Publishers are busy people. We know that, because more often than not, they don’t have time to tell us, writers all, how much they loved our book idea.
That publishers and agents are muzzled by having to deal with – I kid you not – thousands of submissions a month is not the only factor that leads to Rejection, or its close cousin, Total Silence.
There are five other very good reasons:
- They may have failed to grasp the commerciality of your book idea.
- They may not have understood your idea. Full stop.
- They may have sufficient budget only to produce six books this year. Your book is the seventh great book to hit their desk but they don’t have room in their production schedule.
- They may be distracted by takeover talks with a rival.
- They might have decided, only this month, to stop publishing books in your genre. They haven’t announced this, in case it makes them even more vulnerable to a takeover.
There are many more reasons, but you get my point: it’s not about you, and it’s not often about your book, and it’s rarely about your writing.
It’s everything to do with whether the publisher or the agent thinks they can make a profit by selling your book.
Please, please, please, please, please don’t think of a publishers’ rejection (or silence) as ‘failure’. Context is everything.
Publishers are not lovers, or friends, or even literary critics. (They are not Gateways to Literary Excellence: remember that book by a certain famous son of a royal father that did nothing for transatlantic family relationships?)
A publisher’s decision not to run with your book is purely a matter of business.
Keep researching. Keep submitting. Keep yourself informed about alternative routes to publication.