seemed reasonable. We figured this, combined with submission tracking, would eventually give us the most accurate representation of your chances as a prospective writer.
We now have over 100,000 tracked submissions and over 700 editors are managing their listings on Chill Subs. So, I’m going to start sharing some of that data here. Not all the time, but I think a lot of writers want to know their chances when submitting somewhere.
I’m going to start with 5-10% because many “top” lit mag lists tend to come with 1-3% acceptance rates, but there are so many more accessible yet still competitive lit mags out there. I think 3-20% is a good, broad target zone, but let’s take this one step at a time.
If these statistics are something you’re into, please answer this little poll so I can put together lists that will be most useful for everyone.
For today’s list I’ve included all I’ve got. Genre specifics, notable tags, fee, pay, socials, descriptions, open/close status, the works.
This is one of our paid subscriber lists this month. Our paid subscriptions are what give us the ability to gather all of this information and maintain our database. If you have the means, you can upgrade here.
Of course, we are always happy to help those in need; just let us know.