Rejection rate?

[darwin1859]

Coming from an academic background where journal rejection rates are well-known, I’m curious about the metrics for LE (which, I know are very different from an academic journal).

Manu has mentioned ~400 submissions on a peak day, so maybe 300 or 350 are typical? And my own observation is about ~180 new stories posted daily (I counted stories on 10/4, 10/5 and 10/6, the average was about 180).

So, the rejection rate appears to sit somewhere between 40% (300 submitted, 180 published) and 55% (400 submitted, 180 published). I have no idea about the cumulative effect of poor writing, violations of the content guidelines, AI use, perceived AI use, etc. but those seem like very high rejection rates.

Or could the actual submissions be much closer to ~180 on a consistent daily basis, suggesting a much lower rejection rate?

Do we have any idea what percent of stories submitted are eventually approved?

BTW, one thing I don't explicitly see in many posts here is how amazing Literotica is: It's free. And hundreds of new stories are posted every day? Implying there are many hundreds of active authors? I'm amazed that this is possible! And maybe even more amazed that LE has not become thoroughly enshittified.

 

[StillStunned]

Manu has mentioned ~400 submissions on a peak day, so maybe 300 or 350 are typical? And my own observation is about ~180 new stories posted daily (I counted stories on 10/4, 10/5 and 10/6, the average was about 180).
[...]
Do we have any idea what percent of stories submitted are eventually approved?

Somewhere in the FAQ it says the average in 2024 was 250 submissions a day. Sorry, I can't find the exact quote. Anyway, I assume that this number has gone up with AI making it easy for people to churn out non-human writing.

BTW, one thing I don't explicitly see in many posts here is how amazing Literotica is: It's free. And hundreds of new stories are posted every day? Implying there are many hundreds of active authors? I'm amazed that this is possible! And maybe even more amazed that LE has not become thoroughly enshittified.

There are a few. I started one last Thanksgiving, and there's What do you appreciate in this site? Why is this community valuable? But I agree, it deserves to be said more often. As a place to write and publish an almost infinite range of stories, styles and genres, and as a community to help each other and share our triumphs and frustrations, it's absolutely incredible. So a big thank you again to @Laurel and @Manu (may they live forever)!

 

[TheLobster]

Manu has mentioned ~400 submissions on a peak day, so maybe 300 or 350 are typical?

What's the date for these numbers? If they are older than like 2023, when LLMs became capable enough to churn what looks like short stories, then I doubt these stats reflect the current number of daily submissions to Lit.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

And maybe even more amazed that LE has not become thoroughly enshittified.

I attribute that to the two original pilots still being in the seat.

The crap comes in after changes at the helm.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

Coming from an academic background where journal rejection rates are well-known, I’m curious about the metrics for LE (which, I know are very different from an academic journal).

Manu has mentioned ~400 submissions on a peak day, so maybe 300 or 350 are typical? And my own observation is about ~180 new stories posted daily (I counted stories on 10/4, 10/5 and 10/6, the average was about 180).

So, the rejection rate appears to sit somewhere between 40% (300 submitted, 180 published) and 55% (400 submitted, 180 published). I have no idea about the cumulative effect of poor writing, violations of the content guidelines, AI use, perceived AI use, etc. but those seem like very high rejection rates.

Or could the actual submissions be much closer to ~180 on a consistent daily basis, suggesting a much lower rejection rate?

Do we have any idea what percent of stories submitted are eventually approved?

BTW, one thing I don't explicitly see in many posts here is how amazing Literotica is: It's free. And hundreds of new stories are posted every day? Implying there are many hundreds of active authors? I'm amazed that this is possible! And maybe even more amazed that LE has not become thoroughly enshittified.

why, I always get hard when reading numbers. but don't know why.

 

[ronde]

Coming from an academic background where journal rejection rates are well-known, I’m curious about the metrics for LE (which, I know are very different from an academic journal).

Manu has mentioned ~400 submissions on a peak day, so maybe 300 or 350 are typical? And my own observation is about ~180 new stories posted daily (I counted stories on 10/4, 10/5 and 10/6, the average was about 180).

So, the rejection rate appears to sit somewhere between 40% (300 submitted, 180 published) and 55% (400 submitted, 180 published). I have no idea about the cumulative effect of poor writing, violations of the content guidelines, AI use, perceived AI use, etc. but those seem like very high rejection rates.

Or could the actual submissions be much closer to ~180 on a consistent daily basis, suggesting a much lower rejection rate?

Do we have any idea what percent of stories submitted are eventually approved?

BTW, one thing I don't explicitly see in many posts here is how amazing Literotica is: It's free. And hundreds of new stories are posted every day? Implying there are many hundreds of active authors? I'm amazed that this is possible! And maybe even more amazed that LE has not become thoroughly enshittified.

Since I've been the administrator of a similar site, I can believe your numbers. It was amazing to me how many submissions I got that were basically either unpublishable or unreadable. Typical things I rejected were:

Thousand+ word long paragraphs

Lack of any punctuation at all. By this I really mean the entire story was just one very long sentence. I once rejected such a story after I paged down three times and still wasn't at the end.

Intentional violation of the minimum age for sexual content policy. This often took the seemingly innocent form of, "When I was in high school..." For those who don't understand education in the US, few kids graduate high school at the age of 18 unless they were held back a grade for some reason.

Rape stories the writer tried to fix with a final sentence along the lines of, "She told me later that she loved it."

BDSM stories where the main plot of the story was how much torture and excruciating pain the dom (usually male) inflicted on the (usually female) sub, rather than the true mutual arousal of a BDSM relationship. Often the story included the description of how much blood was shed by the sub. Usually ended with the same statement as rape stories.

 

[darwin1859]

What's the date for these numbers? If they are older than like 2023, when LLMs became capable enough to churn what looks like short stories, then I doubt these stats reflect the current number of daily submissions to Lit.

2025 https://forum.literotica.com/thread...eue-nudity-policy-more.1632509/post-100894493

 

[TheLobster]

2025 https://forum.literotica.com/thread...eue-nudity-policy-more.1632509/post-100894493

Huh. That’s… good news I suppose? It means the impact of LLM isn’t nearly as deleterious as I feared.

The flip side, of course, is that it makes recent long submission delays even less justifiable than they already were, given the site isn’t actually bombarded with thousands upon thousands of instances of AI slop like one might’ve suspected.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

For those who don't understand education in the US, few kids graduate high school at the age of 18 unless they were held back a grade for some reason.

The majority of high schools in the U.S. start their school year in August or September and end their school year in late May or early June.

Assuming that approximately the same number of kids are born each month, that would mean that there was a good chance that almost half of the graduating students each year would turn 18 between January and their graduation.

Then throw in the limitations on when a child might start school. Some districts required them to be age five before the start of school while others allowed them to turn five a few weeks or months after school started. I, for example, had to wait a year because my birthday is in December. I started school when I was five, but graduated when I was 18. Over half of my graduating class (831 students) was over 18.

 

[ronde]

The majority of high schools in the U.S. start their school year in August or September and end their school year in late May or early June.

Assuming that approximately the same number of kids are born each month, that would mean that there was a good chance that almost half of the graduating students each year would turn 18 between January and their graduation.

Then throw in the limitations on when a child might start school. Some districts required them to be age five before the start of school while others allowed them to turn five a few weeks or months after school started. I, for example, had to wait a year because my birthday is in December. I started school when I was five, but graduated when I was 18. Over half of my graduating class (831 students) was over 18.

My point about rejecting submissions that state only "high school" wasn't that it isn't possible for a person to be 18 in high school. It was that high school implies under 18 for at least half of students. Data from multiple sources indicates the highest number of births occur between July and October. Assuming that a child starts school after achieving the age of 5 before the school year starts in August, 60% of those kids will graduate at the age of 17 at the end of May and would therefore would qualify as under-age per the rules on many story sites.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

My point about rejecting submissions that state only "high school" wasn't that it isn't possible for a person to be 18 in high school. It was that high school implies under 18 for at least half of students. Data from multiple sources indicates the highest number of births occur between July and October. Assuming that a child starts school after achieving the age of 5 before the school year starts in August, 60% of those kids will graduate at the age of 17 at the end of May and would therefore would qualify as under-age per the rules on many story sites.

I understand the potential percentages both ways, but object to generalizations that imply that merely mentioning that a character was in high school means that they are a minor. There is a 50/50 chance (or 40/60 by your definition) that they are of legal age.

 

[old_prof]

If you just day high school it’s very likely they are under age. There are two or three other years in a high school that are essentially all under age. And it depends on semester— almost ever senior is under age in September but only a fraction are in June

 

[darwin1859]

Huh. That’s… good news I suppose? It means the impact of LLM isn’t nearly as deleterious as I feared.

The flip side, of course, is that it makes recent long submission delays even less justifiable than they already were, given the site isn’t actually bombarded with thousands upon thousands of instances of AI slop like one might’ve suspected.

I hesitate to even post this because my dataset is tinier than tiny, but the linear regression line based on data from a few days in October to the last couple days suggests that published stories are growing at a small rate that would add up to +50 stories an an annual basis. So, take that with a huge grain of salt, but if more stories is succeeding, then Literotica seems to be succeeding.

I attribute that to the two original pilots still being in the seat.

The crap comes in after changes at the helm.

This is also my feeling. Maybe Laurel and Manu also got lucky. And it seems impossible that mistakes were not made, but they must have done a lot of things right to get to this point.

In the Anniversary post last November, she talked about offers to buy the site. I'm sure that would not have improved things from my POV.

 

[darwin1859]

Just noticed this thread in "Similar threads" that shows fewer stories being published daily (163.4/day on average for a week in early December 25).

 

[RocketGrunt]

In order to start 12th grade (Senior Year of Highschool) in California, you have to turn 17 years of age BEFORE the 1st of September of that year. The last day of instruction of High School in the Bay Area is the 3rd of June. There are 89 birthdays you can have that will have you turn 18 after graduation, and 276 birthdays you can have that will have you turn 18 before graduating.

More than three quarters of Highschool Seniors turn 18 before graduating. And in pornographic stories, that number is obviously 100 percent instead.