This is how many submissions it sometimes takes

A few of us have honed our skills to the point where we're ready to submit our work to publishers, in the real world, for real money.

I'm not in that group; but I hope to be, and I'm working toward that goal.

And I was curious as to how much rejection I might face, on the way to getting something published. Would my work be accepted on the first go? Maybe a few submissions? Maybe several?

Or more?

So I did some research; and this is what I found. Success doesn't come quickly; and rejection should be viewed, not as personal rejection, but simply as part of the game. And we should also keep in mind that many publishers have appalling taste, and couldn't recognize fine writing if it slapped them in the face.

With that in mind, here's a list of some pretty good stuff, and the number of submissions it took before the work was published. I hope you find this to be encouraging. >MC

Animal Farm by George Orwell - rejected 4 times
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling - rejected 8 times
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann - rejected 10 times
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer - rejected 14 times
Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis - rejected 15 times
The Peter Principle by Laurence Peter - rejected 16 times
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - rejected 16 times
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach rejected 18 times
Lorna Doone by Richard Doddridge Blackmore - rejected 18 times
Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl - rejected 20 times
M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker - rejected 21 times
Dubliners by James Joyce - rejected 22 times
Dune by Frank Herbert - rejected 23 times
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle - rejected 26 times
Carrie by Stephen King - rejected 30 times
Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen - rejected 33 times
The Ginger Man by James Patrick Donleavy - rejected 35 times
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - rejected 38 times
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison by Charles Shaw - rejected 44 times
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig - rejected 121 times!

Superb post! THANKS!

- curl

In SOPHIE'S CHOICE author William Styron's male character is a junior editor who rejects a book that becomes a major best seller with another publisher. One of my lowest rated LIT stories was bought by an indy movie maker.

All any of us know for sure is what sells, and editors are notoriously clueless.

All that shows is how much the paper assholes in the publishing world know about real talent and what people would want to buy/read

Dune. 30 times, that is staggering, and King over 20...yeah it pays to have a handful of arrogant schmucks deciding what we should all read.

50 shades interests me in the sense that James self published this originally and it was picked up by Random house.

I wonder if she had directly submitted it to publishers how many would have rejected it?

And those examples are one thing, now just imagine how many amazing authors were never published because they gave up after the "experts" said their books will never sell? There could be people out there that could have had best sellers, we'll never know.

This is why self publishing has really changed things for the better, on the author end you can publish whatever you want and hope it does something on the reader end? You get endless choices to read anything you want in any genre you want.

Let's face it the the only reason "lit style erotica" as in fairly hardcore has never hit the mainstream is the mainstream publishers have decided they will never give it a chance

And before someone says it, Shades was not published under erotica I believe it was "romance" and even though racier than previous books, nothing compared to ture erotica.

So for us pervs our genre is still in the hands of a couple of hundred morons who reject authors and books that later become famous.

I think a big part of this is that it's easier for publishers to go with an established name than to take a chance on someone new.

I read part of one book by Clive Cussler but couldn't continue after one horribly unrealistic exchange between two experts. It was an obvious example of the author intruding to pass a piece of information via dialogue. I put the book down and moved on, and I haven't given Cussler a second glance. How did this ever get past the writer, his agent, and his editor? Easy, he was an established writer making money for the publisher. The novel wasn't any better than half the stuff in the slush pile, but it was less risky, and it involved less work.

It's not just books.

Eventually, Decca Records rejected the Beatles, saying "guitar groups are on the way out" and "The Beatles have no future in show business,"

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles'_Decca_audition

lovecraft68 said:

All that shows is how much the paper assholes in the publishing world know about real talent and what people would want to buy/read

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I'm new to fiction, but I wrote motorcycle and automotive non-fiction for 30 years. I took all the rejection letters I received over my first ~10 years as a freelancer, and wallpapered my downstairs bathroom with them. It was the best place ever to sit looking for a reality check.

I eventually became VP of a small publishing house. I met few "paper assholes" in the industry, whatever that means. I met a lot of people like myself who had a very good grasp of what they could market and sell to their audience. They had a very good idea where they wanted to take their publishing house. A good book is not a good property for every publisher.

50 shades interests me in the sense that James self published this originally and it was picked up by Random house.

I wonder if she had directly submitted it to publishers how many would have rejected it?

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Publishers receive a large volume of unsolicited manuscripts. 50 Shades as published gives some idea of how bad the original submission must have been. It should rightfully have been rejected by every single publisher it was submitted to.

But you can't argue against "success". Once it was self-published and had a track record of sorts, less risk was involved for Random House.

You can't always predict what the public is going to like. That book received a lot of hype (went "viral" as they like to say these days) for whatever reason. Nobody should have been more surprised than the author and Random House.

And those examples are one thing, now just imagine how many amazing authors were never published because they gave up after the "experts" said their books will never sell? There could be people out there that could have had best sellers, we'll never know.

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Yea, it's a tough business. Freelancers who "give up" aren't cut out for the pressures of the business so it's Darwinian, not a conspiracy of "paper assholes".

However, a quick look at what does get published shows that a number of not so amazing authors do get published by the experts. The winnowing process isn't perfect in any of the arts.

This is why self publishing has really changed things for the better, on the author end you can publish whatever you want and hope it does something on the reader end? You get endless choices to read anything you want in any genre you want.

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You might say that, but from a reader's standpoint, I would disagree. When you remove the filters, some good stuff comes through that might have been erroneously filtered out before. But a lot of sludge oozes through as well.

I have yet to read a self-published novel, even ones that have been recommended to me, that I read completely through and didn't have buyer's remorse afterward, even for 5 bucks.

I'm NOT saying all self-published books are crap. I'm saying with no filter, the shear volume of crap overwhelms the relatively small volume of good novels self-published. An individual reader is not in a position to wade through all that looking for what they might like.

Filters are a good thing whether in publishing or news.

rj

Combat323 said:

I think a big part of this is that it's easier for publishers to go with an established name than to take a chance on someone new.

I read part of one book by Clive Cussler but couldn't continue after one horribly unrealistic exchange between two experts. It was an obvious example of the author intruding to pass a piece of information via dialogue. I put the book down and moved on, and I haven't given Cussler a second glance. How did this ever get past the writer, his agent, and his editor? Easy, he was an established writer making money for the publisher. The novel wasn't any better than half the stuff in the slush pile, but it was less risky, and it involved less work.

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Readers make their choices the same way that publishers do. It's impossible for a reader to deal with all the books published each year, and find something they like without some sort of filter. Name recognition is certainly an important filter.

So I got suckered into a Clive Cussler book that way too. I was looking for something light from someone I hadn't read before. I'd heard the name so I picked one from the large B&N offerings by this author. It was The Chase. Very possibly the worst commercial fiction I have ever read. I couldn't finish it. I would have thrown it in the trash except that it was on my nook. Deleting an ebook doesn't have the same impact.

At about the same time, I ran across Nelson DeMille's Word of Honor and followed with everything he wrote. I've since read a couple of them a second time.

rj

rjordan said:

Readers make their choices the same way that publishers do. It's impossible for a reader to deal with all the books published each year, and find something they like without some sort of filter. Name recognition is certainly an important filter.

So I got suckered into a Clive Cussler book that way too. I was looking for something light from someone I hadn't read before. I'd heard the name so I picked one from the large B&N offerings by this author. It was The Chase. Very possibly the worst commercial fiction I have ever read. I couldn't finish it. I would have thrown it in the trash except that it was on my nook. Deleting an ebook doesn't have the same impact.

At about the same time, I ran across Nelson DeMille's Word of Honor and followed with everything he wrote. I've since read a couple of them a second time.

rj

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You came in at the wrong time for Cussler. Go back to his early works. The first book of his I read was Raise the Titanic. This was long before Ballard found it so no one knew it wasn't in one piece.

I stopped reading his books not longer after he continued the series with Dirk's son, of the same name no less. The Chase is part of a new collaborate series. It was okay (imo) but I liked reading his books for the historical parts and other things I wouldn't normally think about.

One never knows when some tidbit of information will come in handy while trying to escape in a car racing down a ski slope.

rjordan said:

But you can't argue against "success".

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Apparently you can D), as posters here are still grumbling about the success of 50 Shades--while showing no appreciation that that series opened up a whole market for others to benefit from as well.

I agree that self-publishing (and more self-publishing in e-book form, I think, because it makes the work cheaper and more accessible) has opened up the market and served readers--in many cases because it makes small niche genres available. But most of the disparaging of going the publisher route is an attempt to buck the self-publisher up because he/she either couldn't get anyone else to take the risk and put up the front money for their works or they didn't even try to find a publisher. We've been round and round on this. Using publishers, I can three three times the number of titles into the marketplace as a self-publisher doing everything him/herself at her/his own total cost can. And I can focus on the part I like best--the writing.

someoneyouknow said:

You came in at the wrong time for Cussler. Go back to his early works. The first book of his I read was Raise the Titanic. This was long before Ballard found it so no one knew it wasn't in one piece.

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Good to know. Sometimes the early stuff isn't as good as the writer learns both the craft and the audience. Maybe this time the writer peaked early. I'll download Raise the Titanic and give him another chance.

Thanks,
rj

sr71plt said:

I agree that self-publishing (and more self-publishing in e-book form, I think, because it makes the work cheaper and more accessible) has opened up the market and served readers--in many cases because it makes small niche genres available.

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Very good point that I hadn't considered.

But most of the disparaging of going the publisher route is an attempt to buck the self-publisher up because he/she either couldn't get anyone else to take the risk and put up the front money for their works or they didn't even try to find a publisher.

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Publishing is the easiest production process there is, especially ebook production.
Self-publishing proves that. The hard part, and the most important part is marketing it. Putting up the money and taking the risks as you point out. THAT's what publishers get paid to do.

In the day, self-publishers were faced with having a couple pallets of books hot off the press sitting in their garage with no idea how to sell them. I remember running into authors with a car trunk full of books trying to get the local bookstore to take on 5 or 10 copies. They were also shocked at the deep discounts booksellers demand. When I was in the business, book retailers usually got 50% off list, and the bigger ones sometimes 60% off. I sold to wholesalers who would often demand and get 70% off, but they were moving a lot of books, and my costs dropped the larger the printing.

We've been round and round on this. Using publishers, I can three three times the number of titles into the marketplace as a self-publisher doing everything him/herself at her/his own total cost can. And I can focus on the part I like best--the writing.

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That's how it works best.