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Joseph E Bird

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publishing

rejections from agents

If you’re an author trying to get published, rejection is part of the process. I have no problem with that. As part of my day job as an architect, we submit our qualifications for projects and are rejected 90% of the time. It’s not that we’re not qualified; most of the time it just means we’re not a good fit for that particular project. It’s the same with writing. And though I’m accustomed to rejection in general, I’d like to see a little more success with my writing.

Authors seeking to be published by a traditional publisher generally seek agent representation first. Thus, agents are the first to offer rejection. Here’s a typical rejection letter (email) from an agent.

Dear Mr. Bird:

Thank you for your recent submission.  We enjoyed reviewing your work. Unfortunately, at this time, we do not feel we have a good place for you on our client list. We wish you all the best success in the future.

Just a form letter. No real feedback. Nothing to tell you if your writing is truly bad or if it’s just a wrong fit for that particular agent. And this judgement is based typically on no more than the first 50 pages of your novel, and more often, the first 10 pages. I can also imagine than an agent can make the assessment after the first few paragraphs.

Here’s another I recieved.

Dear Mr. Bird,

Thank you very much for your query below.   I liked the premise of this story, but I am sorry to say that I did not connect with the writing in the way I had hoped.  For this reason, and with regret, I cannot offer you representation.  However, I wish you every success and hope you will find the perfect home for this material. 

Hey! Positive feedback. This was for Heather Girl and apparently she liked the premise of my story! So that tells my I’m not completely off base with the overall story idea. This is good. Great, actually. Now the bad news.

I did not connect with the writing.

In other words, my writing sucks.

This is what authors tend to do. One minute you’re receiving the Pulitzer, the next your pages are not worth lining the bottom of a bird cage. We’re an insecure bunch. Reality is somewhere in the middle.

After a few days of self-loathing, I decided to try to figure out why the agent might not have connected with my writing. Working under the assumption that she started at the beginning, that’s where I start. And one of the first rules of novel writing is to have a good opening hook. So I spent a few days trying to craft a hook. That was more or less a useless excercise.

Did the agent really not connect with my writing because I didn’t have a clever hook? I doubt it. It’s more than that.

What did I do?

I scrapped the first three chapters altogether. I’ve moved one of my favorite scenes to the beginning of the book. I think it’s more engaging and my hope is that readers will be caught up in the story right from the beginning and be completely unconcerned about the words I use to tell the story. It’s the story, after all, stupid. That stupid is for me.

Yes, it’s taken a lot of work to rearrange the pieces and I’ve lost some of my favorite passages in those first three chapters, but wasn’t it William Faulkner who advised authors to “kill your darlings”?

I’m almost ready to begin another round of agent submittals. We’ll see if any of this has helped.

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The 1% lie.

According to surveys, about 80% of us believe we have a book in us.

Let’s play with some numbers.  The US population is about 320 million.  That means that about 256 million Americans believe they can (should) write a book.

Now let’s apply the 80-20, just for fun.

Of the 256 million who think they have something to say, only 20% of those will ever get around to actually trying to write a book.  That’s 51 million.

Of those, only 20% will finish their book.  That’s a little more than 10 million.  That’s a lot of books.

According to my non-scientific research, there are about 300,000 books published in the US each year, not counting self-publishing in all its forms.  Of the 300,000, about 100,000 are some sort of fiction.

Now 100,000 sounds like a lot.  Surely your novel can be one of the 100,000.

Let’s look at it another way.  Of the 10 million books that are written each year, only 1% get published.  The best 1%.

Maybe you’re in the top 10%.  That would earn you an A in school.  You’re better than 90% of the others.  But it’s not good enough to get published.  You need to be in the top 1%.

Here’s the part that’s not true.

The 1% doesn’t necessarily represent the best writers.  It represents the most marketable, the books that publishers are willing to take a chance on because they believe they can sell product.  Sometimes lesser writing is marketable.

So not only do you have to be a good writer, you have to have a sense of what is marketable if you want to get published.

The odds are against you.  But then again, it’s not about the numbers. It’s about the words.

Tell your story.  Even if it’s just for you.

 

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