Equus Submission Stats

by Rhonda Parrish

I expected Equus submissions to break personal records in regard to numbers — that’s one of the reasons I decided to break with tradition and use Submittable to read them all blind. It didn’t. It didn’t break records in regard to total overall number of submissions, anyway. In that regard, Equus comes out right smack in the middle.
 
Total number of submissions to Magical Menageries:
Fae — 191
Corvidae — 135
Scarecrow — 100
Sirens — 199
Equus — 136
 
I sent fewer revise and resubmit requests to Equus submitters than for any other anthology in the series though—only five altogether. Of those five, only two people actually did revise and resubmit and I ended up accepting both stories. There’s a lesson there, I think…
 
But I digress!
 
The thing about Equus that stands out the most is the quality of the stories that were sent to me. I shortlisted 34 of them. That’s like a quarter of them.
 
That.
 
Is.
 
Crazy.
 
I never shortlist 25% of my slush. Like, ever. But the quality of submissions to Equus was so great that I just had to.
 
And don’t think the stories I didn’t shortlist weren’t great too — they were. I had to let go of a lot of amazing stories before the shortlist and then from the shortlist to make my Table of Contents.
 
It was hard.
 
I know, I know, I complained about this with Sirens too, and just like with Sirens while my complaints are sincere they are also a sort of humble-brag, because this anthology? It’s amazing. I can’t wait to share the Table of Contents with you!

About Rhonda Parrish

Rhonda Parrish is driven by the desire to do All The Things. She was the founder and editor-in-chief of Niteblade Magazine, is an Assistant Editor at World Weaver Press, and is the editor of several anthologies including, most recently, Sirens and D is for Dinosaur. In addition, Rhonda is a writer whose work has been included or is forthcoming in dozens of publications including Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast, Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2012 & 2015), and Mythic Delerium. Her website, updated weekly, is at rhondaparrish.com.

More of Rhonda Parrish's Magical Menageries