Favorite rejection quotes

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Szary

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Here's a thought, next time try writing to an agent about why they shouldn't accept your book. It's offensive, draggs on, steps on too many toes for too few reasons. I'd bet you'd getter a better reply than your standard 'I didn't like it but someone else might'.

-Szary
 

davesbad1

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This one must have taken the agent a LOT of time!

I got a manuscript back (after more than six months) and the only visible clue on it was the letter "R" scrolled rather sloppily on the title page over my name and book title. There was no rejection slip, nor a piece of agency stationery included. Most of the pages were dog-eared, of course, and the faint imprint of a coffee stain defaced page 12, but other than that? Nada.
(I assumed the "R" stood for Rejection, but since there was no code or glossary included with the return, I was forced to use my imagination. I was tempted to call the agent in Chicago, but since I was unfamiliar with their methods of communication, I decided against it.)
 

WendyNYC

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Behind you! Boo.
davesbad1,

You need to send it back to him with a big "F" and "Y" scrawled across his "R"
 

davesbad1

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That's a great idea. I'll keep that in mind. Everyone keeps telling me I need to be professional, but when dealing with these people, you can't help but want to let that primordial urge rip. . . .
 

Judg

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Seems to be general knowledge that JK Rowling was rejected quite a few times before HP was taken on. But my favourite is the urban myth (?) that an uber-famous author, for whose work publishers were gagging, submitted a ms. to a top Lit. Agent under an assumed name. Needless to say, said ms. was rejected. :Shrug:
Well, no, she was taken on very quickly actually.

The submitting a famous work under another name trick has been done many times. OF COURSE it gets rejected. The agent sees a prankster at work and can't be bothered to have any more of her time wasted by writing a personalized response. Form rejection. And most of them don't accept unsolicited manuscripts anyway, in which case it would be rejected unread. Form rejection again.
 

Bourbon Street

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This one made me laugh, then cry, then laugh again, then bang my head on the desk

"Dear Author, we're passing as we felt the prologue is too long and action-filled."

Excuse me? You're passing on my Historical Action-Adventure novel because it has too f***ing much ACTION and ADVENTURE?! Are you f***ing kidding me?!

{Driver! To the liquor store!}
 

J. R. Tomlin

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My all time "favorite" rejection (although I've gotten a few doozies lately):

Dear Jeanne,

You have a gift for pace and scene. However, this story doesn't seem to have a soul.


Edit: And the same short story that that editor said showed I have a "gift for pace?" Well, the next one said it moved too slowly. Yeah. Been one of THEM weeks.
 
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Thomma Lyn

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Here are three of my favorite rejection-weathering quotes:


"And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages - all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronized, put-down and underpaid person." ~ Doris Lessing


"Anybody can become a writer, but the trick is to STAY a writer." - Harlan Ellison


“As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I’m not sure that I’m going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says, ‘You are nothing,’ I will be a writer.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson in June 1959, age 21
 

Dragonfly45

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Here's a new one for me...I just got a query rejection because the agent says, "this sounds like a movie more than a novel." That's a new one...I hadn't gotten one like that before. What do you know?
 

GJB

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Big time West Coast agent wrote, "I really like your writing, the story held my interest all the way to the end, but I've learned that when I haven't followed my instinct I always regret it later, and my instinct tells me to pass."

My immediate reaction: Give me a flying break! Thanks for the useful comment. Now, several years later, I realize that might have been one of the most honest, really saying, "I don't know why the hay I'm passing, but I am."
 

Le Mot Juste

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"That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes I get TIRED of being so @%)#@x#*$# strong!

Finished my book at the end of July and started getting it out there in August. I know that's not a long time but I don't HAVE a long time (late bloomer, not a terminal illness, although, given some attitudes towards age, it might be considered as such by some!)

LMJ
 
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mikeland

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Here are my two favorite rejections. These are for two different stories.

"Quirky characters in a non-story. No thanks."

"One of our readers liked the story quite a bit. A second found the vibrating phone thing a bit too much."
 

Shady Lane

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I'm sorry about the delay in getting back to you. Now that have had a chance to take a look at your book, I am going to have to pass. The voice and the plot are not strong enough to grab and hold the reader's attention. I kept thinking, "so where are we going with this?" and that's not good. You have to add some element to the plot that make it more compelling. And at least one character has to be truly sympathetic, and I did not find that to be the case with any of them.

I guess the book is just not for me.




ha. I'd say not....
 

KikiteNeko

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Most Honorable Sir,
We perused your MS.
with boundless delight. And
we hurry to swear by our ancestors
we have never read any other
that equals its mastery.
Were we to publish your work,
we could never presume again on
our public and name
to print books of a standard
not up to yours.
For we cannot imagine
that the next ten thousand years
will offer its ectype.
We must therefore refuse
your work that shine as it were in the sky
and beg you a thousand times
to pardon our fault
which impairs but our own offices
-Publishers

-rejection letter from a Chinese publisher, from Louis Zukofsky's "A"
 

MiniMeEmma

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In the words or Rocky: “I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.”
Sylvester Stallone
 

JAG4584

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Not for me was commom

I guess in agent speak "not for me" is "thanks but no thanks"! Laugh!

For those reading don't give up as miracles do happen..or may be agents get so tired of queries that they give in finally not sure which but sooner or later the query battle you can win.
 

KikiteNeko

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I try to tell myself that I've read some CRAPPY books in my day. And if THEY managed to be published, I have a chance.

I guess in agent speak "not for me" is "thanks but no thanks"! Laugh!

For those reading don't give up as miracles do happen..or may be agents get so tired of queries that they give in finally not sure which but sooner or later the query battle you can win.
 

Seaclusion

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I actually got this from an editor a few years back.

"This is very good and we would offer you a contract now, but we don't have any more room in our upcomming catalog. I'm sure you'll place this with someone."

Thanks alot, I feel really good now.

Richard
 

shawnrohrbach

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Rejection

"Rejection; when you think about it, it happens." I said that, but I'm sure all I am doing is mouthing the wisdom of other successful people who recognized this a long time before I did.
 

Atlantis

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Some of my favourite rejection letters qoutes are:

Crash by J G Ballard
‘The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.'

Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde
‘My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.’

and
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
[FONT=Times New Roman,Times,serif]‘... overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’

[/FONT]
My all time favourite would have to be the one in my signature. Its from a Chinese publishing house. It always makes me laugh.
 

Shara

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I have a rejection letter from a major UK agency that says "we only take on new writers who are guaranteed commercial success".

I've never had a novel published. How do I know whether or not I'm going to be a commercial success???

I took that to mean, 'if you were a famous person, we would take you on no matter how rubbish your book was because we could sell it. But because you're not a famous person, we won't'.

Shara
 

KikiteNeko

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This one made me giggle, so I kept it in my inbox:


thank you for your submission, and sorry for the delay, but we are not interested.

peace
 
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