I just received this rejection yesterday from a large publishing house. I think, when I get a rejection from now on, I’m going to post what the rejection says on this blog. Why? So that other authors and aspiring authors can see the reasons for rejection. Also, for those who haven’t started submitting yet, they can see what a real rejection looks like. I’ve placed my comments in caps and brackets. Here’s what the letter said:
Dear Cecelia,
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read [NAME OF MANUSCRIPT INSERTED HERE] I really enjoyed this project. Unfortunately, however, the general feeling was that the initial print numbers would be too small for our list. So, therefore, I have to pass.
It was a pleasure meeting you at the Faith and Fiction Retreat in Atlanta. I’m so sorry this didn’t work out for us but I wish you the very best in finding a good home for your work.
Best-
[EDITOR’S NAME HERE]
I’d submitted this manuscript on June 20 and I think this editor was nice to respond within three months. I’m glad she gave me a compliment. Although rejections stink, it makes me feel good when an editor for a large publishing house has something nice to say about my work.
I keep a spreadsheet with all of my submissions so that I can track them. I have more than one manuscript floating around out there now since I want to find a home for my books! After I receive the rejection, I keep it in a file and I remove the line from my spreadsheet since I’m no longer tracking that submission. I also try to keep track of where I’ve submitted a project so that I don’t make the major mistake of submitting a manuscript someplace twice!
Do you keep track of your submissions? What do you do to keep track of your manuscripts? If you have an agent, does your agent keep a similiar spreadsheet to track the status of your manuscripts?
Uh, no, Cecilia … I stopped keeping track of rejections because I couldn’t keep up!! 🙂
Anyone who attended the 2005 ACFW Conference will remember me as the poor slob who waved her hands wildly in the back of the room when Brandilyn Collins asked who had the most rejections in a year. I won the booby prize hands-down with 19 (at that time) and went on to garner 45 (both agent and publisher rejections, including three received AFTER I signed a 3-book contract with Revell Publishing!). Even my agent Natasha Kern blanched a bit when she first signed me, realizing after the ink was dry just how many times I’d been rejected. I believe the word she used was “daunting.” But apparently not too daunting for her amazing skills, giving a whole new meaning to the title of my latest release A Hope Undaunted! Imagine my shock when four years after receiving the booby prize, my debut novel A Passion Most Pure went on to win the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Debut Book of the Year on the same ACFW stage I’d accepted the rejection booby prize three years earlier. Now if that doesn’t give aspiring writers out there hope, I don’t know what will!
Onward and upward for the call of Christ, rejections or no!!
Hugs,
Julie
I don’t keep track of my rejections, but I probably should. I had a dream last night that my Steeple Hill manuscript came back, rejected. And from the editor’s comments, I was pretty sure she had been reading a different ms than the one I subbed. 🙂 But it was an interesting dream, anyway. I woke up expecting to be just torn up about the rejection, but I wasn’t.
Granted, it wasn’t the real thing. Yet. But I’ll have to think about this again, for when I have to deal with it myself. 🙂
Great post. Thanks for letting us know about it at FHL!
Hey Cecelia,
Thanks so much for sharing this! I’ve seen your books around online but haven’t had the chance to read one yet. Hopefully someday. 🙂
Rejection is tough. This one esp, since it seems to be based on numbers. Blech.
So far I don’t have trouble tracking my full requests because I don’t have that many. LOL But I do have some and use querytracker for my queries.
I really need to learn how to use a spreadsheet. Your system sounds great.
I’m sorry about the rejection and hope you do find a home for your story! 😉
Cecilia, I had 30 rejections before I sold. Would you believe I made a scrapbook that included them all? A reminder to myself about perseverance. And the letters still make me cringe. Some are nice, some are not so nice.
I tracked my submission status on a web site called querytracker.net. For $25/year, you can keep all of your agent and editor queries organized by manuscript, and get information on which agents or editors accept what and what their track record is on response time. People also leave comments about their experiences with specific agents and editors.
All in all, I think it’s well worth $25/year!
Blessings, Christine
I DO keep track of my rejections, Cecilia, but then I like color-coded excel charts. Call me odd. : )
And I’m still receiving rejections for the book that Abingdon releases this week. I’m working on book 2 of the 3 book series for Zondervan, but you know what I received in the mail yesterday? Yup. A rejection from Thomas Nelson. It’s all good. God guides our path, not the little slips that come in envelopes.
I keep track of rejections, sort of…I know where my proposals are, and aren’t. I used to fly into a tailspin at first, followed by chocolate, commiserations, and “I’m NOT doing this again…” But it’s a business decision, and timing, a lot of the time. I’m okay with that right now. 🙂
My agent called me an idea machine, which is a good thing. She believes it’ll be the right idea at the right time. And so we keep going. Which I need to do now. 🙂
Sorry for the rejection, but at least it was a “good rejection.” Also thanks for sharing the conference info and pics!
Great post, Cecilia. I am on a pretty even course with Steeple Hill now, but when I was writing magazine articles, I did keep track of query letters. It was too depressing to count rejections per se so I made it my goal to have ten different queries in the works at all times (not duplicate queries to different publications, but different ideas). That way I didn’t worry so much about the number coming back as I did the number I was putting out there. No matter what kind of writing one does the old submit and get rejected model seems to be the way it is.
Rejections are part of writing. Rejections mean we haven’t given up. I do keep a record on my submissions list. I’m reminded of something I once heard about mistakes, “making a mistake means you are doing something.” Receiving a rejection means I’m still writing and submitting.
What bothers me about the rejection letter is that there is nothing about the quality or worth of your book. Clearly, publishers no longer care about that, but only whether the book will sell. This is penny wise but pound foolish. The consequent decline in quality will mean fewer people will be inclined to buy books.
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Julie, that’s amazing! I have NO IDEA how many rejections I’ve stacked up over the years, both before and after publication! Your experience just shows that you can never give up!
Rebecca, I have something sitting at Steeple Hill right now! I hope and pray that they buy it! I’ve only sold to them once and they’ve rejected everything I’ve sent to them since! But your dream reminds me of a magazine publisher that I submitted to once. When I got the rejection….it wasn’t for the story that I’d submitted! The title was so unfamiliar to me, and I even called to inform them that Train To Temptation was not my short story!
Thanks, Jessica! My books are pretty cheap on Christianbook.com if you want to give them a try
Christine, I’ve never heard of querytracker, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind! I save all of my rejections in a manila folder. However, in recent years, I have gotten a number of e-rejections, so I save those in a folder online.
Vannetta, that’s hysterical! You’re still receiving rejections for a book that’s about to be released??
Lynette, I used to be the same way! I’d sit around and moan and complain when I received a rejection! I’d call a writer friend, Michelle Monkou, and cry about the rejections I’d received! Now, they don’t really bother me as much. Of course, I want all of my manuscripts to sell, but, if they’re rejected, it’s much easier for me to dust myself off and move on than it was twelve – fifteen years ago!
Thanks for the sentiment, Robin!
Janet, I make sure I keep multiple projects out there! I’m finding it harder to do that in recent years with having a son and all, but, I still manage to do it.
Loree, back in the days when people had AOL profiles, my profile saying was: Never Give Up!
David, I can’t blame the publisher for wanting to sell books – they’re trying to make a living and we’re in the midst of a economy slump. I do think that this publisher was interested in the quality of the book AND having a HUGE volume of past sales figures! They want that combination and if that’s the way they do business…oh well, nothing I can do about that but move on and perhaps submit something else later down the road if/when my sales figures increase.
Julie, that’s amazing! I have NO IDEA how many rejections I’ve stacked up over the years, both before and after publication! Your experience just shows that you can never give up!
Rebecca, I have something sitting at Steeple Hill right now! I hope and pray that they buy it! I’ve only sold to them once and they’ve rejected everything I’ve sent to them since! But your dream reminds me of a magazine publisher that I submitted to once. When I got the rejection….it wasn’t for the story that I’d submitted! The title was so unfamiliar to me, and I even called to inform them that Train To Temptation was not my short story!
Thanks, Jessica! My books are pretty cheap on Christianbook.com if you want to give them a try
Christine, I’ve never heard of querytracker, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind! I save all of my rejections in a manila folder. However, in recent years, I have gotten a number of e-rejections, so I save those in a folder online.
Vannetta, that’s hysterical! You’re still receiving rejections for a book that’s about to be released??
Lynette, I used to be the same way! I’d sit around and moan and complain when I received a rejection! I’d call a writer friend, Michelle Monkou, and cry about the rejections I’d received! Now, they don’t really bother me as much. Of course, I want all of my manuscripts to sell, but, if they’re rejected, it’s much easier for me to dust myself off and move on than it was twelve – fifteen years ago!
Thanks for the sentiment, Robin!
Janet, I make sure I keep multiple projects out there! I’m finding it harder to do that in recent years with having a son and all, but, I still manage to do it.
Loree, back in the days when people had AOL profiles, my profile saying was: Never Give Up!
David, I can’t blame the publisher for wanting to sell books – they’re trying to make a living and we’re in the midst of a economy slump. I do think that this publisher was interested in the quality of the book AND having a HUGE volume of past sales figures! They want that combination and if that’s the way they do business…oh well, nothing I can do about that but move on and perhaps submit something else later down the road if/when my sales figures increase.
Julie, that’s amazing! I have NO IDEA how many rejections I’ve stacked up over the years, both before and after publication! Your experience just shows that you can never give up!
Rebecca, I have something sitting at Steeple Hill right now! I hope and pray that they buy it! I’ve only sold to them once and they’ve rejected everything I’ve sent to them since! But your dream reminds me of a magazine publisher that I submitted to once. When I got the rejection….it wasn’t for the story that I’d submitted! The title was so unfamiliar to me, and I even called to inform them that Train To Temptation was not my short story!
Thanks, Jessica! My books are pretty cheap on Christianbook.com if you want to give them a try
Christine, I’ve never heard of querytracker, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind! I save all of my rejections in a manila folder. However, in recent years, I have gotten a number of e-rejections, so I save those in a folder online.
Vannetta, that’s hysterical! You’re still receiving rejections for a book that’s about to be released??
Lynette, I used to be the same way! I’d sit around and moan and complain when I received a rejection! I’d call a writer friend, Michelle Monkou, and cry about the rejections I’d received! Now, they don’t really bother me as much. Of course, I want all of my manuscripts to sell, but, if they’re rejected, it’s much easier for me to dust myself off and move on than it was twelve – fifteen years ago!
Thanks for the sentiment, Robin!
Janet, I make sure I keep multiple projects out there! I’m finding it harder to do that in recent years with having a son and all, but, I still manage to do it.
Loree, back in the days when people had AOL profiles, my profile saying was: Never Give Up!
David, I can’t blame the publisher for wanting to sell books – they’re trying to make a living and we’re in the midst of a economy slump. I do think that this publisher was interested in the quality of the book AND having a HUGE volume of past sales figures! They want that combination and if that’s the way they do business…oh well, nothing I can do about that but move on and perhaps submit something else later down the road if/when my sales figures increase.