How many rejections did you get before you were published?

gingerwoman

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I had two rejections and three contract offers on my first published full length novel which is Wicked Wonderland. (I sent it to five places.)
Wicked Wonderland
comes out in print this month on the 5th. It is already available in ebook from Samhain Publishing.:)
I have other published work but it has all been short story length and one novella. I think the first short story I tried to sell for money had two rejections and sold to the third place I sent it to.
 
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Any published authors here? How many rejections...

How many rejections did you get before landing an agent?
 

Old Hack

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I've heard of writers who got just two or three rejections before finding an offer; I've heard of writers who got three or four hundred.

Neither is indicative of what you can expect when you submit. If your book is fab, and you target very specific agents and write extremely personalised queries, you might get very few rejections; if your book isn't so good, or if you query much more widely, you will probably get more. There isn't an average: you just have to get out there and query.
 

SentaHolland

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I didn't get an agent, I placed the book myself with HarperCollins after 4 years of trying everything I could think of. (It took me 4 years to write it, so that's 8 years of my life).
It was a hard, bitter road. Looks like it will be the same for my next book, although this one did extremely well (in the words of the editor). But I have to say it was worthwhile to be able to get thousands of people to read my story. Can't think of anything more important that I've achieved and I've done many things.
 

Jerboa

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I tried one novel with agents and have had about 20 rejections so far (it's on hold at the mo as I'm waiting for beta feedback before working on it again).

With the other two, I went direct to publishers. I had three rejections on one before I got offered a contract, and one rejection and one R&R on the other before I got a contract.
 

Undercover

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Countless times. Had 2 agents in the past, and still looking now. So it will be more countless times.
 

gingerwoman

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Cool stories, I hope you guys keep them coming. I'm thinking of going with a small press myself.
Be aware that there is a huge variety and some are MUCH more desirable than others. It's all about research.
 
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WeaselFire

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...how many times were you rejected before a publisher showed interest?
Zero. And you should get interest from your query letter on four out of five submissions. If you did the query letter right and it's targeted properly.

The only time you should get an immediate rejection is if the publisher/agent has just accepted a very similar work. The truth of the matter is that agents and publishers both need submissions, both are looking hard for good work and both are looking for new authors. Yet 90% of the submissions they receive are not appropriate for them.

I was talking with an agent who reps Christian fiction yesterday during lunch at a conference. She said she rejects several dozen submissions for adult-oriented material a week. She gets dozens of vampire/werewolf love stories submitted as well. She gets proposals for non-fiction all the time. She has people send a query letter that just says "Here's my book." She got a letter last week about why the Bible should be burned and suggesting a book deal for a new Bible.

Her submission guidelines ask for a query letter with first five pages pasted below it in the query email. She gets Word, PDF, Powerpoint and all kinds of other attachments, which she won't open. She gets entire books, with no query letter. She got an Excel spreadsheet attached to a query. She got a link to another agent's web site in a query to her.

Bottom line, the majority of authors don't understand what they are doing, or don't care. Or they think they are so good it doesn't matter. If you write coherently and follow the guidelines, you're already above 90% in the slush pile.

For the record, she just sold a book for a decent advance that is from an author who doesn't write very well. They are hiring a ghost writer to help and get the book in shape. So talent isn't as high on the list as most writers assume. :)

Jeff
 

WeaselFire

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His wife dug "Carrie" out of the trash. He threw it away, thinking it garbage. How many writers have done that?
I saw him at a conference just after Carrie was released as a movie and he talked about the experience. He did mention that, at the point he threw Carrie away, it was trash. It still took work to get it into shape.

He's also the only writer I've seen who actually seemed to like, even relish, the Hollywood aspect. It may have been new to him at the time, but he definitely was somewhat of an attention junkie. :)

Jeff
 

Little Ming

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Bottom line, the majority of authors don't understand what they are doing, or don't care. Or they think they are so good it doesn't matter. If you write coherently and follow the guidelines, you're already above 90% in the slush pile.

Obligatory link to SlushPile Hell.
 

juniper

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Bottom line, the majority of authors don't understand what they are doing, or don't care. Or they think they are so good it doesn't matter. If you write coherently and follow the guidelines, you're already above 90% in the slush pile.

I've heard this before and it's always encouraging. Follow the guidelines and there's a much better chance of having your work read. Seems simple, no? And yet, I guess many people don't ...
 

Hip-Hop-a-potamus

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I've heard this before and it's always encouraging. Follow the guidelines and there's a much better chance of having your work read. Seems simple, no? And yet, I guess many people don't ...

I just got back from a conference the first part of this month, and I'll echo this. From thinking I was still an incredible amateur, I am now convinced that I have my proverbial $%^& so much more together than the average writer.

I owe much of this to AW.

:)
 

noranne

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Zero. And you should get interest from your query letter on four out of five submissions. If you did the query letter right and it's targeted properly.

I don't think that's necessarily true. There is a lot of subjectivity in the whole process and saying that you're doing it wrong if you're not getting a >80% positive response rate seems misguided at best.
 

Old Hack

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I've heard this before and it's always encouraging. Follow the guidelines and there's a much better chance of having your work read. Seems simple, no? And yet, I guess many people don't ...

In every slush pile I've ever encountered (and there have been quite a few) the majority of the submissions were inappropriate for the publisher they were sent to. And by a large margin, too: fiction sent to non-fiction publishers, children's books sent to publishers of books for adults, and so on. It's astonishing how so many writers ignore the guidelines that are there to help them.

When you add to that the submissions that are handwritten or illegible, the writers who demand that you sign a non-disclosure agreement or similar before they'll let you see their work, the writers who demand 50% of the income from the book, or that you publish their work within three months because it is so topical, and so on and so forth, then it's amazing anyone ever finds anything workable in there.

So yep. If you submit your work appropriately you're already a long way ahead of the rest of the field regardless of how good your book is.
 

Becky Black

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Bottom line, the majority of authors don't understand what they are doing, or don't care. Or they think they are so good it doesn't matter. If you write coherently and follow the guidelines, you're already above 90% in the slush pile.

When I was doing my first submission back in 2010 I did the best editing I could, read up about writing a synopsis and query letter before I tackled them, and did the best I could with those. I researched the publishers and picked three whose requirements my story fitted. I formatted the MS three slightly different ways to fit the subs guidelines for those publishers. I put together my query exactly according to their guidelines. (Seriously, I have never taken as long over any emails in my life as I took over those three emails.)

I was determined that if I was going to be rejected it was not going to be for any kind of stupid avoidable error.
 
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Kevans

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Grin, add my wife and I to the zero list, we were recruited to write for our magazine. We went to a party at Anaheim world con, and did not escape until we were committed to a short story and two fact articles.

The above does not prove anything, except that success comes to the prepared, we were well versed in the needed technical subject so we got drafted when we were in the right place at the right time.

In essence prepare, stay ready, and strike when opportunity wanders by. (I use a club, but bear traps work too. Grin.)

Kevin
 

Phyllo

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Great to hear all those success stories! I will say, however, that in my view the publishing landscape has changed substantially in the past few years. I recall about a year and a half ago, after being turned down by approx. 60 or so agents, doing my research so that I might submit directly to a publisher. I was determined to submit only to publishers that paid advances, even if that advance was small.

I went to the library, sifted through the recent directories and digests for publishers in North America and the UK that accepted unagented submissions, prepared a list of about 50 or so that might be appropriate (my novel was historical fiction with a literary bent), then went online to supplement my research.

What I learned online was that many of those publishers on my list were either out of business, closed to submissions, or now only accepted agented submissions. Others made it known that they preferred agented material.

My list of 50 was whittled to 30. I had fifteen rejections (two that provided encouraging words) before I was offered a contract with a UK small press.

I think that with the narrowing of the gates to publication, the quality of material has to be better than ever to warrant consideration today
 

tko

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nah

I sent out a query one Sunday night, was rejected in a few hours. I think agents reserve Sunday for query catch up.

I got my first rejection in less than 24 hours. I think that must be some sort of record! LOL!!
 

tko

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I have a really hard time believing 4 our of 5. A phenomenal query letter, in a hot market, might get 3 out of 5, but 25% would normally be considered amazing.

There are a lot of good authors in this site, who have spent months polishing their queries in query letter hell, who have gotten zero interest with dozens if not a hundred queries.

There are best selling authors, selling millions of novels world wide, that got 10, 20, 50, a hundred rejections before one acceptance. Not sure how many of those were for the query, and how many were for the full, but you can bet it wasn't 4 out of 5.

You might want to read this post.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291559


Zero. And you should get interest from your query letter on four out of five submissions. If you did the query letter right and it's targeted properly.

The only time you should get an immediate rejection is if the publisher/agent has just accepted a very similar work.
Jeff
 

Fuchsia Groan

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I have a really hard time believing 4 our of 5. A phenomenal query letter, in a hot market, might get 3 out of 5, but 25% would normally be considered amazing.

There are a lot of good authors in this site, who have spent months polishing their queries in query letter hell, who have gotten zero interest with dozens if not a hundred queries.

There are best selling authors, selling millions of novels world wide, that got 10, 20, 50, a hundred rejections before one acceptance. Not sure how many of those were for the query, and how many were for the full, but you can bet it wasn't 4 out of 5.

Agreed. I've experienced a run of good luck with my submissions recently, but my full request rate with agents has ranged from 2 to 30 percent, and I've always followed guidelines. I can see having a much higher rate if you're laser-targeting agents for a particular niche topic, or if your book is unspeakably amazing and on trend, but it doesn't seem like the most common experience.

For instance, I queried agents who expressed interest in "dark YA" or YA and thrillers. That may seem pretty specific, but it covers a lot of differences in personal taste and sense of the market. One agent who read the full thought the book wasn't unique. Another had problems with the narrative structure. Another liked it the way it was. Yet others form-rejected the query pretty much instantly.

I could not have intuited from these particular agents' online info which one was going to love the book and which would have zero interest. (That would have saved me a lot of time, though!) I could only go by their general guidelines and hope for the best.
 
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kenpochick

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Agreed. 4 out of 5 is insane. Most estimates are that a 30% request rate means that your query is right on.
 

Old Hack

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It seems that a link to the wonder that is Slushkiller might be useful.

Write a good query, send it out to appropriate agents or publishers, and you're already ahead of most of the people who submit.
 

stephen andrew

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Yeah 4 out of 5 sounds insane. I've heard far more stories of persistence through hundreds of rejections before publication than instant successes. I've been querying for a couple months, probably 30 or so submissions so far, many personal rejections and several form rejections, but no success yet. I just keep re-working the query letter and keep going for it.