Depending on the genre you should definitely move on after much fewer rejections than that. There are maybe 50-100 agents in any one genre that are worth having. Once those have said no, write something else. But I'm pretty sure you're talking about short stories, and many of them, which is very different to this guy's situation.
Shouldn't you rewrite? I mean times out of ten, if not ten times out of ten, it could be good if you rewrote it. Even if you have to change some plot, I'm pretty sure you can get an idea published. Like this guys stuff, it has potential. It's just he obviously needs to rewrite.
Too late for him now. That harsh blog he wrote is plastered all over the internet; no one's gonna wanna read it now.
Well yes, his whole fiction craeer is probably doomed to remain in limbo. I think he should go back to non-fiction and editing since he's apparently wuite good at those. But I'm just saying in theory if a book gets rejected repeatedly shouldn't you rewrite rather than scrap it?
If your draft got rejected that many times, you may need to probe further and find out if it either needs a re-write, be put on the shelf, or scrapped all together.
I do have short stories on the brain where it's quite easy to rack up a high number of rejections very easily, especially if you are trying to get your work in some place good. I have four-year-old stories I am still submitting. I don't see it as a lost cause just yet. But years back I was in a different place and querying agents. It was a nonfiction, current events book. It was a good story, I thought and so did a few agents. But I got quite a few rejections early on. I didn't change my query or proposal. I just kept sending it out. There were things that happened out of my control that killed that project, but I queried somewhere between 50 and 100 agents and would have kept going if I had to. I imagine I will do the same with any book in the future. I never really thought about running out of agents. That would really suck. Rewriting is not always the answer. I'm not talking about this guy particularly. I didn't bother to look up and read any of his stuff other than the blog post in question. I'm not a huge fan of rewriting. The only time I really do it is when I have to. I have gotten rewrite requests from magazine editors. I will do it then. And I had to do quite a bit of rewriting when I was getting my MFA. But I have novel attempts that I don't feel deserve a rewrite. And not every rewrite turns into a sale or a deal or anything. Aren't most of us going to fail and get rejected enough times that it makes us crazy or quit? This is a really tough business. If you aren't a very good writer, you probably won't do a very good rewrite. I can scrap things. It hurts a little sometimes, but I can do it. The great thing about writing and being writers is that we can produce an unlimited amount of material. I am writing new and better stuff all the time. I think it's important to remember that or we are likely to quit or go crazy.
Hi, At the risk of being seen as pushing the indie band wagon - does he need to rewrite? Is his work problematic? You all seem to be assuming that becuse he's been rejected so many times there must be something wrong with it. But is there? I'm sorry folks but you have to face the harsh reality of the trade publishing system. Your work may be brilliant. That doesn't mean you'll get an agent or a contract. The biggest hurdle a writer faces in going down this road and trying to get an agent, is numbers. Said agent has hundreds of other manuscripts on his or her desk while you're submitting yours. And in all likelihood while there will be stuff that can simply be chucked by the end of the first paragraph, a lot of it is going to be of a reasonable standard. All it takes for you to be rejected is for one of those other works to grab the agent's attention. Note - not even be better than yours, just have something that grab'san agent's attention. Now I don't know this guy's work. And judging from his blog I'm not encouraged to read it and see if there's any merit to it. But he could be the greatest literary talent since Shakespear or the biggest blowhard out there. (Sadly I know which option I'd put my money on.) Either way the agents are not going to tell him. Hell I don't even know if they've given him any advice as to what if anything they think is wrong with the book. If they've even bothered to send him any rejection letters. If not then how the hell is he going to rewrite it? Is he just going to guess what they didn't like - assuming there was something they didn't like and he wasn't just beaten by another manuscript pure and simple? So I return to the basics. 319 rejections. It obviously isn't grabbing the agents' attention. Time to put it out there with the people whose opinions actually matter - the readers. Cheers, Greg.
Did you read his blog posts? Quite a few agents have told him the problems with his MS - but he dismisses them all.
It is quite easy. Just accept it even if it hurts or sucks. Writing back won't do much good. Just move on to another agent or publisher. At least that is what I did when I got a couple of rejections, though I decided I am not good enough to go the traditional route. But who knows you could lucky with casting a wide net.
He might as well self publish. With this history trailing him, no agent in their right mind would touch him with a barge pole, no matter how 'great' his writing might be. He's well and truly cooked his goose.
There are so many things you can read as an aspiring author that make your blood run cold. In his case he has a few books published already, so it's not even the case that he can't get a break. He's had his break and its run out. Although from what he's written already I think he's had a good run for his money. I was reading an article once about how even authors who by most yardsticks are successful are being dumped by their publishers. These are the mid listers, who would in times gone by have been able to make a living putting out a couple of books a year and selling 60,000 or so copies. Apparently now publishers are uninterested in this type of ROI and are putting everything into trying to make smash hit debut novelists, or attracting big hitters from elsewhere in the industry. Apparently if you are already known but haven't set the world on fire then you have hit a dead end even if you sell. And it's as much to do with personality as it is with what you write. They're looking for next big things to appear on chat shows and radio interviews. Maybe self publishing is the answer.
Do you remember where you read this? (about authors who sell well-but-not-exceptionally being dumped by publishers?) Although, really, those are the authors who really might be better of self-publishing. If they're selling 60K books a year, they have an audience, and I think audience-finding is the most important role played by modern publishers. ETA: Back to the case at bar - I think this guy only has non-fiction published by real publishers. He self-published the novels he has for sale, and I assume that experience taught him that publishers are pretty damn useful for new authors.
Quite a lot shows up in Google. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2013/02/25/marie-doria-russell-on-the-perils-and-rewards-of-being-a-midlist-novelist/
Regarding pitch conferences... I attended a pitch seminar with screenplay agents at the Penn Writer's Assn. It was an opportunity to pitch my work, after they discussed what constituted a good pitch. And get a real time critique. I didn't actually subsequently go these people (though I may, but it is not screenplay) but the seminar was helpful and somewhat reassuring that the story hits an interesting chord. And they suggested a rewrite to Karen's story, which she is putting into work now... she did her pitch off the cuff, which is really hard to do without data-dumping. Regarding queries, one of the things I learned is that agents typically get 400 queries per month. And pick only four or five per year! That is one out of thousand. So you have to make your query stand out from the pack, likewise your writing... most want between 5 to 50 pages of your work. With that kind of competition, even minor SPaG can get your work dumped, so make it squeaky clean. And the first 5-50 pages have to grab the reader, not set the stage for something to happen later. And send it, personalized, to an agent you picked for a reason... the first two sentences should be about the agent, not your wonderful story. Regarding the OP, I haven't been able to open the link due to technical reasons, but from what I have seen, the individual's character has been well-assessed and I don't need to read it. The blog writes a well-deserved finis to his writing career, if he ever had one. All I could say to him in the way of advice is to grow up. If you act like a child, that is how you will be treated. If he got 319 rejections, then he needs to consider either a major rewrite, or going the indie or self-publishing route. BTW, I have had some success in requesting a critique of my query from my first batch of agents, and actually got one... I said this was my first time and any critique they had would be welcome. In both cases that responded, they had accepted other work, but the query was fine.
Hi, Publishers dropping midlisters? It's been going on for years. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/jun/08/authors-financial-squeeze Cheers, Greg.
Yeah, I've heard rumours, but, as the article you linked mentioned, there are no actual numbers. I was hoping for numbers/facts.
I recently had a novella rejected by my first book's publisher due to the characters being too gritty/sleazy for the genre (m/m romance). The two MCs are hit men and to be fair, are really horrible, brutal guys who don't really exhibit sympathetic behavior until the second half of the book. (@BayView, this is the story I referred to in the Writer's Workshop when I asked if you always needed to like an MC to keep reading the book) I'm going to submit to a couple of other LGBT romance publishers, but if I get similar feedback I'd rather tank the manuscript instead of trying to rewrite their attitudes and behavior. It may well be true that they're not likable enough to draw romance readers in, but I can come around to being okay with that. I'd hardly expect a publisher to put out a book that they feel wouldn't sell well to their reader base.
