Poetry By the Numbers

In 2005 I started seriously sending out my poetry to publications. Over these past 15 years, I have received 97 rejections and 31 acceptances. That's around a 68% rejection rate. Or a 32% acceptance rate if you want to look a things more optimistically. I have currently written 63 viable poems, or at least ones that I think others might be interested in reading. 40 of them have been published (some of which more than once). That's a 63% acceptance rate. I have 1 short story with 1 publication (a number of rejections but my documentation for that is lacking). And 2 novels - one a chapter book for 3rd-5th graders, and one Y.A. book - both have been rejected by 13 literary agents. But writing isn't about percentages, or even publishing credits. It's so much more than that, but it's a lot easier to describe it by numbers.