Slushpile Contest - The Mindnumbing Details

I'm not going to link the details for anyone but the top ten to specific entries, but several people have expressed an interest in the statistics for the rest of the field.  Something to keep in mind: from what I've read, real slushpile readers reject at least 95% of the manuscripts they see without passing them on to the editor.  That would mean that if they got around 40 manuscripts they would reject all but two of them with form rejections.  With that in mind, here are some statistics from our little contest:

Total	Number of Top 10	Number of Top 2
86	13	5
74	11	2
71	11	4
63	11	2
63	10	3
51	8	2
43	8	1
37	7	1
36	7	2
35	6	1
30	6	2
29	5	0
28	5	0
25	4	2
22	5	1
22	5	0
18	5	0
17	4	1
16	3	1
14	3	0
14	2	1
14	2	0
12	2	0
12	4	0
11	2	1
10	3	0
9	1	1

So what does that all mean? If we had been real slushpile readers, all of the entries, including the winner's, would have received form rejections without ever being seen by the editor more than two-thirds of the time.

Of the slightly over 40 entries, 18 would have made it to the editor's desk as being in the top 5% at least one time out of sixteen.  Several more were in the top 3 at least once, so they would have a reasonable chance of making it.  Now it is probable that slushpile readers use a different set of criteria than we do, and they might not be quite as scattered in their tastes.  At the same time, the takeaway lesson for me is to play the odds by getting a lot of manuscripts out there.  I knew that intellectually, but this really brings the lesson home.  By the way, I'll be happy to tell you privately where you stand on that list.