Writers and a Stacked Deck

Not every great book finds a publisher.

I once wrote a novel which came very close to publication. My agent loved it. A very well-known publisher loved it. Their editors requested some modifications which I quickly made. They loved the changes. All looked bright.

But you know where this is going.

The reason for the rejection was the main character was black and I am white.

It was, I suppose, one of the early cases where “cultural appropriation” was the rationale for discrimination. Although I noted that Tony Hillerman was able to write a very successful mystery series about Navajo police officers, his books had been out for some years and I was given a whiff of the “that was then, this is now” excuse.

Most writers are more than aware of books that had multiple rejections before becoming major sellers. These are a few of them:

· And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr. Suess

· Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

· Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

· Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis

· Carrie by Stephen King

· Dune by Frank Herbert

· Dubliners by James Joyce

· A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

· A Time to Kill by John Grisham

· A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

· Lord of the Flies by William Golding

· A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava

· The Big Bounce by Elmore Leonard

· Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

You may argue that rejection is part of the writing game and that eventually someone, somewhere, will publish the book.

That assertion assumes that the writer has spare time and very thick skin. Some highly successful books were rejected 100 or more times before being published.

We don’t know how many fine books never saw publication because, after multiple rejections, they were abandoned by their demoralized authors.

Imagine what it must be like to get 100 rejections.

I’m in the process of completing a short novel (a.k.a. a novella) and have encountered a Catch-22 (now where did that term come from?) in that most publishers won’t accept short novels (e.g. less that 64,000 words) unless the author is well-known. Of course, you probably won’t become well-known unless you are published.

Let that sink in. They won’t even look at the manuscript.

The old days of the under-the-door or over-the-transom submissions are gone. Most publishers require that submissions go through an agent and the agents usually apply the publisher’s screening criteria because, after all, the publisher has the final word.

What that means is an unknown author who has written the equivalent of The Old Man and the Sea, Heart of Darkness, The Pearl, and Of Mice and Men will face rejection both from agents and publishers.

The agents and publishers don’t hide that practice. They tell you not to bother.

Which explains why more and more writers are turning to self-publishing.