Three thousand
It's hard to count exactly, but somewhere close to three thousand different authors have submitted stories to the Strange Horizons fiction department over the past three-plus years. Sure, nearly that many distinct authors submit to Gardner over the course of about three months (assuming few people are sending him multiple stories in a three-month period), but it still feels like a milestone to me.
We've had somewhere around 6500 submissions total, so each author has submitted an average of a little over two stories. Since a couple of authors have sent us over thirty stories, there are clearly a fair number who've only submitted once or twice.
Another interesting (to me) average: on average, roughly every other story we receive is by an author who's never submitted to us before.
