Famous Rejection Stories

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

Don’t feel bad if you’re rejected. The stories about famous authors being rejected by literary agents and publishers are legion. Here are some of my favorites. Share your favorite rejection stories here.

J.K. Rowling’s agent the Christopher Little Literary Agency received rejections from 12 publishers for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The 8-year old daughter of a Bloomsbury editor started the book and demanded to be allowed to finish it. Her father, the editor agrees to publish the book, but advises Rowling to get another job as she’ll never make any money as a writer. Her novels have combined sales of $450 million.

“Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.”
- Rejection letter received by Dr. Seuss. His books have sold over 300 million copies.

“You have no business being a writer and should give up.”
- Rejection letter received by Zane Grey. Over 250 million copies sold.

“Anthologies don’t sell.”
- Rejection letter received by Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen. Their Chicken Soup for the Soul went on to sell 125 million copies.

“It is so badly written.”
- Rejection letter received by Dan Brown. The DaVinci Code goes on to sell 80 million copies.

“We feel that we don’t know the central character well enough.”
- Rejection letter received by J.D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye goes on to sell 65 million copies.

Margaret Mitchell received 38 rejections from publishers before finding a home for Gone With The Wind. It goes on to sell 30 million copies.

Fourteen literary agents rejected Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. It sold 17 million copies and spent 91 weeks on the NY Times best seller list.

“An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”
- Rejection letter received by William Golding. The Lord of the Flies sells 15 million copies.

Agatha Christie was rejected continually for 5 years before landing a publishing deal. Today her book sales are in excess of $2 billion. Only William Shakespeare has sold more.

Drachen Jager · Sep 26, 2014

I heard God had to do three rounds of publisher queries before he found someone to publish the Bible. :evil

Seriously, though, good list, thanks for sharing.

Parametric · Sep 26, 2014

Many writers would kill to only ever receive twelve rejections like JK Rowling. I know plenty of people who racked up 100+.

mayqueen · Sep 26, 2014

Parametric said:
Many writers would kill to only ever receive twelve rejections like JK Rowling. I know plenty of people who racked up 100+.

Seriously. I'm probably at 400 and counting.

Parametric · Sep 26, 2014

mayqueen said:
Seriously. I'm probably at 400 and counting.

Yeah, exactly. I always laugh when people bring up JK Rowling as an example of persevering through rejection.

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

To prove how hard it is for new authors to get published, Jerry Kosinski used a pen name and submitted his bestseller Steps to 14 publishers and 13 agents. All of them rejected it, including Random House, the people who had published it.

Publisher Little, Brown & Company rejected Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. It went on to sell 10 million copies and win the Pulitzer Prize.

“We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”
- Rejection letter received by Stephen King. Carrie goes on to sell 1 million in the first year.

Parametric · Sep 26, 2014

I don't understand your point here. Not every single trade publisher is meant to accept every single publishable novel. Some readers still don't like Stephen King.

As for Jerry Kosinski, he submitted what appeared to publishers to be an entirely plagiarised manuscript, but he was shocked to be rejected?

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

mayqueen said:
Seriously. I'm probably at 400 and counting.

Why don't you self publish?

There's no reason to go through the agony of finding an agent or a publisher when it's quite easy to do it yourself.

I received only three rejection letters, one as flippant as, "We'll pass," when I discovered self publishing. Am glad I did. It gives you total control over your book's destiny.

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

Parametric said:
I don't understand your point here. Not every single trade publisher is meant to accept every single publishable novel.

Would think the point is obvious. Everyone, including successful authors have gone through the pain of being rejected by the traditional publishing industry.

Publishing is a business. They're out to make money. They style themselves as the gatekeepers of what's readable and what's not, but they've pulled numerous gaffs over the years.

Laugh if you like at JK Rowling's experience, but I'm sure every one of the publishers that rejected her are kicking themselves now.

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

Parametric said:
As for Jerry Kosinski, he submitted what appeared to publishers to be an entirely plagiarised manuscript, but he was shocked to be rejected?

This was just a story I'd heard. Did a little more research on it, and found this on Wikipedia:

In 1975, a freelance writer Chuck Ross, in order to prove his theory that unknown authors always find their books rejected, sent out excerpts from Steps to four different publishers, using the pseudonym Erik Demos. All four did not accept the sample. In 1977, Ross sent out the entire book to ten publishers, including Random House, which had originally published the book, and thirteen literary agents. Again, the book was rejected, also by Random House, having not been recognized, despite being an award-winning work.

An article on hoaxes.org goes into more detail:

In 1975 Chuck Ross was selling cable TV door-to-door, and dreaming of becoming a writer. However, he felt the odds were stacked against him since the publishing industry seemed incapable of recognizing talent.

To prove his theory, he typed up twenty-one pages of a highly acclaimed book and sent it unsolicited to four publishers (Random House, Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday, and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), claiming it was his own work. The work he chose for this experiment was Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski. It had won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1969 and by 1975 had sold over 400,000 copies. All four publishers rejected the work, including Random House, who was its original publisher.

Ross repeated the experiment in 1979. This time he submitted the entire book to fourteen publishers (the original four plus The Atlantic Monthly Press; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Harper & Row; Alfred A. Knopf; Seymour Lawrence; David McKay; Macmillan; William Morrow; Prentic-Hall; and Viking). He also used the pseudonym Erik Demos, in case someone recognized his name from the earlier experiment.

Again, every publisher rejected the work. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, publisher of Kosinski's Being There, commented, "While your prose style is very lucid, the content of the book didn't inspire the level of enthusiasm here that a publisher should have for any book on their list in order to do well by it." Houghton Mifflin, publisher of Kosinski's The Painted Bird, wrote:

Several of us read your untitled novel here with admiration for writing and style. Jerzy Kosinski comes to mind as a point of comparison when reading the stark, chilly episodic incidents you have set down. The drawback to the manuscript, as it stands, is that it doesn't add up to a satisfactory whole. It has some very impressive moments, but gives the impression of sketchiness and incompleteness.

Ross commented that, "Evidently, Kosinski is not as good as Kosinski when Demos is the name on the envelope."

Next Ross sent queries to twenty-six literary agents. Again, no agent offered to represent him. Ross wrote that, "No one, neither publishers nor agents, recognized Kosinski's already published book. Even more disappointing was the fact that no one thought it deserved to see print."

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_steps_experiment

Parametric · Sep 26, 2014

Theokles said:
Publishing is a business. They're out to make money. They style themselves as the gatekeepers of what's readable and what's not, but they've pulled numerous gaffs over the years.

Of course trade publishing is a business. So am I. Self-publishing paid a fair chunk of my rent over the last year, and I calculated my profits, did my accounts and paid my taxes like any other business. Surely anyone who makes an income from writing is in business, wherever their royalties come from? Aren't you a business too, if you sell via Amazon? :Huh:

cornflake · Sep 26, 2014

Theokles said:
Why don't you self publish?

There's no reason to go through the agony of finding an agent or a publisher when it's quite easy to do it yourself.

I received only three rejection letters, one as flippant as, "We'll pass," when I discovered self publishing. Am glad I did. It gives you total control over your book's destiny.

I don't think that's flippant.

It also gives you total responsibility - for editing, copyediting, proofreading, designing a cover, marketing, advertising, etc.

Theokles said:
Would think the point is obvious. Everyone, including successful authors have gone through the pain of being rejected by the traditional publishing industry.

Publishing is a business. They're out to make money. They style themselves as the gatekeepers of what's readable and what's not, but they've pulled numerous gaffs over the years.

Laugh if you like at JK Rowling's experience, but I'm sure every one of the publishers that rejected her are kicking themselves now.

I still don't get the point. Yes, most everyone is rejected at some point - so? Every actor has stories of rejection too, even very, very successful ones. Actors are even rejected when they're very successful, because not every actor is right for every part.

Not every book is right for every publisher or agent at every point in time.

Yes, of course it's a business. They're not the gatekeepers of what's readable or not; you're contradicting yourself. Publishers are the gatekeepers of what they want to publish.

The houses that rejected Rowling's work probably regret it, maybe not. Maybe it wasn't right for them, and it wouldn't have done well with them, for a variety of reasons.

It's not a meritocracy. You've got successful sellers on that list; it's not a list of literary masterpieces. Was the person who sent that to Dan Brown wrong? Was the person wrong because The Da Vinci Code was a big seller? Should the person have accepted something they felt was badly written because hey, people buy a lot of crap? What is the point?

Drachen Jager · Sep 26, 2014

Is that the lesson you've learned?

Publishing is hard, so just give up and self-publish.

That's fine if that happens to be your path, but to me publishing is not simply having a physical copy of your work. I'd like to see my novel in bookstores and in libraries, get it out there to the broader public and make enough money from it to have an impact on my family's finances.

Self-publishing won't accomplish any of that, unless you're a brilliant and tireless self-promoter, or your book has a magic something that helps it sell itself. The odds of seeing any kind of financial success from self-publishing are incredibly slim.

I'm not against it, if that's what you want to do then go for it, but it is not the best path for an author to take if they want to achieve my definition of "success".

All that aside, the rejection and failure I've had breaching the ramparts of the publishing world have forced me to constantly reevaluate and upgrade my writing. I wouldn't be half as good as I am today if I'd quit mid-way through querying my first novel and just published it myself. If for no other reason than that personal growth, I'd recommend writers try to publish their first three or four novels the traditional way before surrendering the game.

Parametric · Sep 26, 2014

Drachen Jager said:
Publishing is hard, so just give up and self-publish.

Drachen Jager said:
If for no other reason than that personal growth, I'd recommend writers try to publish their first three or four novels the traditional way before surrendering the game.

I don't think of self-publishing as "giving up" or "surrendering", FYI - I think that implies a value judgement. It's just one path out of several. And frankly, I need the money. :tongue

cornflake · Sep 26, 2014

Theokles said:
This was just a story I'd heard. Did a little more research on it, and found this on Wikipedia:

"In 1975, a freelance writer Chuck Ross, in order to prove his theory that unknown authors always find their books rejected, sent out excerpts from Steps to four different publishers, using the pseudonym Erik Demos. All four did not accept the sample. In 1977, Ross sent out the entire book to ten publishers, including Random House, which had originally published the book, and thirteen literary agents. Again, the book was rejected, also by Random House, having not been recognized, despite being an award-winning work."

An article on hoaxes.org goes into more detail:

"In 1975 Chuck Ross was selling cable TV door-to-door, and dreaming of becoming a writer. However, he felt the odds were stacked against him since the publishing industry seemed incapable of recognizing talent.

"To prove his theory, he typed up twenty-one pages of a highly acclaimed book and sent it unsolicited to four publishers (Random House, Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday, and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), claiming it was his own work. The work he chose for this experiment was Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski. It had won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1969 and by 1975 had sold over 400,000 copies. All four publishers rejected the work, including Random House, who was its original publisher.

"Ross repeated the experiment in 1979. This time he submitted the entire book to fourteen publishers (the original four plus The Atlantic Monthly Press; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Harper & Row; Alfred A. Knopf; Seymour Lawrence; David McKay; Macmillan; William Morrow; Prentic-Hall; and Viking). He also used the pseudonym Erik Demos, in case someone recognized his name from the earlier experiment.

"Again, every publisher rejected the work. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, publisher of Kosinski's Being There, commented, "While your prose style is very lucid, the content of the book didn't inspire the level of enthusiasm here that a publisher should have for any book on their list in order to do well by it." Houghton Mifflin, publisher of Kosinski's The Painted Bird, wrote:

Several of us read your untitled novel here with admiration for writing and style. Jerzy Kosinski comes to mind as a point of comparison when reading the stark, chilly episodic incidents you have set down. The drawback to the manuscript, as it stands, is that it doesn't add up to a satisfactory whole. It has some very impressive moments, but gives the impression of sketchiness and incompleteness.

"Ross commented that, Evidently, Kosinski is not as good as Kosinski when Demos is the name on the envelope.

"Next Ross sent queries to twenty-six literary agents. Again, no agent offered to represent him. Ross wrote that, "No one, neither publishers nor agents, recognized Kosinski's already published book. Even more disappointing was the fact that no one thought it deserved to see print."

People try this idiotic "experiment" all the time, with various famous works.

Note Ross' (and whoever wrote that on hoaxes.whatever) utterly unsupported conclusion that no one recognized it, because they didn't offer to represent it.

No one offered to rep it, or publish it. That's all he knows. He knows from the, what, exactly one personalized rejection he got that either someone was fucking with him (seems most likely to me, given the specific house that sent the single personal rejection), or someone at that house is a little dippy.

That's the entirety of what he "learned," besides how to waste people's time.

cornflake · Sep 26, 2014

Parametric said:
I don't think of self-publishing as "giving up" or "surrendering", FYI - I think that implies a value judgement. It's just one path out of several. And frankly, I need the money.

DJ can obviously speak for himself, but I took that as a direct response to the OP's 'why not give up and self-publish' and 'after three rejections, I ...' stuff. Not as a comment on a universality of self-publisher's decisions.

Fuchsia Groan · Sep 26, 2014

Honestly, I think selling creative work is always a gamble and always involves subjective judgments, along with market analysis that can't take account of trends yet to appear. Not to knock J.K. Rowling, but Diana Wynne Jones was writing similar books in earlier decades — as, I'm sure, were many other kids' fantasy writers. For whatever timely reasons, HP took off, and the rest is history. How could a publisher predict that?

There's a software program that Hollywood execs use to analyze screenplays and try to identify the future hits. Even that seems far from 100 percent accurate, and it ends up stifling creativity and enforcing conformist conventional wisdom, imho. (For instance: "People only buy tickets for properties whose names they recognize." Never mind that Guardians of the Galaxy, a name little known to those outside comics fandom, was the highest-grossing film of last summer on the merits of a fun story.)

I like being reminded that successful authors saw their share of rejections (God knows, so have I), but I don't deduce from that that anyone in particular, such as me, knows better than the "gatekeepers" of publishing. They're just readers like all of us, with preferences. I'd rather not replace readers with software.

And best-sellerdom isn't the only measure of literary success. I've adored many books that didn't sell well, and I'm glad somebody else liked them enough to give them a chance.

RaggedEdge · Sep 26, 2014

RE the number of rejections people accumulate, keep in mind:

Compared to when JK Rowling was querying (the Dark Ages :tongue

), electronic submissions have made it easier and cheaper for people to query, and therefore people are going to rack up a lot more rejections on average.

Add to that the fact that more young writers are querying before they've finished high school or college thanks to how internet savvy they are, odds are their writing chops aren't equal to their enthusiasm and query know-how. Thus, they're going to have a lot more rejections by the time their material is publisher-ready than someone who was as old as Rowling (early 30s when HP sold).

nealraisman · Sep 26, 2014

Okay but I received a rejection on my self-publishing!!

wampuscat · Sep 26, 2014

Theokles said:
There's no reason to go through the agony of finding an agent or a publisher when it's quite easy to do it yourself.

While I'm happy for any writer to find the path that his right for him/her, I disagree that self-publishing is easy. Successful self-publishers do a tremendous amount of work. You have to coordinate or make your own cover, hire or edit your own work to perfection, format or hire someone to format your work, etc. And that's before you even factor in being shouldered with all of the marketing. I think it's great that there are multiple publishing avenues out there, but I think they all demand a great deal of hard work, perseverance, etc. It's just a matter of what avenue fits you best as a writer.

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

I thought this was a board regarding rejection. My only thought on starting this thread was to share some stories that might help people realize lots of authors have a hard time getting published. It's something that binds us together. Unfortunately, I must have expressed myself rather poorly, as I feel like I'm getting pelted with eggs every time I open my mouth.

I like eggs. So you're going to have to work harder to run me off.

I've worked as a writer most of my life, mostly as a journalist. Though I've written magazine articles, I've probably helped more people get their articles' published than I have published myself. Currently I work in advertising. My foray into book writing is recent, and although people have commented that self publishing is hard, I suppose it is for some, but not for all of us. How hard is it to read instructions on how to format your manuscript? How hard is it to edit your own material? The only thing I couldn't do was the cover. One of the graphic designers I work with did it for me. The only money I've spent is on marketing through some services like BookBub and eReader News Today, but even that's hardly taken much time or effort.

I suppose everyone's goals are different. Mine is not to make a million bucks or get on the New York Times best-seller list. My goal has simply been to get read. Due to some nice reviews, for 10 months my book was the highest rated in its category on Amazon, which has gotten the book into people's hands, but it's not making me rich. I'm just happy it's out there and people seem to enjoy reading it.

Drachen Jager · Sep 26, 2014

cornflake said:
DJ can obviously speak for himself, but I took that as a direct response to the OP's 'why not give up and self-publish' and 'after three rejections, I ...' stuff. Not as a comment on a universality of self-publisher's decisions.

That was my intent, yeah, thanks.

When I wrote it, it was the next message down, so I thought it would be obviously a response to the OP's post, but a couple of people cut in front of me while I was typing.

I'm not anti-self-pub, it depends on what you want from writing, but IMO querying under a dozen agents and giving up is simply not even trying.

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

Parametric said:
Of course trade publishing is a business. So am I. Self-publishing paid a fair chunk of my rent over the last year, and I calculated my profits, did my accounts and paid my taxes like any other business. Surely anyone who makes an income from writing is in business, wherever their royalties come from? Aren't you a business too, if you sell via Amazon?

Congrats to you! For any writer to say they are able to survive by the skill of their pen is admirable.

cornflake · Sep 26, 2014

Theokles said:
I thought this was a board regarding rejection. My only thought on starting this thread was to share some stories that might help people realize lots of authors have a hard time getting published. It's something that binds us together. Unfortunately, I must have expressed myself rather poorly, as I feel like I'm getting pelted with eggs every time I open my mouth.

I like eggs. So you're going to have to work harder to run me off.

Why in the world do you think that's anyone's goal? If you say things, people will respond. It's not a fight.

I've worked as a writer most of my life, mostly as a journalist. Though I've written magazine articles, I've probably helped more people get their articles' published than I have published myself. Currently I work in advertising. My foray into book writing is recent, and although people have commented that self publishing is hard, I suppose it is for some, but not for all of us. How hard is it to read instructions on how to format your manuscript? How hard is it to edit your own material? If you're going to say that, probably best not to have a run-on as the first sentence in your book. The only thing I couldn't do was the cover. One of the graphic designers I work with did it for me. The only money I've spent is on marketing through some services like BookBub and eReader News Today, but even that's hardly taken much time or effort.

I suppose everyone's goals are different. Mine is not to make a million bucks or get on the New York Times best-seller list. My goal has simply been to get read. Due to some nice reviews, for 10 months my book was the highest rated in its category on Amazon, which has gotten the book into people's hands, but it's not making me rich. I'm just happy it's out there and people seem to enjoy reading it.

If someone's goal is to 'get read,' self-publishing is an unlikely route to accomplishing it.

Everyone has different goals and different ideas of how to achieve them.

Theokles · Sep 26, 2014

Drachen Jager said:
I'm not anti-self-pub, it depends on what you want from writing, but IMO querying under a dozen agents and giving up is simply not even trying.

Hey, if traditional publishing works for you, good for you. From the reading I've done, it's not a path I want to go down.

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