Eight reasons that even a good book is rejected by publishers

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From Scroll.in:

Several years ago, as an aspiring novelist with stardust in my eyes, I used to spend most of my waking hours in Yahoo’s Books and Literature chatroom in the company of fellow aspiring writers. I clearly remember how one of the main topics of conversations used to be the number of rejection slips one had received on that particular day (or the previous week), agents/publishers who had requested a synopsis or proposal, and those who had just not bothered to respond. All of us were united by the looming sense of uncertainty, suspense, and the palpable realisation that the odds were firmly stacked against us.

Today, having spent more than seven years on the other side, first as a consultant and then an agent, I think many writers have wrong notions about rejections. While most books are rejected because of poor quality and incompetence (as they should be), there are several other factors that play a role in publishing decisions. And these affect “good” books too.

A book with no market

Good books are often rejected at the acquisitions meetings at publishing companies, where people from sales and marketing factor in the target audience, potential print runs, and profit margins. Rejections are more common in case of fiction ( especially genre fiction), poetry and short story collections. Several publishers have revised their minimum print run from 2,000/3,000 copies to 5,000.

As a result, books with a dedicated readership and market no larger than 3,000 buyers are being turned down. This partly explains the palpable shift towards publishing books written or at least driven by celebrities, or mass market books like the ones by Savi Sharma and Ajay K Pandey.

A book by a writer with no network or marketing abilities

Writers are increasingly being asked to be closely involved in promotional activities for their books. While some of them might be open to the idea, others feel that it is their works that should be doing the talking. One question that writers are sometimes asked: how many books can you sell within your existing networks – both professional and personal?

Sometimes a writer is also asked about their contacts with the media and with celebrities and influencers who can be roped in for blurbs and high-profile launches. In today’s age of literary festivals, it helps to know some influential festival directors as well. Eminently publishable books are at times rejected in the absence of such contacts or commitments.

. . . .

A book evaluated by the wrong editor

Authors often end up sending their submissions to the wrong editor: a commercial novel may end up in a literary editor’s inbox, or a mind- body-spirit title, in that of the current affairs editor’s. Even when the submission may have reached the right editor, they may not be too familiar with the subject. The more conscientious among the editors will not sign up even an eminently publishable book if they feel they won’t be able to add any value to it. Such misdirected submissions are wasted opportunities, since publishing houses rarely reconsider books, even if they feel they have been read by an unsuitable editor.

Link to the rest at Scroll.in and thanks to Dave for the tip.

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35 thoughts on “Eight reasons that even a good book is rejected by publishers”

  1. As far as submitting a book to the wrong editor or publisher, isn’t that the agent’s job? To know who is looking for what? Agents are supposed to be insiders who know the market. If they can’t get a book into the right hands and are completely incompetent at negotiating contracts as well, which they all appear to be, I’d say they’re useless altogether.

  2. Maybe a little translation will help:

    1: We don’t know how to actually market books.

    2: The Writer is actually responsible for all the marketing demands on their own, unless an appreciable portion of the planet already knows her/his name. Then we’ll think about it.

    3: We don’t know a good and worthwhile book if we got slapped with it.

    4: We don’t know how to actually market books.

    5: Generic excuse we use when we don’t want to admit to rejection reasons 1-4

    6: We don’t know a good and worthwhile book if we got slapped with it.

    7: We don’t know a good and worthwhile book if we got slapped with it.

    8: We don’t know how to actually market books

    So really, it’s just 8 more reasons to stay the hell away from TradPub and SP.

    • Agree with those points. The publishers’ behavior indicates they also agree. All the feel-good talk from agents and PR people doesn’t matter.

  3. Actually I agree with those points. In the beginning, when I started by approaching the holy grail of publishing, hat in hand, I got rejected or ignored 100% of the time, Numerically, 199 times. Obviously those editors and agents did not know the “masterpiece” that landed in their mail or e-mail box.
    After 13 books I published as an Indie Author with various degree of success, and accumulated a sack of tricks and failures marketing my books, I kind of understand the editors and agents’ predicament. I don’t know as much as publishers know about the publishing business, but I know the risk when they gamble their money on unproven authors. It is not only the money on the line, but the editors’ jobs.
    Would you publish someone’s else book with your money? I wouldn’t. It’s OK to gamble my money on my books, but that’s where my risk tolerance ends.

    • Which is why advances and actual support for debut writers is minimal even though most releases make money.

      Tradpub tends to think in terms of slots and maximizing the launch window return. Unlike indie author/publishers they aren’t in the business to build a brand and ramp up a career. They need quick returns.

      Very different game on both ends.
      They take the path that is best for them and authors need to figure out the path that is best for them. These days they are not often not the same.

  4. Good thing GRRM is not a woman. I’m told by writers who know some stuff about writing for TV that if you’re female and over 40, you’re DOA.

    Please don’t take me up on this; I have no personal knowledge. I’ve heard it from more than one source, however.

    • Might be true.
      Might be changing.
      The Shonda Rhimes empire on ABC seems to rely on a lot of female writers and producers. And the same is true of the Berlanti shows on CW and ABC.

      • Anybody seriously interested could look up the episode credits on IMDB and bios on Wikipedia or LinkedIn. Would be tedious unless DataGuy trots out a spider or two. 😉

  5. “A book with no market”

    I’ve seen agents online say that George R R Martin’s “Game of Thrones” would not sell if released as a debut today. Then I look at the bestseller lists and wonder which planet they’re on.

    He also didn’t have any social media accounts until relatively recently, and barely updates them anyway – so maybe that’s why he’s considered unpublishable?

    • All those Games of Thrones high fantasies are only out there because Song of Ice and fire is a monster success and everybody is trying to mine his fanbase.

      Now imagine he never existed and instead the exact same story is coming from a total unknown; who is going to bet on a six-to-8 volume series totalling over 3 million words with no resemblance to Tolkien or Zelazny?

      Or, try this: what traditional publisher would commit to a 300k monolithic, character-driven, ensemble space opera by a total unknown? Tell them it is a repurposed Honorverse fanfic and they’ll jump all over it as long as the serial number’s not too visible. 🙂

      Remember: today’s tradpub is risk adverse.
      “Just like Xyz but slightly different” works for them. Or, “Asimov’s foundation reimagined”, that they’ll drool over.
      “Like nothing you saw before” doesn’t work, especially if the author doesn’t bring along a track record.

      Anybody that new or that ambitious is wasting their time dreaming of a tradpub deal.

      • Well, it helps if you’re already a Hollywood insider.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._R._Martin

        Note that he only switched to Hollywood writing after ARMAGEDDON RAG thudded and, despite a long record, he was persona non grata for Manhattan publishing.

        —–

        “The unexpected commercial failure of The Armageddon Rag (1984), “essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time”, he recalled. However, that failure led him to seek a career in television[14] after a Hollywood option on that novel led to him being hired, first as a staff writer and then as an Executive Story Consultant, for the revival of the Twilight Zone. After the CBS series was cancelled, Martin migrated over to the already-underway satirical science fiction series Max Headroom. He worked on scripts and created the show’s “Ped Xing” character. However, before his scripts could go into production, the ABC show was cancelled in the middle of its second season. Martin was then hired as a writer-producer on the new dramatic fantasy series Beauty and the Beast; in 1989, he became the show’s co-supervising producer and wrote 14 of its episodes.[28]

  6. From their point of view, this makes sense, because they truly believe that they’re shouldering all the risk. To them, writers are disposable, necessary evils best kept as far away as possible. But every day there are more writers who disagree with that, and all the other nasty rhetoric from condescending gatekeepers who believe their perch is sacred, and the so-called estimable-but-rigged bestseller lists, and the creepy “submission” fetishes. …

    I have my own gripes with Amazon, but at least they made it possible to easily walk around these vampires. Other companies did, too. It’s beautiful. We don’t have to put up with bitter, jaded, embezzling, holier-than-thou editors, agents, or slush readers ever again.

  7. How about, “Consumers don’t want them at prevailing prices.”

    At prevailing prices, there are far too many authors and books for the traditional publishing market to absorb.

  10. A book by a writer with no network or marketing abilities

    Yeah, this was the thing that made me suspicious of publishers in the years leading up to the Kindle’s existence: if the writer has to do the marketing, what is the publisher for? If the publisher can’t afford a marketing teams for their divisions what good are they? Go indie, young writer.

    A book evaluated by the wrong editor

    I’m not sure how much of a thing this is. For years I had a copy of or access to Writer’s Market and Publisher’s Lunch. I think the authors who didn’t use those resources are probably red herrings. By default anyone trying to sell Bridget Jones’s Diary to Baen is destined to fail. The system is working as intended.

    Now if the point is to console authors facing rejection, focus instead on the failure of the sci-fi writer who submits to Baen: wrong subgenre, e.g. planetary romance? Right subgenre but story lacks oomph? Story has oomph but editor was just not into it? Go indie, young writer.

    • It’s not so much a matter of submitting BRIDGET JONES to BAEN as submitting it to a BPH were it gets routed to an editor who loves coming of age stories or tough guy action books and despises “chick lit”.

      One of the (many) problems with submitting to the BPHs is that, unlike smaller presses, there is no telling who is going to deal with the book. Even if it gets accepted, it may end up in the lap of a “hands on” editor who want it rewritten or an editor who had nothing to do with it getting accepted. In the olden days when imprints were independent publishing houses you could be sure who the editor was and what they liked. This days editor assignment is russian roulette with only one empty chamber.

      • This days editor assignment is russian roulette with only one empty chamber.

        Ah, I didn’t know that. I was thinking of the time when I had spreadsheets with the names of actual editors at various imprints, plus the agents who successfully submitted to them. That’s why I looked askance at the “wrong editor” claim; it seemed too unlikely, though obviously with the exception Antares talks about below.

        I stopped keeping up with how the game is played once the Kindle became a thing 🙂

        • No reason you should.
          That’s part of the freedom of the new normal, for those willing to take advantage of it; no need to keep track of the prejudices and foibles of gatekeepers that run in and out through revolving doors.

          (As to your ME4 question: I’m 10 hours and 10% in and I feel comfortable saying there is a brilliant SF experience in there. With two caveats: do you believe the best Mass Effect was the first? I do. And, I’m playing on XB1, where it has been rock solid. No crashes, hangups, no big glitches.)
          (That said, the graphics are actually excellent–Inquisition good–but some of the character designs are attrocious. The Ryder twins can be customized so that is fixable. But whoever designed Cora needs a trip to the woodshed. A friend of mine accurately described her as a crazed methhead. And her shoulders look dislocated in some conversations. The dialogue in your first visit to the Nexus is painful in parts, yes, and whoever voiced Cora slipped in one unforgivably bad line reading. Being early in the game it undoubtedly scared off a lot of people. Hasn’t repeated, so far. I’ll be switching her out for PeeBee, I think, just to be on thexsafe sidem)
          (The first habitat mission is fantastic: exploration, scanning, mining, puzzles, all for good story purposes, punctuated with reasonably challenging skirmishes. Enemy AI is good enough; you can draw them out of their safe positions if you’re willing to take some damage and they try to hide once you have the upper hand.)
          (My biggest fear was that it would be even more of a shooter than ME2/ME3 but it’s a trip back to the franchise roots: an RPG with guns. It’s looking like a chance to live the life of an intrepid space explorer, a lot like ME1.)
          I’m think EA pressured them into releasing early. And it may be that like several recent simultaneous console/PC releases, the PC version isn’t ready for prime time.
          But me, once I left the Nexus, I started having fun. It’s good Space Opera, so far.

          I hear you can get a free five hour trial if you sign up for EA ACCESS and cancel afterwards. If that deal is still up you can go hands on to make up your mind. (If you do give it a try, build a Carnifex pistol first chance you get. It could save your life. 🙂 )

          • Thanks for the update! I’ve been contemplating clearing space on my PC hard drive to test this, but I wanted to be sure it would be worth it first.

            I did enjoy ME1 the best so the “going back to the RPG roots” is a definite selling point. I’m in for the space opera.

            Thanks for reporting back. If I recall correctly, I always kept a Carnifex pistol handy so it’s good to know I don’t have to end that tradition 🙂

            • If you’re talking PC try checking out some reviews.
              As I said, I can’t speak to the game’s PC stability.
              But that Habitat 1 mission was really fun and long. And PeeVee is a hoot. Whatever team wrote that knows their SF. Hopefully I’m not steering you wrong, but that one mission would make a great movie. Reminded me of RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA in scope, if nothing else.

              • I’m not worried about the bugs so much as I’m worried about the story itself. According to the articles the devs know they have bugs to fix on the PC (generally the animations). But if the story is boring then it wouldn’t be worth the bother at all for me.

                I’ve never read Rendezvous but since it’s $1.99 on Kindle I’ll look into it.

                • It’s prototypical Clarke, deep on ideas–it’s an example of a rare breed SF story archetype, the travelogue–but lean on character. It’s about a group of astronauts exploring the interior of a giant alien artifact flying past the solar system.

                  The core plot of ME:A looks solid and the early chapters (labeled as such, too) play out reasonably logical. As the trailers show, five giant ships take 600 years to travel to the new galaxy–four arks, each with 20,000 colonists, the fifth a much bigger proto-Citadel with a leadership cadre and skeleton staff, all in cryo–and on arrival Murphy’s law takes over. Supplies are short, locals are hostile, and somebody has to recon and lead the way. Of course, everybody brought baggage…

                  It’s actually the very kind of story that a BPH SF imprint would reject out of hand for being too retro. It’s one reason why travelogue SF is so rare these days despite being common in the early years.

    • Jamie, RE: My experience with Writer’s Market
      Years ago, I researched Writer’s Market to find an agent. Found one that looked like a fit. Submitted mss. Got back a polite, non-form rejection with a hand-written note. Submitted another mss. Another polite, non-form rejection with hand-written note. Called agency. The end of the conversation follows:

      Me: What if I sell the book to a publisher and get a contract. Will you represent me then?

      Agent: No.

      Me: Why not?

      Agent: We don’t represent that genre.

      Me: Well, it says you do in Writer’s Market.

      Agent: Yeah, I guess we need to update that.

      Sent query letter to another agent in Writer’s Market. Came back marked ‘Unknown at this address’.

      Maybe you’ve had better luck than I.

      RE: Baen’s Books

      I got rejected by Baen’s. After 19 months. My book went through the slush pile, got selected, went to the senior editor who rejected it with “I don’t know how to market this. Send something more like XXX.”

      FWIW I was told by Baen’s slushreaders that my short stories had been passed to the editor at Jim Baen’s Universe (now defunct) for consideration. Just so you know, this does not happen all that often. Baen’s slushreaders screened the submissions and passed on only those they considered good fits for JBU. Got rejected; no reason given.

      Am I a bad writer? The weight of the evidence says not.

      Ignorance and apathy: I still don’t know why my stories did not click with Eric Flint (Senior Editor at Baen’s), but now I don’t care.

      YMMV, and apparently it does.

      • Thank you for the data point. The OP had made it sound as if writers were shotgunning, which was bound to result in the “wrong editor” problem. They didn’t seem to be focusing on experiences such as yours. As in: writers who did select the publishers/editors who say they represent your genre.

        The agent you dealt with was an idiot for not updating their info, and technically I’d say that this doesn’t count as a rejection, because it’s truly on them and not you. That is, in your place I could picture myself muttering about the agent being an idiot vs. wailing that I must suck really bad.

        The Baen scenario where you do submit the proper genre (as opposed to Bridget Jones) and the editor just doesn’t gel with it is why I said the writer should just go indie. The ridiculous response time is icing on the cake. I’d heard Baen was getting extreme about the time, but damn!

        Honestly my answer is “go indie” all the time anyway. It’s just that “wrong editor” line in the OP smacked too much of the infomercials where the actors have an extraordinarily difficult time accomplishing simple tasks — until they use the Shiny New Product.

        • Yup.
          “Go Indie” should be the default unless a proper justification says otherwise.

          As to BAEN, the problem there is they only put out about 60-70 titles a year and their stable of proven sellers accounts for almost that many titles. It’s a tough channel to crack.

          • Postscript: I went indie on the advice of Jerry Pournelle who was shocked that Baen’s took 19 months with my novel.

            RE: The agent
            Maybe not an idiot, but certainly incompetent. What upsets me is the time, effort, and postage wasted because the agency misrepresented itself in Writer’s Market.

  11. “A book with no market”

    How would anyone know until they try to market it?

    “A book by a writer with no network or marketing abilities”

    What has that got to do with if the book is any good?

    “A book by a writer with a failure in the past”

    And every person who has ever had any type of accident in a car should never be allowed to drive again.

    “A book in a genre that a publisher has not succeeded in”

    So you offered it to the wrong publisher.

    “A book with a familiar theme”

    Funny, I thought publishers chased things like the things that were selling well.

    “A book evaluated by the wrong editor”

    Just like offering it to the wrong publisher.

    “A book that fails an editor’s ideology or belief system”

    See above.

    “A book too expensive to produce”

    Are we sure it was actually a ‘book’?

    Perhaps they’d done better with:

    “Eight reasons that even a good book should be indie/self published”

    • “A book with no market”

      Isn’t this actually a book with not a “big enough” market? Because a self publisher isn’t a billion dollar company with shareholders, many would be quite happy earning 70% of 5,000 ebook sales, especially when they don’t have to produce physical product.

      Indies can be way more profitable in smaller markets.

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