Cold Brood: Year One

Hello, folks. Today marks one year since I launched Cold Brood. Where's the time gone?

It's been a fun little experiment, though I still prefer seeing my words in traditional print venues. Self-publishing is fine, but it's kind of like drawing a picture and hanging it on your own refrigerator. I want to draw a picture you hang on YOUR refrigerator. Or something like that. Poor analogy, but I'm too tired to come up with something better.

Let's talk stats. When I began this little ol' blog, I doubted anyone would bother to read it and the few who did would do so only because they'd stumbled upon it accidentally. Well, thanks to the wonderful and indispensible Google Analytics, I can tell just how often and how long certain regions of the world stick around on this site. I am happy to report that people from every continent dropped in for a gander (except Antarctica -- probably because penguins haven't figured out how to log onto the 'net yet). There are several hot spots who come back again and again -- Belgium, for one. In fact, most of central Europe has paid repeated visits to Cold Brood. Cool! Keep on comin'!

To date, Cold Brood has over 25,000 views. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that. 25,000+? I have no idea where that stands compared to the average blog, but it sounds good to me. As I said, keep on comin'! For whatever reason, the post entitled Game Day has far and away the most views. Not sure why. It's not all that compelling. But, hey, you won't hear me complain. 

Google Analytics got me thinking about checking on the stats for my other writing and I'd like to share some tidbits with my writerly friends (and those of you who may care).

In several years since I began submitting written works to various markets, I have submitted 213 pieces. Of those, 16 have been accepted, 156 rejected, 10 are pending, 5 have been withdrawn (for one reason or another), and 26 remain inconclusive (due to no response from the market or the market going dead). It took 57 attempts before I had a piece accepted for publication. When you break all this down, 7.5% of my total submissions have been accepted and the number climes to greater than 10% when you take out inconclusive and withdrawn subs. That's up from 1.8% from the time of my first submission to when I finally got picked up on the 58th try. Again, not sure where this averages with other writers, but I'm all right with 10%. That number will only get larger if trends are to be trusted. I'll only start worrying when it dips back below 8%. (Note: these numbers do not include the columns I wrote for various newspapers or the articles, interviews, and reviews I wrote for Modern Fix Magazine--these are strictly short story and essay submissions).

Anyway, I'm not a numbers guy so I'm going to quit talking about them before they start getting a big head.

Thanks for reading over the past year. It's appreciated. And it's been fun! Come back anytime.