by Kristin George Bagdanov, Colorado Review Associate Editor

In order to shed some light on some of the “mystery” inherent in the submission process, we have compiled our submission statistics from 2013 to share with you.

Total Submission Stats*

(includes all genres and both paper and electronic submissions)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above responses approximately result in:

1% overall acceptance rate
90% rejection rate
9% pending or withdrawn (pending submissions are those submitted in 2013 that were not yet reviewed as of 2/1/14).

*regular submissions only; does not include contests

 

Acceptance/Rejection by genre:

Total Submissions	Poetry**: 1,649	Fiction: 2,098	Nonfiction: 561
Acceptance %	1.8%	0.38%	1%
Rejection %	80.6%	96.8%	92%
Pending/Withdrawn %	17.6%	2.76%	6.6%

**Calculated by submission, though each submission can contain anywhere from 1-5 individual poems

While these statistics may seem discouraging, we do encourage you to continue submitting. Our editorial assistants and editors spend hours and hours each week reading submissions, and treat every submission with concentration and care.

 

Paper vs. Electronic Submissions:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While paper and electronic submissions are treated the same in terms of our reading process, we tend to receive over five times the number of electronic submissions as compared to paper submissions, a number that increases each year.

 

Genre and Gender:

Thanks to VIDA, which documents the representation of women in the literary arts, we also have the following breakdowns of gender representation by genre. You can view the breakdowns from other magazines here. Note: these statistics correlate to the issues published in 2013, whereas our statistics above correlate to submissions received in 2013.

Here are their results:

Poetry: Female 44/ Male 63                                  Overall: Female 63/Male 77

 

 

 

 

 

Fiction: Female 8/ Male 3

 

It’s worth noting as well that their analysis of our book reviews does not take into account our move from print to online book reviews. The reviews they have analyzed come from the Spring 2013 issue–the last print issue in which we published book reviews. The chart below, which I have made, takes those into account plus the 42 book reviews we published online in 2013. Here are our 2013 book review breakdowns with that in mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21 male authors and 30 female authors had books reviewed in CR in 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20 males and 28 females reviewed books for CR in 2013

 

If you are interested in submitting during our current cycle for fiction and poetry, be sure to submit by April 30^th (nonfiction submissions are read year round). Submit online here or follow these instructions to submit via the mail.