The Statistics of Getting Published
13221 titles were published in the US in 1996 (the latest information I could find that broke out fiction from non-fiction). That covers all of literature, which seems to cover re-issues, children's picture books, graphic novels, collections of poetry and short stories -- everything, in short, that's not non-fiction. It seems as though it may count each edition of a given work separately. It was hard enough to find data that broke the numbers down even this much. I could not find what I really wanted: how many new novels are published each year in the US.
Let us call this (unfortunately) unknown number X. What will it take for a writer's work to become one single part of that X?
I have a couple of anecdotal reports from separate literary agencies that give some consistent data to work with. Consistency is encouraging, even if the data is not.
The first is from Agent Kristin at Pub Rants. Kristin's agency has 2 agents and 25 clients. Each agent gets 50-75 queries every day. They request partials from just over 1% of the queries.
Literary agent Nathan Bransford gets about 50 queries per day (including weekends). Again, just over 1% of queries get a request for a partial.
Literary agent Nathan Bransford gets about 50 queries per day (including weekends). Again, just over 1% of queries get a request for a partial.
In round numbers, let's say each agent gets 50 queries per day, and requests partials from 1-2% of them. I'd assume the number of partials that get a request for a full is fairly low -- say 10%. I'd also assume the number of fulls that result in an offer of representation is about 25%. These numbers work out to about 4.5 books per agent per year from new-to-them authors (they also have their existing clients providing them with manuscripts, but we're not considering them).
That says that on the high side we're looking at 1 out of every 4000 queries gets all the way to acceptance by an agent. Seems high to me, but that's what the numbers say.
I'm ignoring the fact that not every book that gets agented gets published. I think the percentage that gets left on the agent's desk is fairly small (less than 20% -- meaning 80% get to store shelves). Let's be positive and pretend that doesn't change anything, and that if an agent accepts your manuscript it will get published.
Of course you can't just send your query out 4000 times and get a book deal. This is not a random process. The vast majority of queries are rejected because they're unprofessional nonsense. Another part of them are not in the proper genre for the agent they're sent to. You won't have those problems, right? Your query's chances just went from 1:100 to, say, 1:2. Not a bad payoff for doing your homework.
Next, we'll assume you learned how to write somewhere along the way. Well. And you can tell a story. And it's not memoir (which can be a difficult sell). So instead of 10% on your partial, you can expect more like 30% acceptance, and 50% for your full. That gives you 1:4. Some agent's info will be out-of-date, or they'll already have what they're looking for in your area, and you'll be rejected for reasons you couldn't find out beforehand. Using a 30% "just because" rejection rate, gives about 1:26.
An average of 26 queries to get yourself published. Now that's not bad at all. That's a lot better than the shotgun 1 in 4000. Do your homework.
The Statistics of Travel Writing
We've all heard it said that writing can take you places: flights of fancy, treks through the wasteland of abandoned plots, book tours, fame, fortune. Aside from literary road-trips, though, it takes your fingers on a journey. Lets see how far they might go.
I calculated the finger throw distance for each key on a conventional keyboard. That's key travel (4mm for an average keyboard) for a key in the home position where your fingers rest on the keyboard, including the space bar. Then I added the extra strokes needed to be off home position (like w or m), and here I assumed the required key was only one key away from a home position, which added another 20mm of travel by my measurement. Of course this ignores the extra reach for punctuation up above the number keys: in my manuscript, and probably yours too, these are pretty rare. Capitalized characters require a separate 20+4mm depression of the shift key, but I didn't account for punctuation that requires the shift key. Call me lazy if you wish.
Then I calculated the frequency of each character in my 96000 word fantasy manuscript, the round-trip distance the finger(s) moves in striking the key and returning to home position, and the total distance in mm that key required of my fingers over the course of the manuscript.
total
key freq mm travel
--- ---- -- ------
'/' 4 48 192
'Q' 9 96 864
'(' 29 48 1392
')' 29 48 1392
'\t' 32 48 1536
'K' 33 56 1848
'U' 42 96 4032
'!' 63 48 3024
'P' 70 96 6720
'V' 78 96 7488
':' 92 56 5152
'E' 107 96 10272
';' 108 8 864
'R' 130 96 12480
'M' 151 96 14496
'G' 160 96 15360
'#' 163 48 7824 (a single '#' marks my section breaks)
'z' 195 48 9360
'L' 196 56 10976
'O' 247 96 23712
'q' 249 48 11952
'J' 261 56 14616
'C' 270 96 25920
'B' 331 96 31776
'j' 391 8 3128
'Y' 450 96 43200
'x' 461 48 22128
'F' 515 56 28840
'A' 606 56 33936
'D' 798 56 44688
'N' 832 96 79872
'H' 872 96 83712
'S' 975 56 54600
'W' 1108 96 106368
'-' 1235 48 59280
'?' 1298 48 62304
'Z' 1463 96 140448
'T' 1526 96 146496
'I' 1686 96 161856
'v' 3001 48 144048
"'" 3181 48 152688
'k' 4406 8 35248
'\n' 4721 48 226608 ('\n' is a newline)
'p' 5572 48 267456
'b' 6005 48 288240
',' 6019 48 288912
'c' 6645 48 318960
'f' 7035 8 56280
'm' 7064 48 339072
'y' 7696 48 369408
'"' 8154 48 391392
'g' 8429 48 404592
'.' 8542 48 410016
'w' 9162 48 439776
'u' 10486 48 503328
'l' 13561 8 108488
'd' 19042 8 152336
'r' 20501 48 984048
'i' 21609 48 1037232
's' 22709 8 181672
'n' 24140 48 1158720
'h' 25119 48 1205712
'a' 29857 8 238856
'o' 31202 48 1497696
't' 35941 48 1725168
'e' 50591 48 2428368
' ' 92836 8 742688
The total is 17.4km, or for the metrically impaired, 10.8 miles. That's how far my fingertips moved in typing my manuscript. It adds-up, doesn't it....
Of course, I didn't just type in my manuscript -- I made mistakes and retyped, backed up and retyped again, etc. I think it's a conservative estimate that the real number is 3 times the straight-through calculation; say 32 miles.
But it gets worse.
I use a special keyboard (the Datahand) because I have arthritis in my hands. It is a low-force / low-motion keyboard, and I thought when I did the above calculations that I'd have saved some distance. Not so. Instead of the 4mm home-row travel, this keyboard has a consistent 7mm travel for every key, with an extra 7mm for shifts. Essentially every key is a home-row key, but it's got a travel nearly twice a conventional keyboard. For this keyboard I get 24.2km, or 15 miles, which gives a total 3x travel of 45 miles.
Writing will take you places, even if it's only 4mm at a time. So remember to be kind to your fingers.
One more thing -- this, the third part of a series posts, the one on Arithmetic, falls on pi-day (3-14). I didn't plan it that way. I'm not that much of a geek.
Very analytical, John! If you hadn't mentioned how busy you've been with work lately, one might think you had an excess of time on your hands! Very interesting none the less.
ReplyDeleteHi, John!
ReplyDeleteMe again. A friend posted on my site asking for help analyzing an Emily Dickinson poem. If you think you can help, would you mind swinging by my blog to read her comment? It's under my Thursday post....not today's. Thanks!!!
I just happened on your blog looking for these figures -- thanks for posting! Not trying to be discouraging here, but... even if an author gets an established agent, that's no guarantee of getting published :-(
ReplyDeleteFirst time reading this blog thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete