First submissions from a fledgling publication

By Joel Troutman
March 28, 2024

Baubles From Bones has finished its first submission period! We’ve been busy reading, reading, and reading through a precarious pile of slush in order to find the sparkly gems within. It’s been a joyous mountain of work that we’re all thrilled to be on the other side of. While we work on whittling down our shortlist, compiling our first issue, and sending out responses, I wanted to breakdown not only our thoughts and feelings about the submissions but also give some statistics, because I think quantitative data can be pretty cool sometimes, and I haven’t had an excuse to make graphs since senior year of college.

Figures and feelings

A publication is nothing without work to publish. The day we officially launched the Baubles From Bones site and opened for submissions was both exciting and bone-shakingly terrifying. We were forced to confront the realness of what we were doing– no longer just an idea tossed around the table of a cafe but a real business fellow creatives would be trusting their work to. None of us had any idea what kinds of stories we’d receive, the caliber of the work, or even if anyone would bother sending us as much as a draft. BFB very easily could’ve been dead on arrival. So it feels really encouraging to have ended our submission period with nearly 500 stories and poems from writers all across the globe.

As we were getting ready to make the site live, we discussed strategies to get our submission guidelines in front of writers. We had plans to reach out to universities and workshops and even put up fliers at local bookstores and board game shops here in Pittsburgh to drum up interest from prospective writers. But before we set out on that leg work, I made sure that we got listed on Duotrope and The Submission Grinder. As it turns out, that’s pretty much all we needed. Writers began submitting their work to us immediately, and we maintained a fairly constant flow of submissions through the first few weeks of the window. This is also when we decided to put an end date on our submission window. Initially, we were so worried about gathering interest that we were going to accept rolling submissions. However, after receiving over 100 submissions in the first week, we felt comfortable cutting things off at the end of February. And boy howdy are we glad we did, because holy shit we got a lot of submissions!

a graph of daily submissions to baubles from bones, 1/24/24-2/21/24. note the mountainous spike at the end.

​From January 21st to February 24th, 2024, Baubles From Bones received a total of 488 fiction and poetry submissions. In just the last three days of our submission window, we received 176 submissions. In three days. It was insane! On one hand, we were really excited, but on the other, we just saw this mountain of work piling up in our spreadsheet with nothing we could do about it and no real explanation why. The looming deadline could’ve played into the sudden rush of work, but it didn’t seem like enough of a reason. With a bit of internet sleuthing, I found out that we got mentioned in a couple writing newsletters throughout February, but nothing towards the end of the month, and nothing big enough to explain the deluge of submissions. So ultimately, we have no idea where all these submissions suddenly came from. But we’re also not complaining! A lot of great work came from these final submissions and having an overwhelming level of interest is perhaps the most exciting problem a little start-up like us could have.

Even more exciting than the volume of submissions is their international origin. Again, we were just hoping to get enough submissions to fill a book, so when two of our first submissions were from Prague and Paris, we nearly lost our minds. In the end, we’ve been lucky enough to receive work from 25 different countries across five continents. Getting submissions from almost every corner of the earth is something I didn’t dare dream of, so witnessing it become a reality has been one of the sickest things about starting BFB. You can see all of the submissions mapped out below!

map of countries baubles from bones received submissions from between 1/24/24 and 2/21/24.

​While we received submissions from all over, the top three countries of origin were the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, with the United States being responsible for 71% of total submissions. Despite these odds, our shortlist is peppered with international writers whose work we’re excited to share on the pages of BFB soon!

This first set of submissions has given us a lot to think about in terms of what we’re looking for. We’ve already taken notes about how many of the submissions pushed at the upper limit of our word count and how long our submission window was open, leading to an almost overwhelming number of stories to read, especially the lengthy ones. But on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve come away wishing we got more poetry. Out of all of our submissions, poetry only accounted for ~8%, which is way less than what we were expecting and definitely less than what we want. We’d love to publish more poetry, so we’ve already been discussing how we can change things for our next submission window in order to get more poets interested in sending us their work.

From slush to slush

​Elyse, Shane, and I have spent the last month and a half reading every single one of the 488 submissions sent our way. This process is known in publishing as slush reading. It’s a pretty damn accurate term. Out of the nearly 500 submissions we received, only a handful can actually get published. We have to take that initial, icy monolith of submissions and sort through it until we have the best 10-20% of stories that actually excite us, which then have to be further critiqued, chipped away, and grouped into a cohesive and thematic issue of fiction. What’s going to make it to the pages of BFB is only going to be the tip of the iceberg, everything else sliding away like, well, slush.

the glacier of zine submissions. this meme was made with paint :)

This reading process takes its toll. If we were perfect machines that turned unread submissions into read and analyzed submissions, we would’ve been reading around 8 pieces a day throughout the whole period. However, we editors here at BFB are busy people with full-time jobs and social lives and an unhealthy tendency to procrastinate. We fell behind. In order to hit our own deadlines, in the final week, we were reading at least twice that original figure, and Elyse, the trooper she is, had days where she read through 30+ submissions. It’s a dizzying amount of reading. But somehow, at the start of March, we conquered the slush pile and, from slush to slush, our brains washed away into the waters of literature.

 Our initial reads done, we’ve since moved onto our shortlist, discussing and debating our favorite pieces long past bedtime. With all of the submissions we’ve received, we’re fairly certain that we can currently fill two issues of the zine with the stories and poetry we have. We’re now grouping those pieces into the strongest, most cohesive issues we possibly can, leaving us with the excruciatingly hard job of deciding which stories just don’t quite fit. In the process, we keep reminding ourselves that no, we do not have the budget for 300 page editions.  ̶B̶u̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶e̶n̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶s̶c̶r̶i̶b̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶P̶a̶t̶r̶e̶o̶n̶!̶

All of this is to say that we’re nearly done with the biggest stage of issue one and are soon going to be moving onto writing contracts, copy-editing, and production. If you’re a writer who’s read this far and hasn’t gotten a response from us, expect an email in the next couple weeks! For everyone else, look forward to some more announcements and get ready to mark your calendar for the first issue of Baubles From Bones!

Cheers,
-Joel

​~ Joel Troutman ~

Joel Troutman is not part-fish, but, some days, he wishes he was. Instead he’s a writer and editor from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who makes a living by stocking grocery store shelves. In his precious free time, he has fun writing about murder on exoplanets, buying more stickers than he uses, and drawing frog portraits.