One of the most depressing parts of my job as a publisher is sending out rejection letters. I’m an author, too; I understand it sucks to get those. I used to send out overly-personalized rejection letters because I knew that I, as an author, wanted more feedback when I was querying. Then I learned two important things:
1) Feedback of almost any kind opened the door for a string of emails I was not prepared to engage with.
2) I, as an author, shouldn’t want an agent or publisher who provides feedback to people they’ve rejected.
Agents and publishers work for the authors they’ve signed. They’ve been kind enough to consider adding a client, but once they’ve said, “Nope,” they should get back to focusing on the people they’ve signed. While a brief, impersonal rejection letter might not feel good, it was actually a sign I’d sent the manuscript to someone who understands their job and our professional relationship.
Still, it sucks to send those emails.
We just closed to submissions (except for the open call for poetry, visual art, and short fiction for the Antifa Lit Journal, which is still open), and after evaluating about a hundred queries and picking the manuscripts we want to read in full (and still choosing too many because, apparently, we’re masochists), I sent off the rejection emails.
(Another couple things I’ve learned: Submissions should be evaluated by a committee. It’s more fun, and it’s important to have people with different perspectives pointing out potential issues. But the rejection letter comes from me and me alone. Why? Because when the rejection letters have come from other members of our team who are women and/or people of color, the responses are very different, and not in a good way. Want sexists and racists to show their true colors? See how they respond when they feel rejected by someone who is a woman or is Black. Whoa. Very eye-opening for this old white dude.)
I got some polite, brief thank you notes, and that’s a professional move I recommend. I also received a heartfelt reply from one of the authors, someone I’ve interacted with IRL so we’re more friendly than a stranger sending me a query, and he wanted to know why he was being rejected, and what he was doing so “terribly wrong.” In general, I would say this is the kind of email you shouldn’t write (or, if you need to vent, write it but don’t hit “send”). But because we know one another, I presume he’s writing to me as a friend and not to me as a publisher. I wrote him the following reply, and then I thought it might be helpful to some of you as well, especially the advice at the end.
[Dear unnamed author friend],
There's no "terribly wrong," going on here (except, possibly, on our end). When I started this company, I was under the misapprehension I should sign books simply by asking the question, "Do I love this book?" Over the years, I've learned I should be asking two different questions: "Will lots of other readers love this book?" and "Are we the best company to sell this book to the readers who will love it?" We're still making very subjective judgments, and it's possible we've terribly misjudged the market for any given book. Some other publishing company or agent may say to themselves, "This is going to be a huge hit, and I can sell it effectively." But the very fact that we didn't immediately say that to ourselves means, when we're standing at a table full of our books, or talking with a bookstore owner, we don't have the kind of excitement about the book necessary to convince them to put it in their bag or on their store shelves, so our judgement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You deserve to have an agent or publisher look at a particular project and say to themselves, "This is going to be a huge hit, and I can sell it effectively."
And maybe your next book will elicit that reaction from our committee. This one just didn't grab us in that way, and there were different elements that turned off different members of the committee. As an author, I completely understand that these rejection emails are depressing, but please don't feel it's because you've committed some error. It's just a mismatch between our subjective perception of the market and our subjective impression of the book, both of which could be wrong, and neither of which you can control while writing. I know, when I'm querying a novel or short story or poem, I tell myself it's a numbers game, and the more places I can send it to, the more likely I am to get to yes. And that's true. But, in a larger sense, it's a combination of a numbers game and timing. It has to get to the right person just when they feel it's the right project for readers to jump at it. It's impossible to know when that will be, let alone whose email inbox is the magic one to send it to at that time, so we're all throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to see what sticks.
If I can give you any advice that will improve your chances in the future, it's not on the writing side, or at least not strictly on the writing side. Get engaged with readers in some way. Choose a social media platform (Instagram if you're into photography, TikTok if you're good on video, Threads or Bluesky if you're better in text form, Substack if you prefer longform, or twitter if you don't mind wading through a river of filth), and spend time interacting with readers there. You will simultaneously be building a following so you can tell a future agent or publisher that your book will have an instant audience, but, perhaps more importantly, you'll be learning from those folx about what they want in your next book. I am not saying to chase whatever is the current fad. By the time you write it, that fad has come and gone, and you'd be pitching a book to agents and publishers who are sick of hearing about boy wizards and teen vampires and every author claiming to be the "next ________." We don't want the "next ________." We want the first YOU. But we want your book to catch on with readers because it's just what they are thirsting for (whether they know it or not), because you've been listening to them and have a sense of what excites them. So build a fanbase who will inform you, and then take their advice. That's my advice. And then agents and publishers will still foolishly pass on your projects until someone more clever than I am realizes you've touched the zeitgeist at just the right time in just the right way, and you will allow them to keep the lights on while they make you lots of money. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.
I'm sure this is not a comfort now, but when you have hundreds of thousands of followers on some platform champing at the bit to read every word you write, I will be happy for your success and kicking myself for not publishing your work when I had the chance.
-Benjamin Gorman
Publisher, Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated