Rejection

Published on by thelonelyauthorblog

Without a doubt this is the most whined about topic in writing forums. When I receive a rejection letter there are two thoughts that automatically come to my mind. 1) My query didn’t induce enough enthusiasm in the agent for them to request a sample of my work. 2) The first five pages (my brief sample included in the submission) contained faults or weaknesses that lead the agent to conclude the novel is unmarketable (or worse. LOL). There are many reasons why an agent may not want to see your work; not currently looking for that genre, already has too many writers, etc. I prefer to be hard on myself and take the blame.

My attitude: my work or presentation could have been better. We as writers need to be honest with ourselves when it comes to the rejection. Taking on this attitude can only make us better writers and marketeers. Blaming the literary agents may be easier, but that doesn’t force us to view our own work with a critical eye. Were your first five pages as tight as they can be? Is your hook strong enough to attract interest? Are you presenting this manuscript in the right way?

For me, the most difficult and frustrating part of this process is not receiving any feedback. Not knowing what part of your presentation query, sample pages, or synopsis lacked appeal makes it so challenging. The process as it currently stands, leaves you trapped in the twilight zone (or in a lonely literary hell like a car caught in a ditch of mud and unable to escape). It is a shame agents don’t use a response form letter with a list of options they could check off to inform you what they didn’t like. For example; weak query, synopsis vague, writing not up to par, too many typos or errors,or even a simple I don’t like you. (I’ll accept any kind of criticism at this point). As crude as this may seem, it would provide invaluable information.

Any kind of input would be great as long as it isn’t destructive criticism (see photo).

What do you think?

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114 thoughts on “Rejection”

  1. I agree, feedback is a wonderful luxury. I’ve had a few agents who’ve done that for me, and it was enormously helpful. I always send a thank you to let them know I appreciate the feedback, even if the query was rejected.

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  2. Carrie, Yes it is a wonderful luxury. Great idea sending a thank you note for any feedback. I imagine you didn’t get many rejections. I will keep your suggestion in mind. Thanks for stopping by.

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    1. LadyFi, not only a slow killer, but for me a silent killer like hypertension.
      I haven’t received any criticism from my queries, so I am left wondering is it my query, the synopsis, or the five opening pages. Hey, thanks for stopping by my page to comment. Really appreciate it. .

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  6. Don’t you love that rude, invisible feeling? I used to send out a lot of visual art and be ignored and rejected, and finally acceptance when the wind was out of my sales. After researching the book industry and discovering over 95% of advances paid out never are recovered by the books sales and that the author is 100% responsible for marketing the book, I have to scratch my head and ask, “What good is a publisher other than keeping the price down under indy publishing and a stroke for the ego? (somebody likes me, they really like me!) You can always make your price work across all spectrums by offering digital versions. As artists, we no longer need to wait for approval from the gatekeepers. We can swim out to our ships and get on with our lives by thinking outside the box. Good luck!

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  9. Feedback is absolutely necessary if we are expected to improve some aspect of our writing that may be weak. I know agents spend a lot of their time reading but how difficult is it, really, to write a paragraph saying: dear writer, thanks for your submission but we had the following concerns….or…dear writer, we are not looking for any material in this particular genre at this time…..

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    1. That is why I had to turn to blogging. I have attended many writing groups and received wonderful feedback. And now I am communicating with a much larger writing community. It has been a wonderful experience. It is upsetting that we don’t get any feedback. Why couldn’t they have a form letter they check off fr mailed queries. Or three or four prepared form letters for the different reasons they reject a query. IN this way they provide some sort of feedback. Hey, thanks for stopping by to comment.

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      1. I agree, Andrew…at the very least a standard response letter of rejection should include a check list of items to let the author know why a project has been rejected…

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            1. Coincidence or not; only this morning I saw in a shopwindow this title of a book “Your moment is here and now”. Obviously, a self-help book, the kind of which I will never open, but that is of course a personal opinion.
              I will certainly visit this blog more often! Greetings.-

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  10. I love what you say about this.
    Rejection is a part of life and some of us avoid it like the plague. I think if we avoid it all together, we miss out on learning valuable things about ourselves and serious building of character.
    In my other professions I get rejected a lot, but it leads to thinking about other ways of being in the world.
    As a writer our heart and soul is put into our work, and it can be easy to get crushed by rejection, especially where no feedback is offered.
    It’s important to never give up and trying new things.

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    1. Ever since my senior prom I had to deal with rejection. Seriously, it’s a part of life. We need to look at it as a learning lesson to see what we can improve in ourselves and our work.

      Kendra, the most important thing is when we get a rejection from a publisher or an agent, we can’t take it personally. The way things are today, we have no way of knowing if they even read our query or sample pages. So, a no leaves us in the dark when it contains no feedback. Thanks for stopping by my page to comment.

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  11. Good marketing people will tell you that it takes at least 7 “touches” to develop any kind of relationship with an agent, editor or whomever. Keep going back to the person… If you really want to work with him/her.

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  12. Submitting material for publication sounds even more impersonal than job interviewing. Material rejection sounds very black/white and there are no shades of grey. Maybe that’s for the best because any feedback would likely be “light” on substance anyway. When interviewing for a job you can be led to believe you are perfect for the position and then all of sudden you get no call back nor even any formal rejection. And of course in this age of litigation we can’t expect any, can we? No, whether submitting your work or applying for work one can only plug away and not get discouraged. If we want honest feedback on either our friends or loved ones will likely have to suffice!

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  13. Nice post and I agree totally. It also follows some in other types of work. The simple answer of not responding or saying not interested is a norm. I have re learned things and when I can I rattle off a lot of posts, changing styles and try to keep it interesting. I have realized the past couple of months to make some changes and they have helped. I have a couple subjects that I am going to publish on Kindle soon. I have to break some of it up as I could feasibly get a small series. I have to search through my categories and the 2-3 I plan on publishing and see if there are any I have not added to a newer category. 🙂

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    1. Thanks for sharing that information. Writing is a challenge and getting feedback from professionals is almost impossible. That is why I started the blog to get feedback from the writng community. Thanks for the follow and stop for stopping by.

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    1. Oh, God. Thank you so much. Of course criticism should be constructive and delivered in a positive way. That would make us better writers. Thankfully, we have this blogging community to help each other. Thanks for the comment.

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      1. I like it–very cool 🙂 I remember getting the red pen in grad school… I actually felt at peace with the world when my prof wrote StuPiD on my paper. 🙂 aww those were good times.

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  16. The graphic cracked me up! I burst out laughing. I’ve had my share of rejections and it gets easier each time. I do get annoyed with the instant rejections and I doubt many of my queries are even read, but I get it, agents are busy, they’re people. I don’t take it personally. I did land a small press publisher for 6 books, and through their process, I learned a lot about writing, editing, and the business in general. I decided to start self-publishing a year ago, and I’m glad I did. I would hop aboard a big five publishing house given the chance, but small press offers little in the way of marketing and that’s where I find the greatest challenges. I’m off on a tangent here. I guess my point is…queries are hit or miss. If you get tired of waiting, there are alternatives 🙂

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      1. I find marketing my traditionally published books very difficult. I have no control over pricing so I can’t run any discount promos. Even though the books’ prices are higher, my cut of the profit is so slim that advertising costs are almost never recovered. I also like control over timing. My trilogy took 2 years to get through the publisher’s queue. They did a nice job, but yeesh, I was losing my mind. Much happier now 🙂

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  19. wow another scroll scroll scroll —so i would just continue to send them out and take rejection like a five year old, drink, smoke (i quit) drink a bit more, swear at your wife (my hubby) and start over until someone accepts you. you have talent. or self-publish.

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  20. I sent in about fifty pages of the beginning of a story I’m working on and it was rejected. The email I got said others scored higher but didn’t really say how I scored. I know they can’t take the time to explain everything, but something would be nice.

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  21. I aspire to write a novel someday myself. So in a way, your post was encouraging and informative. Keep up. One day you’ll get a publisher. Who knows, even a spot on the NYT bestsellers list? 🙂

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        1. Nice. Don’t let the idea of a novel intimidate you. When you start flowing in your writing you can get it done faster than you think. A page a day gives you 365 at the end of the year. Bam there is your novel. Good luck and keep me posted.

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          1. Wow. I never thought of it that way. Many thanks for the idea. I will keep you updated whenever there’s any development regarding my book. In the meantime, I will keep enjoying your superb posts and hopefully will enthrall you with some of mine.

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          2. Day 1: New Year; day 2: getting used to the new dates; day 7: national holiday; day 15: dad’s birthday; day 20; provincial holiday; day 29; electricity falls out. :-).
            Of course, I’m exaggerating; I wish I could have followed your advice. A certain amount of discipline is absolutely necessary, but I must admit my lack of perseverance. Being 83 now, I have only written some short stories and keep updating my memoirs – which, by definition, I will not be able to finish – and I don’t think I will ever publish the novel I started twenty-odd years ago; still I find enormous pleasure in trying to write and be famous among friends and relatives.
            Cheers!

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              1. Not sure if I answered your question, sorry if this is a duplicate. I’m trying to find the blog a friend once made for me, but then I was attracted to something else. As soon as I learn how to upload stuff, I’ll let you know.

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                  1. In one of his interesting opinions on learning, Richard Feynman says something like being glad when a hypothesis turns out to be wrong. Because that means that Nature has another lesson to teach us.
                    So my wish is not losing my wish to learn…

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  22. I have stuck my toe into the publishing world only one time and I was so hard on myself. I did the shoulda, woulda, coulda crap on myself for days on end. When I could think unemotionally about what I had submitted, I realized that I should have, in your phrase, tightened up what I had written and made it so much less clunky.

    And maybe going through this process is kind of like a job interview: there are SO many conflicting pieces of advice out there on how to set up your resume, how to act and present yourself in job interviews, whether or not you should send a thank you after the interview, etc. And like you mentioned there is also no feedback involved that can give you a reality check on how to do a better job of writing the next time.

    There are always editors assigned to contracted authors, correct? Then why can’t the publishing industry have editors give constructive criticism of the submissions of the most not-quite-there-but-so-close promising writers? It would immensely help those writers and it would ultimately benefit the publishing industry as well, wouldn’t it?

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      1. Do the people who are great writers know that they are great writers? How do they know that they are great writers before they get their stuff published or even truly looked at by a publishing company? Maybe there should be pre-publishing departments set up so that writers’ stuff could be submitted. Then fair and honest critiques could be given that would be extremely helpful.

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  23. While agree with everything you said about rejection and criticism, a good dose of self confidence is important too. Didn’t JK Rowling get rejected like 27 time for Harry Potter? Point is, she was rejected A LOT but she knew in her heart the books were good so she kept plugging away at it. So while I think accepting constructive criticism is crucial, I think never giving up is just as important.

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  24. Getting a book published just keeps getting harder and harder. Years ago, (before my first husband died and I couldn’t write a word for years after) when I submitted to agents, most actually told me why they wouldn’t take me on. Some letters were brief, some went into great detail. I learned from each and every one. Eventually, I secured an agent, and she submitted my manuscript to publishers. They also stated why my manuscript didn’t suit them.
    Re my current WIP, I submitted many times last year, and was turned down with the standard form letter–if I recieved any sort of response whatsoever. I decided something must be wrong with my story, so I hired an editor, and am currently doing a complete rewrite. I want to go the tradition route (it seems more validating) but may consider self-publishing.

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      1. It depends on how thorough an edit you want–anything from just correcting spelling, grammar, and punctuation, to suggesting ways to improve story and structure. And how experienced the editor is. Cost can range from around $500.00 to a couple of thousand dollars, depending on the length of your manuscript.
        I hired a fellow WordPress blogger, who is also an editor. Since we are friends, he only charged me $450.00. To me, it was money well spent. He pointed out flaws and weaknesses I hadn’t seen, and gave wonderful feedback. Years ago, agents or publishing houses performed this service for the writers they took on, but not anymore. A lot of self-published authors hire the services of an editor.
        It’s hard to view one’s own work with a critical eye.
        I hoped I helped a little. I don’t know much, but am happy to share what I have learned.
        Kathy

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              1. You can Google it. It’s a free (or you can upgrade to a paid premium plan) that you run your writing through and it checks it for possible errors. It highlights and lists them one by one alongside your document, and you can either accept or reject their suggestions. It spotted where I had used oar in a sentence, when I had meant to use ore–spellchecker doesn’t catch things like that. You just create an account and it creates a plugin to your word processing program. I love it…have the paid upgrade now.

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                  1. That’s the one I got.
                    Grammarly isn’t perfect…we do creative writing, and I don’t think it grasps that concept; but it points to potential errors, which is a good thing. Most of the time I tell it to ignore, but I do incorporate quite a few suggestions.

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    1. That is true. Any person who wants to improve their writing (or whatever work they don’t) needs to be prepared to accept criticism. I look forward to it. I want my work to be the best that it can be. Thanks for stopping by to comment.

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  27. Yes! Something like that happened to me last week with my memoirs.
    A grandson-in-law liked them very much, and he also underlined why, but he also allowed himself to make the friendly comment that, here and there, he found me somewhat “too” distant, reserved. I think I understand his criticism (he is the second reader who made this observation on other writings of mine), and I will ask him to point out the episodes he refers to. However, I’m sure I have done my utmost, so rewriting those events in a less distant manner would force me to use wordings I ‘m afraid I wouldn’t have chosen spontaneously.
    I hope I will not come through as a stubborn or arrogant person. Cheers.

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  28. Sorry for commenting so late, just discovered this and wanted to say hello! I’m happy you found my blog, yours looks awesome! I’m a new writer, doing the self published thing after being rejected myself. In fact posting about that today. Glad to have met you!

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