There exists no lonelier document than a rejection letter. It’s essentially a receipt for something you never bought. I know this not from receiving them, oddly enough, but from receiving nothing at all; when I posted my first novel to the literary agents of London in 2016, most couldn’t rouse themselves to say no. More on that shortly.
First, some comfort for anyone whose manuscript keeps boomeranging home: a tour of the famous books publishers turned down, confidently, repeatedly and, in one case, 121 times.
The world record nobody asked for
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance holds the heavyweight title. Before its publication in 1974, 121 publishers turned it down… a figure the Guinness Book of Records once listed as the most rejections received by any bestseller. The editor who finally took it on reportedly did so expecting the book would never turn a profit. It sold 50,000 copies in its first three months and has shifted more than five million since.
In fairness to the 121, a philosophical inquiry into values wrapped around a father-and-son motorcycle trip is a tricky pitch. In unfairness to them, every last one of them missed a five-million-copy classic, and they all had one job.
“Rubbish & dull. Pointless.”
That, in full flow, is what Faber & Faber’s professional reader scrawled across William Golding’s submission: “Absurd & uninteresting fantasy… Rubbish & dull. Pointless.” Roughly twenty publishers had already declined the novel by then. One imagines the reader heading home that evening entirely satisfied with another hard day’s gatekeeping, blissfully unaware of having just booted a future Nobel laureate into the slush pile.
A young Faber editor named Charles Monteith fished the typescript out of the reject pile, championed it through the committee and gave it a new title: Lord of the Flies. Golding collected the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. The reader’s report, one assumes, no longer features in Faber’s recruitment material.
Faber had form here, too. T.S. Eliot, then a director at the firm, turned down George Orwell’s Animal Farm on political grounds. Over in America, Dial Press declined the same book with the immortal explanation that it is “impossible to sell animal stories in the USA”. Orwell had written an allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. The feedback suggests somebody skimmed.
The ones we nearly lost altogether
In 1937, Theodor Geisel… better known as Dr. Seuss… trudged along Madison Avenue with the manuscript of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street under his arm, intending to go home and burn it. Twenty-seven publishers had said no. Then he bumped into Mike McClintock, an old university friend who, that very morning, had started work as the children’s editor at Vanguard Press. McClintock bought the book the same day. The entire Seuss canon therefore rests on one man’s choice of pavement. Had McClintock crossed the road for a newspaper, generations of children would have grown up tragically unaware that a cat might wear a hat.
Stephen King, meanwhile, threw the opening pages of Carrie into the bin, having decided he couldn’t write convincingly about teenage girls. His wife Tabitha retrieved the pages, read them and told him to carry on. The finished manuscript then collected around thirty rejections before Doubleday said yes and launched one of the most successful careers in publishing history. Every writer needs a Tabitha. Most of us just have a bin.
Keep the day job
Twelve publishers turned down Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and somewhere along the way J.K. Rowling received the advice every author treasures: don’t quit your day job. Twelve letters politely declining the best-selling children’s series in history now sit in twelve filing cabinets, presumably under armed guard.
Madeleine L’Engle endured 26 rejections for A Wrinkle in Time, mostly on the grounds that it seemed “too different”, and apparently burdened with the baffling novelty of a female protagonist in a science fiction story. It went on to win the Newbery Medal, the biggest prize in American children’s literature.
Agatha Christie’s experience involved less rejection and more purgatory. Six publishers passed on The Mysterious Affair at Styles, after which John Lane of The Bodley Head held onto the manuscript for around two years before deciding he’d publish it after all. Four years elapsed between Christie finishing her first detective novel and anyone being able to buy a copy… and you can add the writing time on top of that, which is a saga of its own. Considering she went on to become the best-selling novelist in history, you’d hope John Lane at least sent a fruit basket.
The big numbers
Kathryn Stockett pitched The Help to literary agents for three and a half years. Sixty said no. The sixty-first said yes, and the book went on to sell millions and become a hit Hollywood film.
Marlon James fared even worse, or better, depending on how you score it: 78 rejections for his debut, John Crow’s Devil. In 2015 he won the Man Booker Prize. Somewhere out there, 78 people experience a very specific feeling whenever his name comes up.
And the undisputed champion, if we widen the net beyond novels: Chicken Soup for the Soul, turned down 144 times. The authors’ agent abandoned ship at rejection number 33 with the parting words “I can’t sell this”. A small publisher in Florida eventually took a punt, and the series became one of the best-selling in publishing history. The agent’s current whereabouts remain unrecorded, though I like to think there’s a support group.
And yet…
The numbers aren’t really the story. Behind every count sits the same unglamorous picture: a person at a kitchen table, opening another email, reading a stranger’s no, and deciding, against all sensible advice, to send yet another query email.
Which brings me to my own rejection story, such as it is. When I finished my first novel in 2016, I did the proper thing and sent it off to literary agents. They didn’t reject it — rejection would have required someone to read the bloody thing. What came back, almost universally: silence. So I stopped waiting for permission and published the book myself that October.
Oddly enough, I received an unsolicited offer from a fairly large publisher some months after my first novel landed on Amazon’s shelves. A £5,000 advance and all the credibility that comes with a traditional publishing house. I declined the offer. I’ll never know if I did the right thing, but my best guess is that my first novel would have faded into obscurity and I’d have lost all motivation to write another.
If you fancy judging for yourself what the agents of London never opened, that first novel, The ’86 Fix, follows Craig Pelling: a middle-aged man stuck in a dead-end job and a loveless marriage, handed one weekend back in 1986 to repair his life. And if you reach the final page wanting to know what happens when the repairs go horribly wrong, the sequel, Beyond Broadhall, is waiting. Both stand as proof, I hope, that the slush pile occasionally fights back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which book holds the record for the most publisher rejections?
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, turned down by 121 publishers before its publication in 1974. The Guinness Book of Records once listed it as the most-rejected bestseller, and it has sold more than five million copies since.
How many publishers rejected Harry Potter?
Twelve. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone collected twelve rejections before Bloomsbury said yes, and J.K. Rowling also received the now-famous advice not to quit her day job.
Did Stephen King really throw Carrie in the bin?
Yes. King binned the opening pages of an early draft of Carrie, and his wife Tabitha rescued them and encouraged him to continue. The finished manuscript then collected around thirty rejections before Doubleday accepted it.
Why did publishers reject Animal Farm?
The reasons varied. Dial Press in America told George Orwell it would be “impossible to sell animal stories in the USA”, while T.S. Eliot turned the book down at Faber & Faber on political grounds.
How many rejections did The Help receive?
Sixty literary agents turned down Kathryn Stockett’s The Help over three and a half years. The sixty-first said yes, and the novel became a global bestseller and a hit Hollywood film.