Rejection letters

The most common thing when trying to publish a book is to receive a rejection letter. But what does that mean? Does that mean your work is not good enough? Not necessarily.

Many famous authors received cruel rejection letters. Here are some excerpts from some of those letters:

• Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.
• Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.
• Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.
• Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.
• Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.
• The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.
• Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)
• H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
• Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.
• Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…
• Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.
• William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!
• Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
• Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
• George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
• Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
• Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … 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.

But that’s not all, that’s not all at all. Many famous authors were rejected many times before being able to publish their books:

• The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
• Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
• John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.
• Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.
• Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.
• Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.
• Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.
• Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.
• Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.
• The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.
• Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.
• Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters

So my opinion is: no matter what, keep going. Got a rejection letter? Great! Save it somewhere you can find it later and go send more manuscripts. Print this list and put it where you can see it, to inspire you, to remind you that you’re not alone. Do what you have to do. But don’t ever give up.