Why Good Writing Gets Rejected

I have a reasonable amount of experience of the publishing world: I worked as a non-fiction editor for a book-packaging company which gave me direct experience of editing for some of the best publishing houses in the world. In the process, I learned a little about the publishing business; the differences between good and publishable; and the horrible truth about the slush pile.

I've had a reasonable amount of non-fiction published and so have seen that it is possible for complete unknowns to get themselves good publishing deals with a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work.

I've also had all of the novels I've written so far rejected. I've won all sorts of prizes for my fiction and have received only positive comments from agents and editors, so I know I'm competent: but what went wrong?

While I'll agree that my second novel is overlong and far too quiet, I still consider my first to be good-to-excellent—but, having worked in publishing for so many years, I can understand why it hasn't been published, despite a few very near misses: it would have been very difficult for the sales reps to sell it into bookshops.

Without my editorial experience I would be far less able to understand why that's so important; and without my non-fiction publications I might have gone on to conclude that it's impossible for a newcomer to get published. I'm lucky: I can see this from all sides and while I would dearly love to see my novels in print, I can understand why they are not.

I can only imagine how painful it must be for good writers without similar industry experience to understand why their excellent work has been rejected.

How Much Can Writers Get Away With?

We know that writers have to get their work as close to perfect as possible to get it published: but the fact that publishers insist on paying editors to then edit those books before they are published implies to some that books don't have to be quite as perfect as is commonly thought before they are submitted. And if that's the case, what mistakes can writers get away with when they submit their work and what can't they afford to get wrong?

1. The basics of spelling, grammar and punctuation must be there. If the odd error has sneaked into your work then you're not facing an automatic rejection; if you show a persistent-but-consistent error which is relatively easy to correct, like using a hyphen where you should use a dash, then again you're not doing yourself too much harm. But if you misspell several words on every page, you don't seem to understand the correct use of the comma, and you pepper your whole manuscript with extended ellipses then that is going to signal to an editor that your book will need a substantial amount of work to get right—and will probably lead to rejection.
2. It's always possible to strengthen something: if a character isn't quite believable a good writer can work them more deeply into their scenes; new scenes can plug holes in gappy plots; structures can be consolidated or broken down; and a swingeing edit can work wonders on a flagging story-line, increasing the pace and tightening the story. The problem comes when all of these things need a lot of attention: the book will be very time-consuming to edit and with so much in need of revision it's difficult to be sure that the book will end up publishable. Rejection is the probable result.
3. The story has to be good. There is absolutely no point at all in constructing the perfect plot around a story which no one is interested in, or a story which people find repellent. Your story has to be really good, not just good enough.
4. If you have a good story and have perfected the structure, plot and characterisation, you still cannot guarantee that you have written a publishable book. What you also really have to have is a good voice—a unique, engaging and enticing voice. And this is the one thing that you have to get completely right if you want to be published because it's the one thing a good editor cannot help you with. It infuses every page of your manuscript and informs everything that you write. The stronger your voice, the more leeway you will be allowed with the rest of the book, and the more likely you are to get published regardless of what errors might lurk in your texts.

What Gets Rejected

It’s true that a lot of excellent work gets rejected by agents and editors.

Perhaps they don’t think it’s commercial enough; perhaps the story is good but the writing isn’t, or vice versa. Perhaps it hasn’t been submitted to the right agents, editors or imprints. Perhaps it’s too similar to something else that has already been published. There could be all sorts of reasons why good writing gets rejected. But if it’s good enough then it’s almost certainly going to be published eventually, so long as the writer (or his or her agent) persists.

Most of the work that gets rejected doesn’t fit into this category. Most is of vastly inferior quality, which is why it gets rejected. What few people appreciate is just how truly awful most of the slush-pile is: I don’t mean that it’s awful in that it needs a little tidying up, or a bit of an edit: it’s awful in that the bulk of it is incomprehensible and unreadable.

To paraphrase James D Macdonald: if you can write something that’s grammatically correct, which doesn’t contradict itself too many times and which shows a reasonable understanding of both spelling and punctuation then you’re already in the top ten per cent of the slush-pile, with a good-to-excellent chance of getting read—and getting published.

Personalised Rejections

Very few editors or agents personalise all of the rejections they send out: most rejections are made by a form letter, with no detail or comment.

When work shows particular promise but still isn't quite right, then sometimes an agent or editor concerned will write a little note explaining exactly why it has been rejected. Perhaps it's too similar to another book that’s just been signed; perhaps it's an unfamiliar genre; or perhaps it's not quite good enough for publication yet, and needs further work to get it there. But why don't agents and editors do this for every rejection? A couple of lines don't take up too much time; surely it's not too much to ask? (If you think that last is true, then read Emma Darwin's comments here for some new insight on the practicalities involved.)

Editors and agents earn their living from the books that are published, not from the books that they reject; and the ever-replenishing vastness of the slush pile means that if they did personalise every rejection they sent they’d never get anything else done and would be out of business before the month was up.

Assuming, however, that our agent or editor has time available for these things, could anything they have to say be useful to those rejected writers? The majority of the books in the slush pile are so bad that it would be impossible to know quite where to start in order to explain why they were rejected. If an agent were to write, "I've rejected your book because it is dreadful in every way," would that be of any more help to the writer on the receiving end than a form rejection? The writers who are likely to receive such rejections are also unlikely to believe them: what good would it do?

Some writers see any personalisation as an invitation to develop a deeper relationship with the person who rejected their work: they’ll argue that their work has been misunderstood, or that more of it needs to be read in order to fully appreciate its many finer points. Or they might write back just to insult the person who rejected the work (I wonder what writers think will be gained by this behaviour: do they hope to change someone’s mind just by insulting them?). But there’s a more worrying side to this, and it’s one I have first-had experience of. A writer I once sent a personalised rejection to ended up stalking me. He sent me more and more submissions; phoned me every hour; and ended up sending in photos of me arriving at work in the mornings, going out for lunch, and taking the bus home. Now, that was scary stuff and I know of a couple of other editors have faced this too. Like me, they switched to form rejections for just about everything as a result.

Why Work Is Rejected

Over the last three days I’ve read commenters on several blogs and message boards insisting that the race, gender or political affiliation is the single reason certain writers get rejected, regardless of the quality of their writing.

Under the current submissions system, writers send their work in to agents and/or editors; then their work is read, and accepted or rejected because it’s either good enough or it isn’t. Being good enough includes all sorts of things: the quality of the writing, the story, what competition is out there, and the likely market. And unless the submission was made to a niche publisher, this judgement has nothing to do with the age, colour or gender of the author concerned.

Last Autumn, one of my books was rejected by a Muslim editor. Did I react by ranting that this was religious discrimination, because I’m non-Muslim? Or racial discrimination, because I’m white and the editor wasn’t? Or discrimination because I’m a woman and the editor is a man? Nope: his gender and religion had nothing to do with the rejection. I thanked him for his time, had a look at my writing and realised that he was right: my work wasn’t suitable for publication by the company he worked for.

Writing is judged purely on its quality by editors, sales teams and publishers, who themselves belong to all ethnicities, religions and genders. They have little or no idea of the ethnicity or religious beliefs of the writers they’re considering unless the writers choose to tell them: so how can anyone logically insist that that’s why they reject some writers and accept others?

When submissions are rejected by all who see them, chances are the writing, premise or story just isn’t good enough to be published. It’s not good to hear that about something you’ve worked hard on for a long time, but you can learn from the experience: write something better that won’t get rejected. Move on. And for goodness’ sake, don’t try to blame others for your own weak work.

Unsolicited Manuscripts

Most of the big publishers, and an increasing proportion of the smaller ones, state that they’ll no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t submit to them: it just means that they have to solicit your manuscripts before they’ll even consider reading it.

One way to arrange this is to write a concise, appropriate and brilliant query letter. Tell them a little about your book: make them desperate to read it. If you can spark their interest sufficiently they’ll ask if they can read more and suddenly, your manuscript will be solicited.

Note that this won’t work with publishers who refuse unagented work: to be read by those publishers, you need to have an agent of your own. But it can open several doors that seem at first glance to be tightly locked shut.

Janet Reid: The Two Parts Of Brave

I've just read a wonderful post over at Janet Reid's blog.

Janet Reid is a literary agent, based in New York. She's exacting and pernickety and very difficult to land as an agent (I make her sound like a prize carp): but she's also knowledgeable and successful and supportive, and makes fabulous deals for her clients.

She's also very much aware of how heartbreaking the writing life can be, as you'll discover if you read this old blog post of hers.

The Street-Smart Writer, by Jenna Glatzer

Jenna Glatzer is a skilled, knowledgeable writer, and is the founder of AbsoluteWrite, which supports the best writers’ message board on the internet.

In 2006, the Nomad Press published The Street-Smart Writer, which Jenna co-wrote with Daniel Steven, a noted publishing attorney. I’ve bought several copies of this book since, and dished it out to my writing friends. It’s informative, accessible and endlessly useful, and I refer to it almost daily.

If you live in America, you can now download The Street-Smart Writer for free. If you live anywhere else you’re going to have to buy it for yourself.

If you’re a writer, get hold of a copy even if, like me, you have to hand over some hard cash to get it. It’s invaluable (although I wish they'd had the vision to put a shark-bite on the cover).

Rejection

There are two ways to handle rejection.

You could take it personally. Feel wounded; rant and rave about the unfairness of it all. Obsess about the nuances of the note that came with the rejection, and pick out every shred of meaning that you can from “sorry, not for us”. You could reply to the person who so callously rejected you, and explain to them in careful detail why they were wrong to do so; you could even stop writing, your writerly sensibilities to damaged for you too continue.

Or you could remember that it's not you that's been rejected, it's a piece of writing and that writing doesn't have feelings, and so won't care. You could realise that there are many more aspiring writers out there than the publishing world can accommodate, and that you need to learn to write better, target more accurately, or do both, in order for your work to be accepted. You could realise that the editorial assistant who sent you that swiftly scribbled note did not do so in order to upset you and that what was meant by “sorry, not for us” was that they were sorry, but for one reason or another your work did not suit them. If you manage to do all this then you’ve probably been writing for a while, understand how the industry works, are used to the odd rejection, and are far more well-adjusted than I.

The Truth about the Slush-Pile

There are two little things that a writer can do to make sure they don’t get trapped in the slush-pile.

First, make sure their work is ready to submit before they send it off. The vast majority of submissions (perhaps 95%) are nowhere near good enough to be published. I’m not talking about work with a few typos, or in need of restructuring: I’m talking about work which has absolutely no chance at all of ever making it into print in the commercial market.

Second, make sure they target markets which are appropriate for their work. You wouldn’t, for example, write an article about breastfeeding and send it to a car magazine: so why do so many writers do the equivalent when submitting their books?

The company I edited for specialised in illustrated, esoteric adult non-fiction. It published books about meditation, religion, prediction, mythology, retreat, and tantric sex. Submissions included novels, pornography, and proposals for books about cars, weaponry, and computing. The most fantastic submission was a heavily-illustrated children's story book, in verse, about trolls. All written in Dutch, with no translation provided.

No wonder so many of the bigger publishers will now only accept agented submissions, and reject other submissions unread. No wonder so many agents are now closing their doors to new clients.

I’m not telling anyone not to submit. Just make sure that you’re ready, and that you’re sending your work to the right place. That’s all.

PS: Have a look at Slushkiller, over at Making Light, if you want to read more about slush.