Literary Rejections

“If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it.”

- Wally Lamb

Sometimes Traditional Publishers Get It Woefully Wrong 

Traditionally, publishing—the activity of making literature and information available to the public—refers to the distribution of printed works, which, until the eBook revolution, made publishers the veritable gatekeepers of writers’ careers. Over the years, many publishers (and even literary agents), placed in a position to play god, made and broke literary careers through the most poisonous weapon in the book publishing industry: rejection letters. How times have changed! These days, rejection slips no longer have a sting. In fact, many writers neither have the time to bother with them nor feel a need to write query letters in the first place.

The advent of electronic publishing has not only empowered writers to assume control of their work, it has also effectively robbed publishers of the power of monopoly. Today, an author can make his/her work available to the public as an e-book or as a paperback or even as a hardcover book (by way of print-on-demand technology) with the ease of a bird in flight. It is called self-publishing. And, while the author bears the cost of editing, cover design, and promotion, s/he benefits enormously from the process—complete control of the work, full profit from book sales, and incontestable freedom to determine release date, format, cover price, et al. And it goes without saying that rejection slips from publishers and/or literary agents are no longer the bane of writers’ careers. Interestingly, even some traditionally published authors have begun to go ‘the indie way.’  

There is no doubt, though, that for writers still seeking to publish their work the traditional way, rejection letters remain a concern, partially because publishers, even literary agents, at times make poor judgments, mistaking potential best-selling books for manuscripts with no literary merit. While the most magnanimous of rejection letters exhort writers not to be discouraged, some have been cruel and utterly inexplicable. For example, when John le Carre sent the manuscript of his debut novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, he was rejected and told “he hasn’t got any future.” Rudyard Kipling was told in one rejection letter that he “doesn’t know how to use the English language.” James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room was called “hopelessly bad,” and Richard Bach was rejected by 18 publishers who thought a book about seagull was ridiculous.

Another case in point is William Faulkner’s book, Sanctuary, which was rejected and called “unpublishable.” The novelist and literary critic, Malcolm Cowley, was said to have told Faulkner once in a letter, “In the publishing circles your name is mud. They are all convinced your books won’t ever sell.” But it wasn’t the last time publishers would consider a great book “unpublishable and unsaleable.” Jack Kerouac’s On The Road was described as “Frenetic and scrambled prose” and rejected by several publishers. As it turned out, they got it wrong. More than 50 years after its original publication, the book is still read, taught, and assigned in high schools and colleges all over the U.S., selling 100,000 copies each year in the United States and Canada and published in 32 foreign countries.

The fate of Ursula K. Le Guin wasn’t much different. Her 1969 science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, was rejected with these observations: “Ursula K. Le Guin writes extremely well, but I'm sorry to have to say that on the basis of that one highly distinguishing quality alone I cannot make you an offer for the novel. The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable.” In spite of this observation, the book became immensely popular and established Le Guin’s status as a major author of science fiction.

Ten Famous Books Rejected By Publishers

Now many writers are fed up with the short-sightedness of publishers and literary agents. Though some know they may not achieve the much-desired success in today’s publishing market which is saturated with books of different kinds, they prefer to self-publish rather than endure the humiliation of rejection by publishers/literary agents whose narrow view of the industry makes them unqualified gatekeepers.

A good example of this new approach to publishing is Marie Force, a romance best-selling author, who took the leap and became a beacon of hope to many indie authors. In a 2015 blog post by Ruth Harris, an industry insider, Force was quoted as saying: “Every romance publisher in the business rejected Maid for Love (book 1 in the McCarthy Series). I am thankful for every one of them now because if even one of those NO votes had been a YES, I’d still be working for someone else and wishing for the career I have now.”   

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#GameChangers

Indie Author & Social Media Bashing

reveals

The Fallacy of Game Changers

  

As events and ideas that affect a significant shift in the current way of doing or thinking about something come to be known generally as game changing, pretenders in various fields of human endeavor have arrogated the title of game changers to themselves.

More than in other walks of life, this trend is increasingly evident in the publishing sector and the social media. The numbers game—views of a Youtube video, likes of a Facebook post, retweets of a tweet, and large followers of an Instagram account—has become the new standard by which one’s appeal and success is determined, causing random stars, erroneously considered game changers, to emerge overnight.

Courtesy of AdvicesBooks

It brings to mind events of a few years ago when the advent of innovative technology simplified the publishing process through cost-effective POD—Print-on-demand—system for paperbacks and the dawn of e-books. With it, many charlatans, interchangeably called subsidy publishers and vanity press sprouted everywhere like fungi. Despite this ignominious phenomenon, the time had come for self-publishing, and when it started to grab huge market shares from traditional publishers, the latter, afraid of losing out on the chance to ‘play God’ went to great lengths to belittle e-books and the technology that produces them. And, along with some traditionally published authors in the ‘exclusive club,’ they bashed those individuals and companies that did anything to enhance self-publishing. The Authors’ Guild, under the presidency of Scott Turow for example, disapproved, in the strongest of terms, when Amazon acquired Goodreads, citing concerns about the creation of an internet monopoly.

As it turns out today, Amazon isn’t the ‘great evil’ it was made out to be. By putting its technology within the grasp of writers, it has enabled an entire new group of successful self-published authors, who take advantage of the new situation with the realization that they don’t need publishers given the lower costs and ease of distribution. And as they say, ‘if you can’t beat them join them,’ now traditional publishers, after pretending for a long time that self-publishing didn’t exist, oftentimes viewing it as means of exploitation of writers, have joined the fray, doing the same thing they cried foul about.

In 2012, Penguin formally entered the business of scamming inexperienced authors with the purchase of Author Solutions, a reviled vanity press, for $116m. Writing in the IndieReader, David Gaughran said that the performance of Author Solutions was so poor that the press release announcing the purchase couldn’t even tout their own customer’s success, listing instead some self-publishing stars including E. L. James, who didn’t used Author Solutions to publish their work. As if that wasn’t alarming enough, Simon & Schuster opened its own vanity press called Archway Publishing, and hired the now Penguin-owned Author Solutions to run it, amid allegations that they bribed writers to lie about their scamming operation. That, unfortunately, wasn’t the only disturbing behavior by a top traditional publisher. Random House too was accused of forcing unfair terms onto writers via their new digital imprints.

Essena O'Neill

In the social media sphere, a recent event involving a certain Instagram model, Essena O’Neill sheds more light on the fallacy of game changers. Catapulted to fame by the selfie culture, with half a million followers on Instagram and a quarter of a million subscribers to her Youtube channel, O’Neill staged an online repentance that went viral but got a backlash from former admirers who called her act a publicity stunt. After benefiting from the synthetic world of social media stardom by posting seductive selfies, she is now tearfully denouncing it as a hoax and a ‘dishonest and contrived’ way of viewing beauty.

"Her problem, and that of many like her, wasn’t, 

and isn’t social media but the vain manner 

in which it is being used."

Built on hype and showiness, just like reality television, the phenomenon thrives, not on substance but on Likes, Retweets, Followers and the ability to go viral. Getting caught up in its guile or being compelled by greed to abuse oneself in an attempt to look like someone else is only part of the idiocy that regulates the game. In real life, succumbing to peer pressure is not considered a virtue and so it is with the selfie charade. Therefore, playing the victim and claiming that she was lost in the ‘Celebrity construct’ isn’t exactly visionary. After basking in this wantonness for a few years, canceling her Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube accounts and bashing social media on the way out to follow the dictates of conscience, and calling on other ‘like-minded’ people to join her in becoming, yes you guess right, game changers, smacks of hypocrisy.

Essena

Her problem, and that of many like her, wasn’t, and isn’t social media but the vain manner in which it is being used, in the same way that modeling isn’t an evil profession but the senseless way some people abuse themselves in order to fit in, is. But isn’t it curious that to pursue her new role in life as a game changer, she created a website where she appeals for financial support, relying on the power of social media to effectively bash social media? It might have been more honorable for Essena O’Neill to quit the game quietly.

The fallacy of game changers is equally evident in the self-publishing industry. As indie authors are increasingly unfettered from the exploitation of the vanity press and the hurtful rejection of trade publishers, the need for visibility and distribution has given rise to a new wave of ‘game changers.’ Claiming to have the interest of the indie author at heart, these egregious benefactors offer services, including paid reviews, aimed at giving self-published authors a high visibility in the book market. As was recently revealed in an Amazon civil complaint filed in Seattle, there are also fraudulent reviewers in the mix who ask Amazon vendors to send prewritten reviews, which they post from multiple usernames and IP addresses to outwit the company’s detection software.

“Amazon strictly prohibits any attempt to manipulate customer reviews and expressly prohibits compensated reviews,” the complaint stated. “Nonetheless, an unhealthy ecosystem has developed outside of Amazon to supply reviews in exchange for payment.”

Based on the above statement, all paid-for reviews are supposedly frowned upon. But there are several reputable media outlets and industry websites that request payment from indie authors for so called professional and unbiased reviews that are generally regarded as authoritative. Some of them have a separate page dedicated to fee-based indie reviews and others claim to offer free reviews but clearly states that such can’t, however, be guaranteed as requests for expedited (read paid) reviews are high.

"Given that the self-publishing revolution is swarming 

with charlatans, fairness would demand that 

all paid-for reviews be treated as bogus 

whether they are from powerful 

review sites charging as much as $500 for 

a ‘professional’ review or from a freelancer 

in a free-for-all marketplace website charging $5."

Now, with competition in the book market heating up, many online shoppers increasingly rely on customer reviews when making spending decisions, but just how much can such reviews be trusted if they are paid for? Given that the self-publishing revolution is swarming with charlatans, fairness would demand that all paid-for reviews be treated as bogus whether they are from powerful review sites charging as much as $500 for a ‘professional’ review or from a freelancer in a free-for-all marketplace website charging $5.

Upholding such tenets of fairness will go a long way to stop, not only fraudulent reviewers, but also certain industry gurus (whose reviews are seen as authoritative though they are paid for) from undermining the trust of book readers and tarnishing Amazon’s brand because, let’s face it, in this sea of bogus benefactors of indie authors, the real game changers, in fact, are Amazon and those book bloggers who post honest reviews (positive or negative) without collecting a dime. 

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