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Why do authors get rejection letters from publishers?
By Ron | November 12, 2009
Seeing “no” in a rejection letter never feels great but understanding the reasons may help. Publishers say no for a number of reasons. Some of these may have nothing to do with the material submitted. Let’s review the possible answers you may get from most any publisher.
No—the genre is oversaturated. The market goes through a band wagon twist of Simon says. Like television going through an overload of reality shows or courtroom dramas, when one success occurs everyone wants to follow the leader. In publishing you face overload in cycles such as devotionals, leadership, or apologetics. A recent example of having too many books on a topic was twenty books written and published as a rebuttal to the DaVinci Code. So you may have a great concept but too many others have already flooded the market.
No—the timing is wrong. Looking for a window of opportunity helps position a product. For example I would not have been interested in seeing any work on the history of the English Bible until recently. But now as we approach 2011, the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, this will be a great window of opportunity to promote all things Bible and how translations were and are used through history. So you may have a good concept but may have to wait for the timing or pitch the reason for the timing to a publisher.
No—try another publisher. Sometimes one publisher may say no because of the number of titles they can publish in a given period. Simon and Schuster’s “no” may rank fourth beneath their threshold of publishable material, but it might rank at the top of the list for another publisher.
No—this is not our genre. Not every publisher releases books in all genres. Publishers have niches and imprints that focus on certain markets. Purchase an annual writer’s guide. Study your topic of writing as well as who would be a good candidate to publish your book. You may want to pick several.
No—we don’t do poetry. Enough said about the subjective value of this material.
No—you are not the level of author we publish. Some publishers only accept proposals from proven authors. This reduces the risk and allows them to know from previous sales how to estimate the print quantity of the next book. Max Lucado is an easy bet on any topic he chooses to write because he has a following. Level may also be described as credibility. We do not need a marriage book written by someone divorced four times or a leadership book from someone without ethics or morals.
No—you do not have a significant venue to promote the book. Some publishers may risk taking on a new author but prefer that the author have a venue for self-promotion such as the speaking circuit, an audience of some magnitude, or other influence based on position. You will notice another major trend occurring in recent years of radio and TV personalities who are publishing. They have a sphere of influence built in based on ratings that translate into sales. Again the risk has been reduced for the publisher. This has become one of the three legs of the publishing tripod (The author, the venue, and the intellectual property or idea).
No—your writing is not adequate. Writing is much harder than public speaking even though they are closely related. Writing must communicate without the visual cues of gestures, facial expression, and without audile clues of inflection. The use of properly placed active tense verbs creates a mental picture much better than passive tense verbs. To use the terms of one of our editors, a mistake she hates is “when the author gushes” or uses too many adjectives or adverbs and it is obvious.
No—the cost is greater than the return. We recently turned down two products we saw to be great products with excellent content but the cost to bring them to market would be more than we would get back in sales because they required significant video production to complement the printed material. At the end of the day it is about numbers, the amount of books sold versus how much money is needed to bring it to market. Costs can be greater than most authors imagine. You have editorial, design, printing, sales, and marketing and in addition to other items you sometimes have ghostwriting costs.
My pet peeves:
Understanding original thought. Writers should never consider block text quotes to be acceptable unless they are compiling other works. Plagiarism is never acceptable and is thievery.
What I find disheartening is when a potential author says, “There is nothing else in the market like this.” I often name four or five bestselling books in that genre and ask if he or she has read any of them. If you do not read and read most of what is in your genre or topic of choice, then how can you consider yourself an expert in what you are writing?
Do your research. Take time to work up a great proposal. Publishers get a ton of submissions and it is not our job to triage all the manuscripts—that is what proposals do. We can quickly make a determination of interest from the proposal and that will be the litmus test of whether any of your sample chapters are read.
Topics: Book Reviews, Miscellaneous, Randall House Talk | 2 Comments »
November 13th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Great post and suggestions!
March 10th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Ron,
Thank you for this solid, inside information. Rejection is hard to handle, but now I have some empathy on how hard it is for the publishers too.
I am anxious to read an article on “How to Work Up a Great Proposal.” Please let me know if you have written it.
Thanks again, Ron.
Sincerely,
Brandon Mitts