The Sting of Rejection

Chances are, if you’re a writer, you’ve experienced the despair of rejection. You’ve produced a book, article, blog, or short story that you’re sure is really something. It’s the best thing you’ve ever written. The people who have read it think it’s great. You’re really proud of it.

You’ve done everything right. You’ve selected agents that are looking for the genre you write in and follow all of their selection criteria. They’ve got to want it, right?

Publishing, sadly, is a commercial enterprise. It’s about business. If an agent or publisher is going to invest their time and expertise into a book, they have to be sure they’ll be able to sell it. They need to make back at least the money and time they’ve spent on it, and preferably a great deal more.

That’s why we are seeing such a huge increase in the number of celebrity books. Readers are, sadly, much more likely to read a book authored by their favourite celebrities than any other books, even if the chances are strong that the celeb didn’t write it themselves. I don’t include myself in this number. I have no interest in celebrity books, except for books about Nelson Mandela. I know a few of you reading this will be the same.

Whether you do or you don’t, the fact is that publishers know that people will buy books from well-known, high-profile people. To an extent, they need to balance that against the other stories they are getting sent in by the thousands to consider. We can disagree on the balance, and certainly, I do not agree with where the balance sits at the moment, but we cannot disagree that publishing is a business – that is a fact.

You’re likely to have been told that you need social media coverage. In fact, in one of my most recent rejections, I was told not to come back to them until I had 500k followers. I immediately dismissed that agent from my list to ever submit to again. Why? Because every agent has the same criteria, some will consider the book before rejecting you. Every agent will need you to be prepared to and be in a position to promote your own book. Not many are sufficiently cynical that they will make it their sole criterion.

I’m writing this on the night I got one of my harshest rejections. The publisher said, ‘The writing was readable’. I can’t pretend that didn’t sting. I had genuinely thought as someone who has published books and whose ghostwritten books have been published in some numbers, I was past the ‘readable writing stage’.

The question is not whether we will get rejections. We will. The only people who don’t get them are those who never send their books out to be considered. I was at an author event recently where one of the very successful authors stated his fourth book was published. He had received 200 rejections by then. That’s probably about right, and in Vaseem Khan’s case, he is objectively a good writer who tells a good story.

The question is how we handle them. Tonight, I downed tools. It’s hard to write the next book of a series when the first has just been rejected out of hand. The rejector is not the only rejection this book has received. The first claimed ‘the premise was interesting’. Better, but no cigar, as the old saying goes. It’s still with another two digital publishers for their feedback, and I can’t pretend that I don’t have a favourite I’m hoping I will like it sufficiently to agree to publish it. I intended to send the book out to more publishers if someone didn’t pick it up, and tonight the first thing I did was to send it out to another one. I have found another with more specific submission criteria, so I will submit it to them tomorrow.

I don’t want to dance on the ceiling, but I must take my own advice. I am not sitting by my inbox waiting for these emails. I am nearly finished my next writing project. I move on, and that is my advice to everyone. If you are already well into your next book, then the book you’re querying with agents and publishers will not feel like the ‘be-all and end-all’.

Most of our first books will not be published. We may be Vaseem Khan and be lucky enough for our fourth book to be published by someone else. Of course, you can publish your book any time, so if you’re not bothered about who publishes it, then you can have your book out there any time.

My response to immediately find other digital publishers to send my book to is what I advise you to do. More than four submissions are required. Statistically, the chances are that you will not find an agent or publisher in that number. I will send out to at least 20 agents or publishers before I consider whether this book is or is not ‘the one’ that someone else will commit to publishing.

You’re probably sick of hearing me say this, but those who succeed in the publishing industry are those who persist!