Writing Tools: Rejection

Why the most important thing about getting punched in the face is getting back up and learning from the experience.

Look, I won’t sugar-coat this, if you are a writer, then you need to be ready for criticism and rejection. Every writer has some daydream about everyone loving the thing they wrote, about rewards and accolades, and about movie deals and book tours.

Outside of some specific instances of nepotism and/or ridiculous luck, you are unlikely to go straight into something like that. Far more likely is a situation where you either start in the self-publishing lane or you shop for an agent in the Trad Pub route.

With either of those routes, you’re going to run into rejection.

Let’s talk rejection in Traditional Publishing, first off, and why it is important to take it well and to learn from it. I’ve spoken with publishers who receive tens of thousands of submissions a month (this is why most of them have moved to agent-only, by the way). The gatekeepers thin those submissions down in an utterly ruthless manner, because they have no other choice. Didn’t include a cover letter? Gone. Didn’t follow submission instructions? Gone. Uses some weird font or format or file type? Gone. Wrong genre or sub-genre for the agent or publisher? Gone.

Typically a rejection for those reasons gets a “Thank you for submitting, this isn’t what we’re looking for at this time,” rejection (assuming they respond at all, which many don’t). It’s the thanks for playing but we didn’t bother to read even the first line. They have to be this pragmatic about it because this is the publishing equivalent of triage. If the writer submitting it can’t be bothered to follow the directions, then they can’t have cared enough about the story for it to be that good, right?

Why it is important to take a rejection like that: If you get one of those fast-return rejections, it tells you to look back at the submission guidelines and see what you missed. Forgot to number the pages or put it double-spaced, or in the very-specific font that the agency requested? It teaches you attention to detail. There’s a story about Van Halen who put a stipulation in their contract that they wanted a bowl of M&Ms with no brown ones. It was a sign to them whether someone read the contract, and if they hadn’t, they walked. Being a partner with an agent, or publishing through a publisher is rather the same, and they (rightfully so) want authors who can follow simple instructions.

After that first screening, it gets to slush readers. These are either unpaid interns or volunteers who actually look at the manuscript. Depending on the agency or publisher, they may give it a first line, first paragraph, or first page before they give it a rejection. This is again a ruthless effort. I have read slush, it is a wholly awful experience. There are some slush readers who will grind through entire chapters of awful writing.

Generally, though, if the slush reader doesn’t get hooked in the first chapter, it gets another form letter rejection. What you should take from this sort of a rejection is that you need to work on the Hook for your novel. Maybe you need to change where you start, maybe you need a better opening line. This is where polishing your novel needs to happen. Again, there is nothing personal about a rejection like this, it is simply among the thousands of submissions, yours didn’t stand out enough for a deeper look.

So what happens after your story makes it past the slush? Well, then it goes to a second tier or even the main agent/editor, depending on the size or scale of the company. Depending on the recommendation from the slush reader, they might read the first three chapters or they may just skim the book. You may get a rejection at this point because it doesn’t quite match what they’re looking for, or there’s character or plot issues they don’t like. Or, if, say, your book is an Urban Fantasy novel about a shapechanging warlock who solves crimes, and they just published or sold a shapechanging warlock who solves crimes book by another author, they may decide it is too close to what they’ve already got and reject it on those grounds.

This kind of rejection, because of the length of the screening process, could take months or even years. These kind of rejections often come with a personalized response. “We really liked your manuscript, but the plot line about the warlock’s familiar was a little rough” or “the romance between the warlock and the succubus felt a little forced.” Stuff like that is valuable feedback for your writing. File it away.

What’s the appropriate response to a rejection like that? Sending a quick thanks for their time and consideration. What’s not appropriate? Sending an angry tirade about how they will rue the day that they never published your masterpiece.

Look, I’m an author, I get emotionally invested in my writing, and I hope if you’re a writer, you do as well (or else you probably aren’t writing stuff that people will want to read anyway). It is easy to take a rejection, any rejection, as a personal slap in the face. Most of the time, it isn’t. It’s about as impersonal as can be (we’ll talk the rest later). These rejections are purely based upon whether the agent or publisher feels the book, on its own merits, will be successful with them. I’ve heard of fantastic books being rejected because that particular agent didn’t have the contacts or know what to do with it.

Don’t go on attack mode. Don’t take a rejection personally. It isn’t about you. It’s about the book itself. Take what you can from the rejection, understand the context of it, dust yourself off, and move on.

I have heard of multiple authors getting burned by agents and publishers for being difficult in the submission process. Angry responses and online tirades about being rejected are excellent ways to ensure that all your future submissions get an automatic form response (they can fully automate those, you know). Do enough of it, and you get a reputation for being difficult, and that can kill your career before it starts, which leads into the next point.

What about when the rejection is about you? Well, there’s an ugly truth in that some books are rejected over who the author is, because of things like personal politics, interpersonal behaviors, or online behaviors. That’s also how some people get million dollar advances, though, again, because of their social media following or their politics or identity. This is often a situation where there really isn’t anything you can do about it. Some agents and publishers (and even book-sellers) won’t touch people who they see as “damaging” to their brand. There’s not much you can do in that case, other than shop around for other ones and keep going. Typically, in this case, you either won’t get a response or you’ll get a form rejection.

Again, don’t go off on a public social media rant about how it was because the agent/publisher is evil/sadistic/hates small children. Because, first off, you don’t know unless they’ve said something to you directly (and most often they won’t). Second, agents and publishers are people who just want to do their jobs and if you make it difficult to do their job, you become the problem, not just to them, but you develop a reputation that will spread around.

What about rejection in the Independent Author world? Well, the good and bad news is you skip all the other gatekeepers and get straight to the readers, so they’re the ones accepting or rejecting your book through cold, hard cash. This is where you really have to be able to take it on the chin. Whether you’re pitching your book through a social media campaign or pitching it in person at a book fair or convention, you have to stay thick-skinned. Simply put, readers don’t have the time and money to buy every book. They’re judging book purchases across a spectrum of things: personal mood, personal interests, cover art, book description, reviews, recommendations, author bio, other works, and about a billion other tiny factors that even they may not be aware of.

Your book launch can go terribly if you have a bad cover. It can go equally poorly if the cover you have signals the wrong genre or subgenre. I’ve had people walk up to my booth at a convention, pick up a book, talk to me for literally two hours about the book and the series and what makes it special, their ideas about writing, what they liked to read, and then at the end tell me they’re not interested in buying my books.

And (while I would have appreciated the person telling me that earlier in that particular conversation) that’s alright. Was I frustrated? Sure, but you have to move on to the next opportunity. Not everyone is going to like your book. And sometimes the people who should like your book won’t ever pick it up. In the former case, you just can’t do anything about it. In the latter, well, it’s on to you to determine what went wrong. Wrong/bad cover is a big chunk of those. Needs a better opening/hook might be another. If you’ve gone the indie route, asking other authors their opinions can help, doing polls on social media as well. The big thing is to learn from it.

In the end, rejection is just another part of publishing and writing. You can’t let it get you down or make you give up. You should not react with anger or lash out at the rejections of your novel at any tier (remember, it isn’t a rejection of you, unless it is).

I’ve still got a box of rejection letters from my first, second, and third novels. The personalized ones told me I was getting there, and where I needed to improve. Keep learning, keep growing as an author.