I honestly am not entirely on board w the term rejection for all the magazine submissions that don’t get picked.

At @augurmag, our acceptance rate is now hovering around 0.4-0.7%.

Our chosen pieces have so much more to do with selection than rejection.

Absolutely we reject pieces. But because they’re problematic or insulting or egregiously don’t follow guidelines or aren’t an Augur submission or the writer isn’t giving us a publishable piece.

Everything after that is selection, honestly. What fits. What lines up.

I just feel like the word rejection covers up exactly how much luck and timing and alignment and finding the right editor have to do with placing pieces, on top of good writing. It really often has less to do with the piece and more to do with who’s reading it for what.

The fact is, once it’s at a certain quality, if a piece doesn’t get picked, that’s because it’s at the whim of a gatekeeper who is doing the picking.

A gatekeeper who may or may not have a specific vision shaped by every other sub in their inbox.

Selection.