If the magazine you’re submitting to gets 4000 submissions a year and publishes 40, your chances are 1 in 100, right?

Wrong. If you submit something as bad as 90% of the people submitting do, your chances of getting published are zero. If your story is decent and falls within the magazine’s invisible boundaries, your chances may be 1 in 20, or even 1 in 4.

– (paraphrased from) Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction.

Pretty much the point I make in The Well-Presented Manuscript, and I’ve heard variations on it from several professional editors.

#shortfiction